Dan McConnell

Managing Director
DDB Public Relations

 

Dan McConnell is the senior public relations strategist for DDB, a leading global marketing communications company. He manages and directs the company’s integrated solutions/public relations practice including corporate public relations, community relations, governmental affairs, sports and event marketing, sponsorship and promotions.

His 30 year career as a pr consultant has been full of the most exciting, interesting and influential work imaginable. He has been to the high camps on Mt. Everest; followed the Iditarod Trail on a snowmobile; sailed into 80 knot gales on the open ocean; and bungeed with Cirque du Soleil to tell his clients’ stories.

Dan has been quoted on public relations by The Wall Street Journal; The New York Times; Forbes; Fortune and Business Week. His writing credits include PR Week; PR Journal; Marketing; Media Inc.; Puget Sound Business Journal, the International Herald newspaper and a co-author on reputation management in Public Relations Best Practices from Aspatore Books, among others. He is a multiple-winner of the nation’s top public relations award for his programs and he is a national-Emmy-Award-winning PBS documentary executive producer.

Before his public relations career even began, Dan was a Capitol Hill intern in DC, working for the likes of Bobby and Ted Kennedy. His news media experience included working in the same news gathering organizations with Jane Pauley and David Letterman. His corporate work took him all over the world and had him advising Bill Ruckelshaus and Katherine Graham on corporate issues and then flying Spider Sabich and Claudine Longet around the country in a corporate jet promoting Spider’s ski racing career until she shot him.

When he went out on his own in Seattle, he set a positive course for Airborne Express, promoted K2 as the Official Ski of the Olympics and handled local promotion of MLB’s 50th All-Star Game. He directed news media communications for Ronald Reagan’s western White House on his first trip to China and shepherded Bill Clinton during the Seattle APEC meetings. He introduced the excitement of Himalayan climbing, polar expeditions, the Iditarod and open-ocean, single-handed yacht racing to the world, gaining an international reputation for promoting adventure sports.

Dan worked with Ted Turner to introduce the inaugural Goodwill Games in Russia to the world. He’s worked on three America’s Cups and taken American sports and entertainment to China and Japan. He’s managed rescues at sea thousands of miles from anywhere. He’s helped Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu get out their messages of peace from South Africa and aided Sir Edmund Hillary with his work for schools in the Khumbu Valley of Nepal. He’s trained scores of business executives to deal with the news media and protected the reputations of such institutions as IBM, Pace Entertainment, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the Space Needle. Since 1990, he’s taught hundreds of prospective pr professionals the value and integrity of public relations as an instructor in UW’s Public Relations Certificate Program.