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Alyssa Ahern
Head of Earned Media
Misfit
Since 2024, Honeymoon Creative (a creative communications firm) has grown more than 600 percent, won new PR and influencer business for more than 35 new brand clients across Post Consumer Brands, Sazerac, Gallo Wines, Verizon, Wells Ice Cream, Topgolf and Wedderspoon Honey. Much of the agency’s success falls on the shoulders of Alyssa Ahern, a mom of two small kids who lives in a small rural suburb called Homer Glen, curses like a truck driver, has a penchant for Dirty Shirleys, and serves as the agency’s earned media voice of God.
She rarely comes to the office. If her camera is off on a call, one is ill-advised to mention it. Her laugh is booming and infectious. She’s Chicagoland to-the-bone with a seemingly endless cache of “I can’t believe that happened” stories. And she is the living embodiment of results speaking for themselves.
She drives tons and tons and tons of results for Honeymoon clients. In the past year, Alyssa has led “brand act” earned media efforts for Fireball’s Crierball, Lifetime Supply, Ball-Sniffing Dogs, Halo Top’s Dry January and Ice Cream Day, BuzzBalls Blue Balls and Swimming Pool Giveaways, Bomb Pop’s 70th Anniversary and Extreme Room Makeover, Pebbles Pay and Liquid Death Collab, Topgolf Dadternship, Honeycomb Space Waffles, Honey Bunches of Oats Fried Chicken and more.
She may be sitting at a kitchen table in Homer Glen, but she is a media machine and a boss at Honeymoon Creative. And even though she will have two small kids crawling on her at any time during a meeting, she makes creating viral moments for brands seem easy.
Alyssa is 100 percent accountable for the earned media results she and her team produce. THEREFORE, if the client revises or churns over a campaign idea enough that Alyssa believes it will no longer drive the desired results, she says unequivocally “don’t do it.” She will offer clients alternatives and revised expected results, but she will gladly forgo budgets at the cost of having her name attached to a lackluster program. As a new industry player, Honeymoon stands behind her every time, and her clients almost uniformly follow her recommendation.
In the PR industry, this is not done. Agencies do not say no to bird-in-hand budgets, especially in this day and age. “Get the scope signed and just do the best you can” is the prevailing leadership mantra in this business. But as an agency engineered to keep the client-agency honeymoon period going indefinitely, Honeymoon puts a higher premium on truth and driving real results. And this is what Alyssa is all about. In other words: Why? Because Ahern.
We don’t pitch an earned media idea without Alyssa’s blessing. Her brutally frank and unwavering approach to driving real results plays a role in literally every campaign we present.
The agency’s success and growth is a reflection of her impact.
We talk about Honeymoon people living in the cultural trenches, but Alyssa takes it to the extreme. For example, she is a certified storm chaser. Why? Because Ahern.
When every new client we won double-confirmed that Alyssa would be on their business, despite the fact that they have relationships with global PR agencies paying massive earned media teams that boast decades of experience. In other words, clients know she’s different, too.
Within our agency, Ahern pushes our younger team members to run ideas through the proverbial “Will this shit actually work?” ringer. We are a young company and cannot afford to fall short on even one program - this is the tone that Alyssa for all of our work, from earned to content to paid to experiential to … this.
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