Behind the Business

Marilyn Messik

A regular contributor to national magazines when her children were small, Marilyn Messik set up a children’s party business in the early ’80′s, opening first one shop and then another. At the end of the ‘80′s Marilyn moved into the travel market, focusing on New England in the U.S.A. Her advisory, planning and booking service flourished and she concurrently set up a publishing company to make information more widely available. The U.S.Welcome Selected Hotels & Inns annual publication was a lush, full colour guide to independent hotels, inns and B&Bs which eventually grew to take in accommodation all over America.

The success of the book led to invitations to speak at industry conferences and Marilyn served a three year term as a board member of the Professional Association of Innkeepers and was made an honorary member of the New England Innkeepers Association for her work in promoting that area. As a niche company, marketing and promotional budgets were tight but strategic alliances with far larger organisations such as North West Airlines, Johansens and the Debenhams Group offered the opportunity to reach optimum numbers of targeted consumers and the Selected Hotels & Inns guide was finally bought out by Thomas Cook Publishing.

In 2007 Marilyn set up a copywriting consultancy, Create Communication to work with businesses, helping them shape their communications to optimum effect. Her clients now range from start-ups and smes to corporates; in fields such as legal, financial, medical, publishing, the arts and commerce.

She’s become a serial networker on the business women’s circuit, holds successful communication workshops, is currently writing a series of business books for people who don’t believe in miracles and has returned to her blogging roots – although back in the day, publishers simply called it a ‘diary’ series.

You can keep in touch with us by following Marilyn Messik on Twitter or reading the Create Communication Blog.