ABOUT
Hailstone is the leading public relations and communications agency focused on creating concrete, positive social change. Through strategic and powerful communications, we mobilize constituencies, get legislation passed, secure funding, shape policy, elevate organizational brands and win elections. We’re on a mission to help our clients reach their highest goals in a wide range of sectors including labor unions, clean renewable energy, non-profit advocacy, candidate elections and more.
With our decades of experience, we have helped clients across the country achieve hundreds of groundbreaking victories through a proven approach. First, we seek to clearly and deeply understand our clients’ needs and objectives. Then, we take on our clients’ goals as our own. Using impactful messaging, tools and tactics, we work alongside and empower our clients to accomplish real results.
We are a full-service agency that provides support for all of our clients’ PR and communications needs:
SERVICES
Press outreach and media strategies—including press releases, pitching, events, op-eds and letters to the editor—to garner maximum public attention
Social media strategies, content production and advertising
Video production from start to finish, including script writing, planning, coordination, shooting, interviewing, editing and distribution
Advertising and marketing in every medium, including radio, print, TV, online, transit and billboards—from strategy, content and design to ad placement
Mail, literature and flyers, including content creation, design and distribution
Email and text messaging campaigns
Website design, content production and promotion
Signage and promotional materials including banners, rally signs, picket signs, t-shirts, hats, buttons, bumper stickers and more
Speech writing and spokesperson training
Photography
Strategic advising, organizational branding and communications planning
Mobilization for actions and event planning
Support materials such as talking points, white papers and fact sheets
Political communications, organizing and campaigning
STRATEGY
We have an extremely effective and successful approach which has been honed over decades of experience:
UNDERSTAND CLIENT'S GOALS
First, we seek to clearly and deeply understand our client’s needs, challenges, stakeholders and strategic goals. This is accomplished through a series of discussions, asking questions, active listening, background reading and research.
IDENTIFY KEY AUDIENCES
Once we fully grasp our client’s needs and goals, we seek to identify and understand the key audiences in every campaign.
DEVELOP A COMMUNICATIONS PLAN
Then we develop a comprehensive communications plan which we present to our client for feedback. The plan includes overall strategy, messaging, tactics, timeline and a budget.
BUILD A POWERFUL MAIN MESSAGE
After the plan is approved, we move forward with polling (if needed), further research, and building out powerful messaging which speaks to our key audiences’ core values. We believe strongly that effective messaging must speak not just to audiences’ “self-interests,” but also to their deepest values and sense of identity.
TELL COMPELLING STORIES
Then we proceed to deliver our messaging through telling the compelling, personal and emotionally powerful stories of credible messengers in the most impactful mediums. For all of human history, people have used stories to convey knowledge and pass down truths, and we believe this is the best way to affect change. It is important that the messengers telling these stories are trusted by our key audiences.
SPEAK TO THE MAJORITY
We believe the best way forward is often to speak to “the middle” of an audience rather than the extremes of the ideological spectrum. The vast majority of people do not consider themselves to be on the extreme left or right, and so it is important that messages resonate with everyday working people. We vigilantly avoid the pitfalls of jargon, lingo and insider terms that laypeople may not understand or care about.
MAINTAIN MESSAGE DISCIPLINE
We maintain message discipline, control the discourse and do not allow the opposition to define our agenda. On the contrary, we strive to put the opposition on the defensive and make them respond to our agenda.
MODIFY AS NEEDED
As every campaign progresses, we analyze press coverage, online comments, social media activity, polling results and other feedback to determine if any strategic modifications need to be made.
PROMOTE EVERY VICTORY
Finally, once a victory is achieved we promote awareness of this accomplishment to all audiences in order to enhance our client organization’s reputation and brand, as well as build toward their future successes.
CLIENTS
We have a long track record of helping our clients achieve their strategic goals of promoting good union jobs, clean renewable energy, quality healthcare and a better world. We have worked with clients and campaigns throughout the country, including in Washington, D.C., California, New York, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Washington State, Nevada, Iowa, South Carolina, Texas and Michigan.​
We’re proud and honored to have partnered with clients such as:
Our Commitment to Clients
Excellence
We always strive to go above and beyond, delivering the highest quality, most impactful services that achieve concrete results.
Responsiveness
We respond quickly and get our clients what they need, when they need it.
Integrity
We're deeply committed to honesty and fairness with all our clients.
Positive Attitude
We pride ourselves on our can-do, solutions-oriented and personable approach.
LEADERSHIP
DAVE BATES
President & Founder
Dave Bates is a national leader in creating the most effective and powerful communications strategies to win social change. With over 25 years of experience running communications and grassroots campaigns, Dave is a deeply passionate and driven advocate for clean energy, good jobs, quality healthcare and a better world.
He has led teams of up to two dozen staff members, and has extensive skills in all aspects of strategic communications, campaign planning, mass mobilizations and political organizing. During his career, Dave founded and built the communications departments for the two largest healthcare unions in the country from the ground up. As the first communications director for 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, with 450,000 members, he helped lead scores of successful efforts, including organizing thousands of participants for Climate Marches; the campaign for New York's $15 minimum wage; the election of multiple candidates to local, state and national office; and a contract victory that protected medical benefits for over 120,000 healthcare workers.
In his role as president and founder of Hailstone, Dave has helped win hundreds of campaigns for major organizations throughout the country, including a "Hero Bonus" for 85,000 healthcare workers and a $16 minimum wage for 13,000 home care workers in Nevada.
Dave is a thought leader on strategic communications and a published author in national outlets including U.S. News & World Report. He holds a master’s degree in multimedia from Hunter College in New York City and a bachelor’s in film and video studies from Bard College.
KAYLA BLADO
Executive Vice President
Kayla Blado is a seasoned strategic communications and advocacy professional with about fifteen years of experience shaping the public conversation around labor and progressive policy issues. She served as Director of Congressional and Public Affairs at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in the Biden administration, where she led the agency’s communications and government affairs strategy, which included educating workers about their labor rights, gaining a major increase in congressional funding, and raising the national profile of the agency through news coverage. Most recently, she was a Fulbright Scholar focusing on effective labor communications strategies.
Previously, Kayla was Director of Media Relations at the Economic Policy Institute, the foremost think tank that promotes the interests of working Americans. There, she amplified research and policy recommendations through innovative media and digital strategies, trained experts in effective messaging, and forged coalitions with unions and grassroots organizations to advance equitable economic policy. As President of the Nonprofit Professional Employees Union, she spearheaded organizing drives that tripled membership, led successful contract campaigns, and raised labor standards for nonprofit workers nationally.
Her other roles have included communications for labor campaigns and working as a talk radio producer. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin, and a Graduate Certificate in Business Communications from Harvard Extension School.
SHANNON CHILDS
Design and Creative Partner
Shannon Childs is a fine artist at heart who is dedicated to advancing positive social change through creativity. She has over 15 years of experience in website and graphic design, art direction and illustration for organizations, brands, candidates and causes. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Pratt Institute and also has formal training from Cooper Union and the Brooklyn Museum. She is a founder of BrainChilds Design.