(From left) Megan Benish, Katie Kiel, Holly Enneking, Andrea Kleymeyer, Lauren Casey Bemis, Sarah Cox Dedrick, Molly Shreve, Nicole Pence Becker, Melissa Sunsdahl, Emily Sullivan, Melissa Mattingly, Jennifer Bostrom, Claire Hunter, Anna Carrera, and Lisa Wallace. (Photo provided)
By STU CLAMPITT
news@readthereporter.com
This season, Pence Media Group (PMG) was named to PR Daily’s Top Agencies List for 2025. This is only the latest in a string of awards PMG has won. The Reporter spoke with PMG Owner Nicole Pence Becker about how her company started and what makes it different from other media consulting companies.
When Pence Becker retired from TV news in 2017, she founded PGM.
“In 2018, my father, Congressman Greg Pence, ran for Congress, and he wanted a communications and marketing director. I told him, ‘You should go find one,’” Pence Becker said. “And he told me, ‘You’re going to do it.’ So we argued for about 24 hours, and I lost. He won the primary, and I said, ‘See you later,’ and then just slowly started finding my own clients at Pence Media Group. One of my first clients was Church Church Hittle + Antrim, the largest law firm and oldest law firm in Hamilton County. Another client was Slapfish, and another client was He Knows Your Name, and they’re all still clients today.”
In 2019, Pence Becker spent time growing her client list and finding team members.
While she expressed great respect for her father’s choice to serve in the public realm, PMG was built on working with nonprofit, public, and private entities.
“I always say that it’s not just PR,” Pence Becker told The Reporter. “There’s advocacy for the organization or the client, and also, we’re shining a light. When I would be on TV and I would do a story about a nonprofit, it could change the trajectory of that nonprofit. They would, all of a sudden, sell more tickets to a nonprofit fundraiser. They would get more inquiries about volunteering. It really moved the needle.”
Because of those experiences, her company has a “PMG Gives Back” program.
Pence Becker
“We have dozens of nonprofit clients, and we give them a discounted rate because I am so committed to making sure that a nonprofit client has as good of a marketing and PR team as a big for-profit client,” Pence Becker said. “I love telling those stories, and it’s so important. We just got to work with Carmel Education Foundation. I love it, and it moves the needle for them so quickly that it of course demonstrates our value. But most importantly, it makes an impact, and PMG is obsessed with that.”
PMG is a woman-only company. Pence Becker said that is both by design and by accident.
“I jokingly say this – and this is the truth: I have four sons and a husband whom I love dearly, but I basically think, just by default, live in a fraternity all day and balance my work life with the sorority,” Pence Becker said. “There isn’t any sort of intentionality behind that other than that joke.”
Pence Becker was a working mother in the television industry, and that was not a career that allowed for the kind of flexibility she needed.
“I couldn’t just not go in at 3:30 in the morning to anchor my TV show – that wasn’t possible,” Pence Becker said. “What started PMG was that I was looking for other expert women. ‘Expert’ being women who had 10, 15 plus years of experience who were also just entering that phase of life where they had children and they were starting to balance motherhood and work. And they wanted work. What I realized I was doing, subconsciously, was making that opportunity for those expert women.”
PMG was founded on remote work years before COVID made it fashionable. Pence Becker told everyone she hired that they would work remotely and visit clients on site once a month. The bulk of everyone’s work would be done professionally, efficiently, and with all the flexibility they needed.
The long list of awards PMG has won in recent years proves it is a solid business model when you can find people who are the right fit.
“So I always say we’re a consultancy, not an agency,” Pence Becker said. “We’re doing something different. I’m hiring experts. I’m investing in people who have the sets and reps and the experience. That also makes us a different model. I’m hiring for that and I’m only selling that and our clients find that incredibly valuable.”
Pence Becker said she is proud both to come from Hamilton County, and that she’s able to serve her clients and her team with her business model.
“We’re proud to be based in Hamilton County,” Pence Becker said. “We are proud to do work with nonprofit and for-profit clients in Indiana, across Indiana, and nationally. We’re grateful that the market has embraced our unique model. It allows me the opportunity to find these women who are pros and bring them in. I’m proud of the work our team does and all the awards we’ve won in the last year, particularly, but I’m more proud of the team that I assembled. I found a way to get these expert women to the table and create value for our clients in a different model. It’s working for clients and for our team. I’m really proud of that.”
Learn more at PenceMediaGroup.com.
