Message Is Everything
Mary Cirincione, Managing Director US at Propeller Group, applies a journalist’s discipline to B2B PR and thought leadership. She explains why clarity of message comes before choice of channel, how C-suites are learning to communicate like human beings, and why every piece of content needs a call to action.
“Everything is about storytelling and narrative. You have to simplify the message and make it clear why someone should care.”
Mary Cirincione is the Managing Director of Propeller Group’s US operation, which she founded after a career spanning strategic communications consulting, journalism, and B2B PR agency leadership. She brings a reporter’s instinct for what makes a story land, and what makes it fall flat, to every client engagement she leads.
Mary began her career in strategic communications consulting for the federal government in Washington DC, working across homeland security, Veterans Affairs, and defence-adjacent organisations. She then returned to her first love, journalism, completing a master’s at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, where she reported on national security, radicalisation, and STEM from Chicago, Washington DC, and Pakistan.
That combination of communications strategy and editorial rigour led her to B2B PR agency work. After leading the PR function at Getty Images in New York, she joined Propeller Group, the London-based B2B communications agency, and launched its US operation. Her practice focuses on ad tech, adland, and the broader creative and technology ecosystem.
“Thought leadership is not enough. people to change the way they act.”
“If they don’t comprehend, they don’t grasp it, you’ve done a lot of nothing.”
Before channel strategy, before content calendar, before media list, there is the question of message. Mary’s approach, developed across federal communications, journalism, and B2B PR, is to push clients until the message is genuinely simple, not simplified, but clear. Only then does channel selection become meaningful.
“It’s not enough to put ideas out into the world. You need to inspire others to actually do something.”
The most common failure in B2B thought leadership is ideas without direction. Mary’s journalistic training tells her every story needs a ‘so what’: a reason for the reader to change their behaviour, not just update their understanding. Without that call to action, even strong ideas disappear without trace.
“C-suites are coming to life in a new way, being more vulnerable and weaving personal experience into their professional story.”
For years, corporate communications meant polished distance. Mary is seeing that change: senior leaders in agencies and networks are increasingly willing to bring personal perspective, professional vulnerability, and genuine conviction into their public-facing communications. Authentic voice builds trust in a way that institutional positioning never can.
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