Weber Shandwick

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Weber Shandwick is the world's largest global public relations firm.

1 History
2 Present
3 Trivia
4 Clients
5 References
6 External links

[edit] History

Weber Shandwick is a formation of three previous companies^[1]:

The Weber Group - founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1987, it leveraged emerging technologies such as the mobile phone and the internet into the world of communications, which made the company a top 10 PR firm in less than a decade

Shandwick International - founded in London in 1974, 25 years later it had grown to become the largest public relations agency in the UK, and a worldwide force with a major presence in both Europe and Asia Pacific

Leaked internal documents in 1999 from their operation in New Zealand relating to an intense PR campaign to support the continued logging of native forests were the basis for the book Secrets and Lies (Hagar).

BSMG Worldwide - merged with Weber Shandwick in 2001. The company dates back to 1921, with the founding of the Bozell & Jacobs advertising and public relations agency in Omaha, Nebraska. Bozell later acquired Sawyer Miller Group – a leading political consulting firm – and applied its campaign-based disciplines to the world of advocacy on behalf of brands, ideas and issues

Before 1991, Graham Love was a finance director of the firm.^[2]

[edit] Present

Now a division of Interpublic Group, Weber Shandwick specialises in media, business and government; providing marketing communications, media and web relations, public affairs, and crisis and issues management, reputation management and offers corporate communications counselling services. Specialized integrated services include interactive and emerging media, advocacy advertising, market research and visual communications. It has 83 offices in 39 markets^[3].

Chaired by Jack Leslie, its global CEO is Harris Diamond^[4]. Its president is Andy Polansky. UK CEO Colin Byrne was hired by Peter Mandelson to advise UK Prime Minister Tony Blair during the 1997 and 2001 general elections^[5].

In 2006, Weber Shandwick was named Large PR Firm of the Year (PR News U.S.), European Consultancy of the Year (The Holmes Report) and Network of the Year (Asia Pacific PR Awards). The firm also won the United Nations Grand Award for Outstanding Achievement in Public Relations for three consecutive years, 2005, 2006 and 2007. In the Holmes Report's Best Agency to Work For study, Weber Shandwick scored the highest marks of any of the large, publicly-traded, full-service agencies. In 2007, Weber Shandwick received the highest client-satisfaction honors in the 2007 Agency Excellence Survey by PRWeek U.S. PRWeek U.S. referred to Weber Shandwick as the "blue chip" in its April 23, 2007 agency business report.

The 2007 Holmes Agency Report, Paul Holmes wrote: "With no sign of complacency and probably the best management team in the business, there's no reason why the firm should relinquish its current position to anyone anytime soon."

Also in 2007, the entire Brussels team of Weber Shandwick's sister firm Cassidy & Associates left to form EU lobbying law firm Alber & Geiger, including the name partners of the new firm: former Cassidy CEO Andreas Geiger and the former Advocate General of the European Court of Justice, Siegbert Alber.