MOMENTUM
Weber Shandwick was one of the fastest-growing publicly-held PR agencies in 2010, with fees up by about 9 percent—enough for the firm to hold on to the number one spot among the holding company-owned firms. Much of the growth was organic—always a good sign—with clients such as GM, the Gates Foundation, MasterCard, Microsoft, Nespresso, Pepsi, Unilever and Verizon expanding the scope of their work with the agency. But there was plenty of new business too, from the likes of Anheuser Busch, L.L. Bean, BeechNut, Colt, Excedrin, Mass Mutual, Motorola, Suntech, USAID and the U.S. Army.
REGIONAL REACH
Weber Shandwick is a major force in North America, with a network of 24 offices across the US and Canada. The firm’s New York headquarters continues to expand, with strength across every major practice area; it’s a leader in consumer, corporate, healthcare and digital. The other major success story in 2010 was northern California, with the San Francisco and Silicon Valley offices both forging ahead impressively. The firm is a formidable force in other key markets: in Washington, DC, where the Powell Tate and Weber Shandwick brands are both strong; in Chicago, with its impressive consumer capabilities; in Los Angeles, where Rogers & Cowan is a leader in the entertainment business; in Minneapolis, which has great financial services capabilities; and in Detroit, where much of the GM work is hubbed. North of the border, Weber Shandwick has five offices.
INTERNATIONAL REACH
Weber Shandwick now has 77 offices in 58 markets throughout the EMEA region, giving it a footprint that’s comparable to any of its major competitors, with about 1,000 employees. PR Week estimates that about 300 of those people are in the UK, where Weber Shandwick is a top five player, but the story of the past few years has been the development of a much healthier balance between its British and continental European business. After launching in Korea in 2009, Weber Shandwick now offers regional coverage that is as comprehensive as any of its key network rivals. It runs 17 owned offices in the region, with the China operation generally recognized as the strongest. In Australia, following good growth over the past couple of years, the firm’s 30-person operation was named Australian Consultancy of the year by the Holmes Report last year. In Japan, the firm is one of the few multinationals to have genuinely cracked the market, with around 50 people. And Korea’s first 12 months saw steady progress, with the office now numbering around 50 people.
EXPERTISE
One of the impressive things about Weber Shandwick is the firm’s reluctance to rest on its laurels, which means that all of its major practices are seeking to lead the change impacting the public relations business, rather than merely reacting to it. So the technology practice, under the leadership of Heidi Sinclair, is expanding beyond its traditional scope to encompass a wide range of innovative ideas beyond the IT realm. The consumer practice is focusing more on engaging communities than targeting audiences, integrating traditional and social media and expanding its use of mobile technologies. The healthcare practice is adapting to the end of the blockbuster drug era, focusing more on specialized franchises and personalized treatments. The public affairs practice is helping clients develop data for decision makers and create content that shifts the debate. The corporate practice is seeing growth in issues management, reputation risk management, and executive positioning work.
TALENT
Weber Shandwick added depth to an already impressive leadership team in 2010, with the addition of Burson-Marsteller and Gates Foundation veteran Heidi Sinclair as president of the global tech practice and Charlotte Otto (former P&G external relations chief) as senior corporate advisor in New York. The departure of Ken Luce, a major contributor to the firm’s growth over the past decade, was a rare exception to the firm’s impressive record of staff retention at the most senior level, although the promotion of Judy Venturoni to lead the southwest region seems to have ensured minimal disruption. There were leadership transitions in LA, where Lori Fiber joined from Edelman as GM; in Detroit, with the promotion of Andy Schuenemann; and in Seattle, with the promotion of Tim Fry; while Greg Power joined from local firm Optimum as president of the Canadian operation. Other notable additions including Ogilvy veteran Bill Reihl as EVP in the consumer practice; Douglas Schoen and Michael Stopford in the DC corporate practice; and Bradley Honan, formerly of Strategy One and Penn Schoen, as CEO of the KRC Research unit.
CULTURE
Consistently ranked among the Best Agencies to Work For in our North American survey, Weber Shandwick continues to demonstrate that giant agencies don’t have to be soulless, bureaucratic and dysfunctional. A major focus of the firm’s client relationship leader meeting, for example, was collaboration, across offices and practices. The firm also continues to improve its professional development offering—a 20 percent increase in the number of courses offered, both digital and live, and the rollout of a new learning and development portal. And to its credit, Weber Shandwick is one of only a handful of big agencies with a commitment to diversity that goes beyond the tokenistic, with a portion of senior management compensation now tied to success on this metric.
INTELLECTUAL LEADERSHIP
Weber Shandwick was one of the first major agencies to grasp the fact that the rise of social media required a shift from a communications model of public relations to an engagement model, and has been developing an approach it calls “inline” (a combination of “online” and “in life”) that requires the development of ideas designed for a multi-platform, multi-influencer environment. A new development over the past 12 months is the creation of a new Brand Engagement Lab, which uses an internal crowdsourcing approach to generate the ideas that drive this kind of engagement. Another interesting development is the firm’s social media crisis simulator, FireBell, which updates the issues management process for the digital age.
PROGRAMS
Weber Shandwick partnered with client PepsiCo on the Platinum SABRE Award-winning Pepsi Refresh campaign, taking the company’s bold new approach to corporate philanthropy and incorporating a dynamic storytelling approach that helped the company soar up the FT’s index of “corporate web effectiveness.” For GM, meanwhile, the firm worked on the launch of the Chevy Volt, taking the opportunity to redefine the automaker in the minds of consumers, while for Motorola, Weber Shandwick helped to develop the “Life Mpowered” brand, and for Bank of America it worked on an “Opportunity in Motion” CSR platform that has helped to rebuild the company’s reputation at a grassroots level following the financial crisis. Weber Shandwick is also working with sister companies to deliver truly integrated campaigns, partnering with sports marketing specialist Octagon and experiential firm Jack Morton—and enlisting talent such as James Cameron and the Black Eyed Peas—to introduce Samsung’s 3D LED TVs.
BRAND
Among the publicly-owned multinational firms, Weber Shandwick is not only the largest; it also has the best reputation globally—a feared competitor in all three major regions, with strong management and a culture that encourages collaboration across markets and practices more effectively than most of its peers. Globally, it has joined the front rank when it comes to awards success—an industry-leading nine North American SABRE winners—giving the firm a reputation for creativity to go along with its general management excellence.
THE FUTURE
Weber Shandwick is one of only a couple of firms that can legitimately claim to be a top three player—in terms of size and quality—in all three of the world’s major regions. And an examination of the firm’s operations in the top 10 markets confirms that it’s a serious competitor in all of them, something few if any of its competitors can say. And parent company Interpublic has transformed itself—in no small part due to the influence of Harris Diamond—from the least effective PR agency parent to the best. There’s no reason to expect any decline in the agency’s impressive performance.