5W Public Relations is doubling down on digital. The New York-based PR agency has tapped two heavyweights from rival Zeno Group—Lauren McGuire as EVP of Digital & Social, and Clare Algozin as SVP of Paid Media—to strengthen its integrated campaign capabilities.

It’s a clear signal: in the high-stakes world of digital and social, 5WPR doesn’t just want to keep pace, it wants to sprint ahead.

The Digital Playmakers

McGuire, who spent more than a decade running digital operations across sectors from healthcare to travel, is known for building scalable systems that keep teams agile when platforms and algorithms shift overnight. At Zeno, she led operations and integration for ZDX, where her playbook was all about marrying emerging tech with efficiency.

Algozin, meanwhile, brings deep expertise in paid media, running multimillion-dollar budgets across social, search, programmatic, and video. Her edge? Using advanced targeting and AI-driven media buying to make campaigns both smarter and faster. She also has a knack for attribution modeling—the kind of data science that can separate real impact from vanity metrics.

Why It Matters

The hires come as agencies across the PR and ad landscape scramble to adapt to what feels like a constantly morphing media ecosystem. With influencer channels maturing, programmatic buying getting more complex, and brands demanding proof of ROI, agencies can’t afford to treat digital as an add-on—it’s the whole show.

Zeno itself has been on a tear in digital innovation, so poaching two of its senior players is a power move for 5WPR. For clients, it could mean more integrated campaigns that blur the lines between earned, paid, and social—a trend we’re seeing not just in PR, but across the martech industry.

The Bigger Picture

5WPR’s CEO Matthew Caiola calls the hires a mix of “operational excellence and strategic vision,” but the subtext is clear: agencies that don’t continually reinvent their digital chops risk falling behind. Competitors from Edelman to Weber Shandwick have been bulking up their own digital divisions, and with brand dollars shifting toward measurable, tech-powered campaigns, talent like McGuire and Algozin may prove to be the ultimate differentiator.

The takeaway? 5WPR is betting big on leadership that can cut through noise, optimize at speed, and—most importantly—translate complexity into results clients can actually measure. In today’s fragmented media landscape, that might be the only kind of PR that matters.

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