Meet Nicole Mahoney
CEO
The backstory
You might say being an entrepreneur is in Nicole's DNA. As a student, she worked for her dad at the family's audio and car stereo shop, eventually taking on their annual Sound Off event held in their store parking lot. The natural marketer in her took over, and the event grew to mini-festival size, attracting up to five thousand people on a Sunday. When her dad told her to "A to Z" a project, she learned to do every step of business development, marketing strategy, PR, and branding while working her way through college and her Masters.
Professional path
With a talent for creating special events, Nicole went on to work in sports marketing at Frontier Field in Rochester, and as the executive director of the internationally known Lilac Festival. Later on she headed the Canandaigua NY BID. There were projects for Visit Rochester as well.
In 2009, she founded Break the Ice Media, with more than 20 years experience in tourism marketing.
As a business owner, Nicole knows what it takes to be successful. She founded BTI to help businesses tell their brand story through public relations, digital and traditional channels. She has the ability to uncover unique marketing opportunities, and develop marketing and public relations initiatives that help clients build long-term success.
Inside the office she loves:
Working with clients to understand their marketing needs, developing plans and executing those plans. Leading and nurturing her team. (You might call her The Founding Mother.) Watching results happen for clients.
Outside the office she loves:
Her family (husband and four daughters). Traveling on family vacations. Maine. Playing euchre with her long-time girlfriends every month. Living in wine country (and drinking that wine!).

"We're about doing what's best for clients. We're not territorial - there are no 'egos' here."
Posts from Nicole
Borrowing from the Tourism Marketing Playbook: Why Agencies Collaborate
When solutions to our clients’ business issues require disciplines outside of our expertise, we borrow from the tourism marketing playbook and look for ways to collaborate with other agencies to deliver better results.
Read MoreCreating Your 2019 Travel and Tourism Marketing Strategies and Plan
We recently released a 5-part video series on how to create your tourism marketing plan for 2019. The planning process…
Read More7 Steps in Creating a Marketing Plan
Creating a strong marketing plan is an important part of planning for your destination’s year-to-year growth. Writing such a plan…
Read MoreHow Association Management Companies help multi-stakeholder tourism marketing programs
Multi-stakeholder entities and collaborative partnerships are pervasive in the world of tourism. When DMOs, TPAs, counties and other representatives of…
Read MoreMuseum Marketing – Beyond Cultural and Heritage Tourism
Museums and cultural institutions are proactively changing to expand their reach and appeal to new audiences, strengthening their role beyond…
Read MoreThe Growing Importance of SEO In Tourism Marketing
SEO is a term we hear often in our marketing and PR circles, but what does it really mean for…
Read More