Xenophon Met The Year of Crisis Head On

Xenophon Met The Year of Crisis Head On

Medicine & Science Practice Does Broad Pandemic Consulting 

Xenophon Awarded Crisis Campaign of the Year 

David Fuscus Named Crisis Executive of the Year  

2020 was the Year from Hell.   

Every other day there was something new to make us grind our teeth and think, “at least it can’t get any worse”… but it always did. 

2020 was all about the COVID Pandemic, political calamity and civil unrest, Australia burning, assorted natural disasters, murder hornets, the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, ransomware attacks, and whatever came next, each new instance created a mountain of challenges that many of us felt we couldn’t overcome. Despite these obstacles the staff at Xenophon continued to guide our clients, old and new, through 2020. 

Every PR firm claims to do crisis work, but Xenophon is one of the few true crisis specialists in America — in any given year, 30% to 40% of our client work is crisis related.  Crisis is in our DNA, so in early February 2020, we anticipated the need for deep medical knowledge to help clients with the then-pending pandemic. We created Xenophon’s Medicine & Science practice; it was designed to navigate clients through COVID with medical expertise and scientific data as the basis for decisions. To do this effectively we brought on some of the world’s top doctors in infectious diseases, including Dr. Davidson Hamer, an internationally renowned epidemiologist from Boston University, and now Xenophon Medicine & Science’s Chief Medical Officer.  

With a core team of doctors and communicators, Xenophon supported new clients like BioMed Devices, Caesars Entertainment and El Dorado Resorts. We also worked with established clients like Midcontinent ISO, NEC and Airbus to ensure they received sound communications guidance.   

Outside of COVID, a truly successful and important campaign that Xenophon managed in 2020 for The Jockey Club is leading the way for change in the horseracing industry. Xenophon’s work supported The Jockey Club’s quest to create the first national anti-doping authority for thoroughbred horse racing to get drugs out of the sport. Through a comprehensive communications plan that focused on anti-doping and horse safety, Xenophon was a key part of the team promoting the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA) and in late December, the bill passed by the House and Senate and was signed into law by President Trump.   

For our work, Xenophon was also recognized as an industry leader by the Public Relations Global Network (PRGN) and Best in Biz Awards.   

Xenophon received two gold, a silver and a bronze award from PRGN for supporting clients during the pandemic, a collaborative effort on an ESG initiative, and the HISA reform bill. 

The leading journalists who judge the Best in Biz competition awarded Xenophon the Crisis Management Campaign of the Year for our Jockey Club campaign.  

They also named Xenophon CEO David Fuscus the Crisis Management Executive of the Year for the firm’s body of work during 2020.  

2020 finally ended and we gleefully kicked the Year of Crisis in the rear and welcomed 2021 with a sense of hope and the anticipation of better times.  

But just as the glasses finished clinking from the toast welcoming the new year, a mob stormed the Capitol Building and put the American body politic into a blender and hit frappe.  

It was a decent five days while it lasted — perhaps the next toast should be to 2022.   

ESG