As we pointed out last year, it’s one of few ways to know anything about the firm whose clients range from celebs, to non-profits, politicos, and corporations.  The other is to see the duo somewhere.  S&S added a Los Angeles office address and phone number to its website.  That’s it.

After seeing the firm double headcount a year ago, we were a little surprised to see the number of names increase by 29 percent. Clearly there’s an argument to be made about firms not oversharing.

RELATED:  As Sunshine & Sachs Grows, Holiday Party Remains on the Down Low (2010)

Don’t Salahi the Sunshine & Sachs Party! (2009)

At the Sunshine & Sachs Party: Bowling, Booze, and Some Business (2008)

Ben Affleck, John Mayer, Non-profits and the Media Hit the Sunshine and Sachs Holiday Bash (2007)

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We say “seemingly” because now, through his publicist Ken Sunshine, Belafonte is saying that he was meditating, not sleeping.

“True to form, there was a technical glitch in the feed to a local station in Bakersfield, CA. His earpiece wasn’t working, so he decided to take the time to meditate before the rest of his Day-O,” reads a statement, published on TMZ.

Suspect! True or not, when the cameras are ready to roll, best advise your client to be ready also.

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Publicist Ken Sunshine can now add producer to his CV, joining one of his clients, Bette Midler, as the producer of the Broadway show Priscilla: Queen of the Desert. He talked with Playbill.com about how he became involved with the show, saying that it was something that kind of happened by chance while seeing the show “with Bette in London.” Fabulous.

The show opened over the weekend and, in case it’s been a while, we’ve attached a clip from the film, which not only features a few fantastic headpieces, but a didgeridoo played to “I Will Survive.” Also fabulous.

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Comedian Ricky Gervais will once again host the Golden Globes this Sunday.

Michael Russell, who was the lead publicist for the Golden Globes, Stephen Locascio, Cinepoint Productions, and the Michael Russell Group have filed a lawsuit against the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for $2 million, The Hollywood Reporter writes. The lawsuit alleges that the publicists were fired after confronting the president of the HFPA to ask that the organization stop accepting “payola” in exchange for support for particular films.

Russell and Cinepoint had worked with the Golden Globes between 1993 and 2010. According to THR, they helped “the HFPA take the event from a small insider affair to a worldwide television event that allegedly reaps a $12 million-per-year license fee from NBC.”

continued…

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“More top-secret than WikiLeaks, More intrusive than a TSA pat down.”

The annual Sunshine & Sachs party is tonight, and as is tradition, it’s not a cattle call.  The notably secretive and unmarketed firm run by Shawn Sachs and poli-celeb publicist legend Ken Sunshine traditionally lets their staff decide who’s in, and who’s out.

The firm has steered steered away from velvety ropes and banquets the last two years, and more towards low key fun.  Last year it was pingpong with Lance Bass, the year before that was bowling with College Humor’s Ricky Van Veen and Al Sharpton.

If you look at the invitation as a sign of the agency’s growth–which is pretty much all you’ll have to look at –the firm has grown by 50%, adding seventeen staffers to the mix since the 2009 invitation went out.

RELATED:  Don’t Salahi the Sunshine & Sachs Party!

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Acknowledging fears that the Islamic center effort may look “juvenile and amateur,” the developer of the property, Sharif El-Gamal, has brought in A-list New York publicist Ken Sunshine to informally advise the development effort. Sunshine confirmed Monday: “I’m advising the developer informally. They’re not a formal client. I’m not going to tell you what I’m advising them.

“If anybody knows me, they know I do things in a quiet way,” he said, declining to comment on specific strategy suggestions he is making.

Sunshine has represented celebrities including Ben Affleck and Barbara Streisand.

Daisy Khan, one of the project’s leaders, appeared on This Week with Christiane Amanpour on Sunday and discussed some of the other outreach efforts that have been undertaken.

[Image via The Foundation for Ethnic Understanding website]

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PRNewser attended the launch party for DumbDumb last night, a production company from actors Will Arnett and Jason Bateman. The company is part of Electus, the IAC-supported company run by former NBC entertainment chief Ben Silverman.

The party was to celebrate the company’s first digital short, sponsored by Orbit Gum.

At the event, agency Sunshine & Sachs, which represents DumbDumb, Electus and IAC, was busy working their magic, along with IAC PR executives Stacy Simpson and Leslie Cafferty.

