LOS ANGELES: Just-launched agency Cavalry Public Relations is taking a different angle on crisis response: supplying clients with insights from well-known victim advocates, such as Nicole Brown Simpson’s sister, Tanya Brown.
Based in Los Angeles, Cavalry launched last Thursday, founded by David Thompson and Howard Breuer, who are leading its entertainment and legal teams, respectively.
The agency has a number of "victim advocates" on board, including mental health advocate Brown and Mika Moulton, founder of Christopher’s Clubhouse and cofounder of the Surviving Parents Coalition.
Cavalry’s goal is to help the families of crime victims and others involved in high-profile cases on media relations, legal strategy, and crisis management, as well as ways to cope with trauma and other personal challenges.
Breuer was inspired to launch the firm by the people he met during his nine-year stint as a staff writer at People, covering high-profile crime and other legal cases. In that role, he met people including Brown and Moulton, who had endured crises first-hand and became well-connected and resourceful victim advocates, he explained.
"Folks like [Brown] and [Moulton] truly understand what it means to be in a crisis with media forming around you, because they have experienced it from the inside," said Breuer. "These are insights you can’t find anywhere. With them, we are truly able to help people in crisis with a broader range of services and insight, more than other PR firms can."
Aside from crisis management, Cavalry also represents "traditional clients" in the legal, business, entertainment, and startup industries.
The firm’s staffers are based in New York, Salt Lake City, Seattle, and south Texas.
Other team members include former Court TV commentator Beth Karas and legal analyst and crisis management expert Anne Bremner.
Breuer, who left People last June, has consulted with law firms since then.
Meanwhile, before launching Cavalry, Thompson ran the Los Angeles bureaus of Globe, OK!, and InTouch before starting RedThink, a news and photo agency, in 2009.
