Business
Fred Marx has marshaled
years of experience into
being the premier spokesman
for Detroit-area retailers.
ALAN ABRAMS
Special to the Jewish News
good part of Frederick Marxs business depends upon his ability to put his
clients into the public eye. But the irony is that most of the companies
Marx is asked about by the media are not even clients of his public rela-
ions agency.
Bren though it has been years since Marx first conquered the retail trade, he has
assumed the mantle of the industry's market analyst.
When the media want quotes about the economy, they , call David Littmann at
rn
Coerica
Bank. If it involves automobiles, they call J.D. Power. But if it is about
retail, Marx gets the call.
It was that mix of skills and savvy that Marx acquired from the retail business
that helped him and partner Michael Layne build their Farmington Hills-based
Marx Layne & Co. public relations into the area's second largest PR agency.
According to Crams Detroit Business, it is also metropolitan Detroit's largest inde-
pendently owned PR firm. Marx says billings this year are already m excess of $4
million.
Marx Layne's client roster includes Fortune 500 companies such as Northwest
Airlines, cable giant Comcast, and Verizon Wireless, as well as Motor City Casino,
Kroger supermarkets, the Parade Company, Frank's Nursery and Crafts, Jacobson
Stores, Inc., the Suburban Collection, and eateries like Morton's of Chicago and Big
Rock. They are among 140 clients serviced by Marx Layne's 50 employees.
Marx, 58, is a transplanted Ohioan who racked up 20 years in the retail trade
before he even opened the doors of his agency And surprisingly, despite his extraor
dinary success, opening an agency was not his top career choice.
Marx received his bachelor's in economics from the prestigious Wharton School
of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania in 1964, and followed it the following
year with a master's degree in communication. That combination of skills propelled
him into a steady series of pivotal positions with some of the biggest narnes in
retail, beginning as vice president-advertising for the Jackson, Michigan-headquar-
tered Jacobson Stores.
He followed that with stints as vice president-sales promotion and store planning
for Lazarus (a division of Federated Department Stores) in Dayton, Ohio; senior
vice president for marketing at Mac) ,-'s in Atlanta; and then, in 1978, senior vice
president for marketing at the J.L. Hudson Co.
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2000
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