PR Agencies

Created early in March, global communications agency Burson Cohn & Wolfe (BCW) unveiled its Asia-Pacific leaders as we went to press. Matt Stafford, president, Asia Pacific, BCW, said the merged firm’s Asia market leaders are in place and “most of our teams have already begun to move into the same office.”

Created last week, Burson Cohn & Wolfe (BCW) named its regional leaders as we went to press. For N America, Chris Foster becomes president, N America, BCW. Previously he was EVP, global business.

With International Woman’s Day approaching this week and Women’s History Month already here it was heartening to see several PR firms being recognized for progressive policies toward women. Both FleishmanHillard and Edelman were named to the National Association of Female Executives’ (NAFE) list of top companies for women. Still, it’s clear much more progress is warranted.

There is good news and bad news in this latest PR Council survey of its roughly 100 member firms. First, the good news: 66% of those who replied said revenue for 2017 is ahead of 2016 and that projections are on target or better than first forecast. The not-so-good news is that management consultancies want to eat PR’s lunch.

When we dive deeper into the Gould+Partners study about PR firm profitability that we reported about in our June 12 edition, it looks like another case of the rich getting richer. The larger firms are doing well in terms of profits, but the mid-size and smaller firms are struggling. Gould provides insight into why he thinks this is the case and what PR firms can do to raise their profits.

Concerned about alternative facts and fake news? Apparently PR agency clients were not, at least during the fourth quarter of 2016, a new survey from The PR Council shows.

Our weekly roundup of trends, news and personnel moves in PR. This week we feature stories about LEVICK acquiring Chase as well as news about the Volkswagen diesel issue.

Facebook: Almost Everyone’s Doin’ It: How many times have you heard it said that everything flows from the top down? Well, not quite everything. In the case of social media, some CEOs trail their employees, particularly communicators. That needs to change, at least for CEOs using Facebook for business, Facebook says.

W2O Group continues its buying spree. The SF-based agency acquired Sentient Interactive, a firm specializing in digital paid and owned media analytics, strategy and marketing. Sentient president/co-founder Adam Cossman will serve as chief digital officer of W2O Group. Earlier this year, W2O said Mountaingate Capital secured an investment position in the firm to accelerate growth. W2O’s acquisition of Sentient, Pure and Marketeching during the past 6 months has added 100 employees and $25 million in revenue. — Ruder Finn acquired Daylight Partnership, a digital marketing and analytics consultancy. Daylight will merge with Ruder Finn’s digital arm and be known as RFI Daylight. Daylight founder David Ko will become SVP, RFI Studios Asia.

“Almost all firms are over-servicing,” Gould says, though small ones, with yearly revenue of $3 million or less, are the major culprits. This largest group of firms often lacks sophisticated time-management systems (one he recommends is ClickTime) and a chief financial officer (CFO) to oversee, interpret and analyze the data such a system produces.