Agency partners Ken Sunshine and Shawn Sachs even showed up to mingle among the celeb-heavy crowd, which included Arnett’s wife and “Parks and Recreation” star Amy Poehler, actress Amanda Peet, actor Justin Long, “Inside the Actors Studio” host James Lipton, Actress Renee Zellweger, actress Kristin Bell, Comedian Chuck Nice and “30 Rock’s” Katrina Bowden.

Press clips featuring DumbDumb and Electus rotated throughout the night on IAC’s large video screens, highlighting recent PR efforts.

For yesterday’s launch, Arnett and Bateman gave a few pre-event interviews to media, including The New York Times‘ Brian Stelter. At the party, they stayed late, making the rounds with attendees and their sponsor.

“Will and I were happy when given the opportunity to partner with Orbit gum and we’re enjoying the challenge of taking the brand to the next level with this type of integrated branded content,” said Bateman in a release today.

Orbit’s ad agency, Energy BBDO (Chicago) “provided creative insight into the campaign development.”

Our colleague Alex Weprin was in attendance as well and has video of the digital short over at WebNewser.

RELATED: The Ten Myths of Creating Web Content

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Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson has been in hot water lately, after an undercover reporter caught her trying to sell access to her ex-husband, British trade ambassador Prince Andrew.

While in New York for this week’s Book Expo America, Ferguson met with PR guru Ken Sunshine of Sunshine & Sachs. However, Ferguson is not a client, a source at the agency told PRNewser today.

“Ken met with the duchess,” the source said. “They are old friends. They talked about the current situation and he gave her some informal advice.”

Then who is representing Ferguson? Kate Waddington of Sputnik Communications [pictured]. The two have worked together for more than a decade.

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“We’ve never had this proliferation of train-wreck celebrities. I mean, we have this preponderance of reality-show everyday schlumps making headlines.”

–Publicist Ken Sunshine to USA Today in a story titled, “Decade in celebrities: Nobodies walk the path to stardom.”

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The annual Sunshine & Sachs holiday party is tonight, and according to the email invitation (including image right), it’s “harder to crash than the White House” and “more exclusive than Tiger’s black book.”

I guess the latter means they’re loosening the velvet rope a bit to include us bloggers. In respect for hosts Ken Sunshine, Shawn Sachs and their 34 staffers all named on the invite, we won’t disclose the location. As is tradition, everyone who works there gets to invite whomever they want.

Ken Sunshine is fresh off a flurry of interviews about the Tiger Woods situation, including GMA, Hardball, ET and dozens of others.

RELATED: At the Sunshine & Sachs Party: Bowling, Booze, and Some Business

Ben Affleck, John Mayer, Non-profits and the Media Hit the Sunshine and Sachs Holiday Bash

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Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Countless PR professionals are using the Tiger Woods news as a way to get themselves some media attention. Yesterday, we reported on Ken Sunshine‘s appearance on the CBS “Early Show.” That was just the tip of the iceberg.

Sunshine appeared on MSNBC’s “Harball With Chris Matthews” yesterday evening (video above). Ron Sachs, president and CEO of Ron Sachs Communications sounded off to the Orlando Sentinel. Gene Grabowski, senior vice president with Washington-based Levick Strategic Communications spoke with the Associated Press. 5WPR CEO Ronn Torossian went on the record with the Business Mirror.

Not everyone thinks it’s the right thing to do. “The inevitable ‘PRs offer advice to T. Woods’ stories begun. Why take part? You don’t see lawyers piling on with free advice without the facts,” said PRWeek and DMNews Publisher Julia Hood on Twitter yesterday. Actually, a number of lawyers and legal counselors have weighed in. Not surprisingly, those speaking from a legal background tell Woods to stay quiet, while PR pros advise him to tell his story, and quickly.

What’s your take – should PR pros seize the opportunity to offer advice, or is it better to stay out of a story like this?

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Sunshine and Sachs Founder Ken Sunshine appeared on the CBS “Early Show” this morning to talk Tiger Woods. For those of you who may have missed it, Woods was involved in a car accident on his own property early last Friday morning in which he was injured and taken to a local hospital. Woods refused to speak with local law enforcement, and details around the accident have led to speculation that Woods may have been having an affair and the accident was related to an argument with his wife over the situation.

“If Tiger Woods were to call you today, what advice would you give him?” asked “Early Show” host Harry Smith. “You should have called me a couple of days ago,” joked Sunshine. Getting serious, Sunshine said, “It’s the perfect storm…and his people mishandled it.”

