BIOGRAPHY

Steve Cody

As a 20-year PR veteran, Steve has counseled large and small clients alike on a wide range of crisis issues including: sexual and age discrimination, terrorism, downsizings and plant closings, workplace violence and executive malfeasance. He has lectured widely on the subject and authored numerous articles on crisis preparedness, response and measurement.  As managing partner and co-founder of Peppercom, Steve is responsible for overall agency direction and management, new business development, new product development, agency marketing and overall account management. Since founding the agency in 1995, he has been instrumental in Peppercom's rise from a two-person start-up to its current position as one of the nation's best known mid-sized strategic communications firms.  Along with strategic consultant Dr. Richard Harte, Steve has written a book on Pain-based Selling, What’s Keeping Your Customers Up at Night? published by McGraw-Hill. He was also one of the CEOs featured in Donald Trump’s recent book Trump: The Way to the Top.

Over the past nine years, he has directed Peppercom’s rapid evolution into one of the country's hottest mid-sized agencies. In naming Steve an Agency All-Star, Inside PR said of him, "Cody has pioneered the concept of partnering, developing programs for clients that not only create breakthrough publicity but bottom-line revenue as well." More recently, Steve has spearheaded the development of Peppercom's Pain-based Selling service offering, which connects clients to their customers in totally new ways.

In just the past two years, Steve has been named a finalist for Ernst & Young's "Entrepreneur of the Year" award, won six Big Apples, four SABREs, a Silver Anvil Award of Excellence and numerous SABRE Certificates of Excellence. Steve is a frequent guest lecturer at the Association of Management Consulting Firms, the American Marketing Association, the PRSA Counselors Academy, Ragan Communication Seminars and other leading industry events. Steve has appeared on CNBC, CNNfn, and APRadio, and published numerous articles in Ad Age, Silicon Valley Business Ink, Business 2.0, BrandWeek and other publications. He is Executive Committee Chairman of the PRSA Counselors Academy, a member of the Board of Directors of the Council of PR Firms and a member of the Arthur W. Page Society.

Prior to founding Peppercom, Steve was president of Brouillard Communications, a division of J. Walter Thompson. Before that, he had been executive vice president and general manager of Earle Palmer Brown. Steve is a tennis enthusiast, recreational runner and voracious reader of non-fiction, biographies and historical novels. He and his wife, Angie, have two children, Christopher and Catharine. The agency is named after the family dog, Pepper.