Ketchum CEO and Senior Partner Ray Kotcher was among the many agency CEOs working the room at today’s Council of PR Firms’ event in New York. We asked him if the agency was in on the United Airlines RFP. “Everyone in this room should be in on that,” he replied, and noted that United had “cast an amazingly wide net.”

Kotcher said that despite the tough times, the agency is coming off “one of our best new business years in history,” although he did acknowledge that many clients have had to cut budgets. “Client retention is critical,” he said, a sentiment echoed by many PR executives over the last year.