While the economy is stumbling, the PR business is rumbling along briskly at one of the Florida’s largest PR firms, TransMedia Group. www.transmediagroup.com.

“PR firms tend to do be recession proof as they typically get a bigger slice of the marketing pie when ad budgets are slashed during economic downturns,” said TransMedia Group’s founder and CEO, Thomas J. Madden.

Getting a message out through PR is a lot more cost effective than advertising,” he added.

Ad agencies that own PR firms or a have strong PR division are better off during a downturn because when the ad side reduces, the PR side gains, keeping the firm healthy and balanced as it sails through a slowdown, he said.

Madden cited TransMedia Group's recent upsurge in business as proof that companies are turning more to PR while sales revenues dip, credit is tight and fear levels rise.

The multi-lingual firm was just retained by the Government of Brazil to promote an expansion of Brazilian franchise companies into the U.S and tomorrow is sending a platoon of publicists out to Los Angeles to do publicity for America’s Premier Rhythmic Gymnastics Event, LA Lights Rhythmic Gymnastics Tournament of Champions, Jan. 24-27, featuring Olympians from the 2004 Olympic Games and competitors from 14 countries.

It’s helps to be multi-lingual and global in perspective,” said Madden about the firm he started 25 years ago when he left NBC where he was Vice President, Assistant to the President, then Fred Silverman. Operating out of a building it owns in downtown Boca Raton, TransMedia Group has offices in New York and London.

Among companies and web-based businesses who’ve recently joined the firm’s eclectic client roster is Morgan Stanley Senior VP Gary Owens and Composer Lawrence Hurwit, who wrote the Florida Welcome Song, behind which there is a groundswell movement to make it the Official State Song.

“When the economy slacks off , you also want to be sure you’re diversified as much as possible,” said Madden, the author of SPIN MAN and other books and articles about PR. When the dot.com bubble burst some years ago, those firms that had mostly high-tech clients crashed right along with their computer and Internet clients, he said.