Deal Slatin aims to become St. Louis’ boutique PR powerhouse

It took St. Louis’ high-powered new public relations firm 29 years and five minutes to come together. 

The first two components, Marianna Deal and Mike Slatin, first started working together at St. Louis-based PR powerhouse FleishmanHillard in 1997. He was a former newspaper guy; she had one foot in politics after working as press secretary to a congressman. In 2019, she left the firm to run communications for Missouri attorney general—and later U.S. senator—Eric Schmitt. But they stayed close, and when she was ready to move on from working for Schmitt, she and Slatin began talking. 

“We realized there was a need in St. Louis of senior-level counsel, but not at senior-level rates,” Slatin explains. “We can fill that need.”

The longtime friends launched Deal Slatin on April 1 (although, Slatin quips, they didn’t put out the press release until April 2, just to avoid the inevitable April Fool’s jokes). They heard almost immediately from the man who would become the third component of their three-legged stool.

That man, Danny Kerth, had built his own career at FleishmanHillard, albeit several decades later. The youngest son of the late, and legendary, St. Louis PR maven Al Kerth III, Danny Kerth had joined FleishmanHillard as an assistant account executive after graduating Mizzou in 2015 and had risen to vice president. But he longed to do work that had more local impact. FleishmanHillard did a brisk business with global clients. Very little of it was the kind of civic-focused work Al Kerth III used to do.

“I’ll never be able to fill my dad’s shoes, but I at least want to walk in his footsteps,” says Danny Kerth.

He was already on Deal Slatin’s radar. “Danny was on the top of the list of people we wanted to recruit because of the history,” says Deal. “His dad was one of the great mentors I had at FleishmanHillard.” When Danny Kerth mentions that he’s had great respect for Deal and Slatin since they first met in 2015, Deal gently corrects him: “I knew you before that.” (“I was a tyke,” Kerth concedes.) 

After Kerth saw the pair announce their new firm on LinkedIn, he reached out and asked if they would meet him for lunch—and while he tried to play it cool, he says the conversation skipped right past negotiations. “It only took five minutes to say, ‘Let’s do this thing,’” Kerth recalls. He’s now a principal at Deal Slatin.

“I was really interested in the fact that we have three different skillsets and relationships, and collectively, we bring something unique to the table,” Kerth says. And on top of that, his new partners “share my passion for doing what’s best for the region.” 

The region is at a crossroads. The vast majority of St. Louis’ major institutions—from the mayor’s office to the Missouri Botanical Garden, from the Donald Danforth Plant Science to St. Louis Lambert International Airport—either have new leadership or will be getting new leaders in the next six months. In many cases, those institutions are now helmed by newcomers to St. Louis, who bring fresh ideas, and younger people, who see the world in a different way than the Baby Boomers long at the helm. With three generations reflected in the firm’s leadership, 75 years of local PR experience, and several lifetimes’ worth of institutional knowledge about St. Louis, Deal Slatin may be uniquely poised to help shape a new era. Says Slatin, “There’s something about this moment in time.” 

That’s something Danny Kerth thinks about every day. He was just nine years old when his father killed himself on September 11, 2002, and the loss has left a profound mark. That’s apparent in not only how he’s chosen to volunteer his time (the nonprofit organization he founded in college, Project Wake Up, is focused on suicide prevention) but also in the way he feels about St. Louis. He’s seen countless friends move away to Denver or Atlanta—but he’s never wavered in his commitment to the region. At 33, he’s a founding member of what he and his friends call “the St. Louis recruitment team,” actively working to sell others on moving here. “Every time people come into town, we make sure they have the best time ever,” he says.

Now that business won’t just be telling the story of brands that hire FleishmanHillard, but assisting St. Louis organizations that have a story to tell—and advising those organizations in ways that connect and uplift the region. Says Kerth, “I feel like I have a calling to do this because of the unfinished business my dad left here.”

In some ways, that would involve Deal Slatin carrying on the work its principals’ former corporate employer once did locally. Deal references FleishmanHillard founder Al Fleishman helping to bring public television to St. Louis by launching a station owned not by the government or a university, but by the community—what is today Nine PBS. 

“These were giants,” she says. “People who were really passionate about St. Louis. I think we can bring that back.”