The Weber Group

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The Weber Group was a PR agency specialising in servicing the technology sector, founded by Laurence 'Larry' Weber in 1987 in Cambridge, Mass. By the late 1990s the company had offices in Palo Alto Ca, Cambridge Mass and a European office in Covent Garden London founded by Greg Levendusky. The company acquired the Neva Group, another technology PR agency in 1997 and was itself acquired by Interpublic in 1998.

Larry went on to join the management team of Interpublic becoming the chairman and chief executive officer of their Advanced Marketing Services group.

After the acquisition, offices where opened in Portland Ore, Taiwan and San Francisco. A more consumer-orientated agency was spun out based in San Francisco in 2000 called Red Whistle, however by this time the agency itself already had excellent consumer heritage, particularly in Europe working on the likes of Palm Computing, Dealtime, SurfMonkey and phone cards for start-up telecoms company RSL COM.

By this time the company had worked with some of the biggest names in the corporate world including Bell Atlantic, Enron, 3Com, Palm, SAP and Digtial Equipment Corporation. The Weber Group made history when it helped car giant General Motors put on its webcast announcing its electronic strategy as the internet took hold.

The agency pioneered the use of an extranet to manage PR campaigns and provide a transparent programme overview to their clients called Weberworks. The unique culture fostered within the Weber Group was codified in Larry Weber's book the Provocateur published by Crown Business (a subsidiary of Random House Inc.).

In 2000, it was decided to merge the Weber Group with another one of Interpublic's acquisitions: UK international PR group Shandwick. The enlarged organisation became Weber Shandwick. During the following years much consolidation took place within the organisation which lead to the departure of Marie Jean Lauzier founder of the Neva Group and Larry Weber.

The companies US offices merged into Weber Shandwick, the London office merged with the London office of global PR group Golin Harris (also owned by Interpublic.

Weber employees were generally known as Weberites.

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