Fleishman Hillard

Fleishman-Hillard SVP, Partner and Director of Corporate Media Relations Steve Naru writes in:

With Nancy Seliger's promotion, there is a lot of buzz about the fact that one of the best agency jobs out there in our discipline - the NYC Fleishman-Hillard General Manager Job -- is now open... A comprehensive internal and external search is being undertaken by the firm for the NY General Manager's job.

FH appointed Seliger to the new position of executive vice president, global client relations this week. She has been with the agency since 1982. "We have a solid leadership team in place in New York...so we will have a smooth transition," said FH president and CEO Dave Senay in a statement.

Fleishman-Hillard has a new General Manager of its Minneapolis office. David Hakensen "quietly joined" FH in July as senior vice president of the agency's corporate communications practice. Now, with his new role as GM, the agency is going public.

"I think the topic here is re-establishing Fleishman-Hillard in the marketplace," said Hakensen. The firm used to employee 40 people in its Minneapolis office, it now employs nine. Hakensen's career includes a 19-year stint at agency Padilla Speer Beardsley and most recently vice president of public relations at Pearson Education.

Fleishman Hillard's Kansas City office--one of its oldest--suffered somewhere north of a dozen layoffs this week, despite "losing no existing clients" according to the office founder and General Manager Betsy Solberg's quote in the St. Louis Business Journal. It was reported last week that the Omnicom division would have to begin cutting staff at the single digit level.

Our source close to the situation explained that FH is doing what they can to keep people on staff, such as cutting days rather than benefits, and cutting top level people in Kansas City, as well as Los Angeles. Whereas we also heard a lot of support staff got cut in the New York office.

Two voicemails were not returned, and of the 42 public email addresses available for the Kansas City office, fifteen bounced back, and four generated out-of-office responses.

This particular story is hardly unusual, though this round of layoffs generated a good amount of tips in our inbox. One thing is sure though, if firms aren't losing clients, they're facing a roster looking to cut or freeze spending, and see what happens.

Fleishman-Hillard, the big PR division of Omnicom, officially acknowledged staff cuts today by way of a statement to PRWeek from CEO David Senay.

Senay said the cuts are in the low single-digit percentage, and many markets in North America will not big affected at all. He also said the rumored cuts in Canada were overblown (9 instead of the blogged 20).

We hear that two General Managers were included in the cuts. Only a dozen people at Fleishman are listed in LinkedIn in North America with that title. If you have information on this, or background on the cuts that you'd like to share either on or off the record, get in touch here. Discretion guaranteed as always.

Fleishman Hillard notched its first big win of 2009, landing global AOR duties for IRobot, known for their Roomba floor vacuuming robot. The account is in the "high six figures" according to PRWeek.

As with any account of this size, it doesn't come without challenges, and in this case one could certainly be managing Daily Show satire and other more serious media reports on the company's work with the US military. iRobot has received $286m in military contracts to develop robots for "reconnaissance missions and to identify roadside bombs, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and other unexploded ordnance."

Vacuum floor? Check. Find bombs? Check.

Note to agencies: don't disparage a media outlet in an attempt to get some buzz for your client. Ever. Especially when that media outlet is Fox News.

TVNewser and Gawker are both running commentary on press releases they received from Fleishman-Hillard today on behalf of their client, Hot Shot insecticides, "offering free product to the network's guests who may be worried that they accidentally transported the pests back to their homes."

You may recall Fox News has had a bedbug problem recently.

We have to admit, it is a slightly funny jab, but for a global agency, what is more important to you: a few hits for one client, or burning bridges with Fox News? In their words, "We report, you decide."

An FNC insider told PRNewser: Some of Fleishman's larger bureaus are livid over this. Relationship wise this is obviously a bad thing.

As of the time of this post, we are waiting on commment from Fleishman-Hillard.