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Above, John Guilfoil, founder of Guilfoil Public Relations.
After attempting to do the job with its own staff, the Franklin Public Schools recently joined a trend regionally and beyond –hiring John Guilfoil Public Relations (JGPR) to handle their communication needs. Among others, the company provides services to the Norfolk Police, Medway Public Schools, King Phillip Regional School District, and hundreds of other municipalities and public agencies across the northeast.
“Earlier this fall, we reduced the marketing and communications position, which was a split role between Town and Schools,” said Superintendent Lucas Giguere. However, he explained, the department recognized that communication is essential to the work of the department, “so we identified the ongoing need for communication support related to public relations, emergency/urgent/timely communication, and general communication strategy,” he said.
“After researching other districts in Massachusetts, the Department contracted with JGPR for services ranging from stories within the district to media inquiries and crisis communications,” he added.
For Guilfoil, who started the agency in 2013, working with Franklin is something of a homecoming. Earlier in his career he had been brought on by Milford Daily News to test his reporting wings, and spent a few days digging into goings on in 02038.
Later on, he worked in the press relations field for the Mayor of Boston and compared big-city practice with what he had seen covering smaller communities as a reporter. His conclusion was that smaller entities needed a way to get big city professionalism into their communication roles.
So, he launched JGPR with that as its mission.
With a regional office in Canton, JGPR has a staff that even includes an on-call overnight shift for unpredictable emergencies at client organizations.
“In the PR world, clients come and go so we are very proud that we have only a two-percent churn rate,” he noted.
“We keep our prices low and believe we are a very cost-effective solution for our clients,” he added.