“The whole goal with these things is to make the media go away,” said Sunshine, and Wood’s actions – issuing a statement three days after the accident and “stonewalling” law enforcement – didn’t help his case. Sunshine’s agency has worked with a number of high profile celebrities over the years, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Barbra Streisand, Ben Affleck, Michael Moore, John Mayer and Justin Timberlake.

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How much credit can Glenn Beck‘s publicist Matthew Hiltzik take for Beck’s rise to stardom? According to a story by the Washington Post‘s Jason Horowitz, a lot. Horowitz published a profile today on Hiltzik, the longtime democratic strategist and former Hillary Clinton campaign employee, and how some former allies find his alliance with Beck “shocking.”

There are a bunch of money quotes in the story, including this one:

“I love Matt,” said Ken Sunshine, a Democratic activist and public relations powerbroker whom Hiltzik regards as a mentor. “I value our friendship, but I wouldn’t be caught dead representing Glenn Beck.”

It is worth noting, as Horowitz’s story does, that Hiltzik has clients on all sides of the spectrum, including Katie Couric, Alec Baldwin, Annie Leibovitz and Don Imus. We spoke to Hiltzik last a few weeks ago when Couric interviewed Beck for the debut of her web show. He acknowledged he was still working with Beck, but like most adept PR pros, wouldn’t comment on strategy or even if he set up the interview.

“My job is to look out for his personal business interests and try to weave them in well with his partners…We give strategic counsel, which includes managing the profile of the business,” Hitzik told the Post in regards to his work with Beck.

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AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, Fox Interactive head Jonathan Miller, R/GA founder Bob Greenburg, Interpublic CEO Michael Roth, Crispin Porter and Bogusky’s Chuck Porter, and many more we didn’t immediately identify were on hand for Advertising Week’s Opening Gala last night. (We were on AgencySpy’s turf, after all.)

The event moved this year to Times Square from Rockefeller Center. Bonus: use of giant flat screen in Times Square. Minus: The opening video played on the flat screen had an error and instead just showed random images of the crowd and podium.

Sunshine & Sachs, who is handling all PR for Advertising Week, had a team on hand, including partner Shawn Sachs. One S&S employee told PRNewser that the “Crash Test Dummies” costumes (pictured above alongside other brand icons in the Madison Avenue Advertising Walk of Fame portion of the event) were actually filled by S&S staffers. She was kind enough not to reveal their identities.

PR man (he still runs an agency, Plesser Holland Associates) turned video blog founder (Beet.tv) Andy Plesser had his video gear set up in the middle of it all. After the Time‘s Stuart Elliott declined him an interview, Plesser was quick to remind us that Beet.tv is up for an OMMA Award in the “Video-sharing” category. He said the site is doing “more original video than just about anyone as far as I can tell,” with 150,000 video views a month and recently inked distribution deals with TechCrunch and Huffington Post.

Back to Sunshine & Sachs – the agency found itself managing yet another busy day of events. Sachs informed us that Ken Sunshine was at another client function, a ribbon cutting at the new permanent site for the Frank Sinatra school of arts featuring Tony Bennett and Susan Benedetto. S&S also managed a press conference for the innovative $1M Netflix contest, which pitted teams of engineers in a three-year contest to improve the site’s movie recommendation system. The press conference drew coverage in hundreds of outlets.

Sachs told PRNewser, “Companies announcing news around it [Advertising Week] is a vital sign that you have a living event.” Heather Lylis, who runs the Advertising Week account for Sunshine & Sachs said they had registered more than 200 press and that people had flown in from across the country. “It’s not just the ad trades anymore,” she said, citing involvement from CNBC, Bloomberg, BusinessWeek and The Wall Street Journal.

[Photo Credit: Matt Van Hoven]

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It’s the latest of a series of interviews he’s done on behalf of the Jackson family leading up to the massive memorial for Michael Jackson at the Staples Center yesterday.

As part of Sunshine & Sachs’ work with the Jackson family since the firm was hired a week ago, Sunshine personally took on the TV spots to repeat the message that the fans were the top consideration in every facet of the planning in 72-hour run-up to the event. It’s a rare occasion for him to do TV, but as he said, this may be the biggest media event in history.

He appeared on the Today Show (clip below), Good Morning America, and CNN with Don Lemmon.

Sunshine explained to Meredith Viera that his camp has been “foolproof about not confirming or not speaking publicly about any of the private events that may or may not be occurring vis a vie Michael’s death” when asked about a casket and other details and transitioned to a high-road call for remembrance for the “biggest figure emitting love ever.”

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