Fred Cook - PRNewser

The Case for Blending PR and Advertising

Tonya Garcia — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 15:53:23 +0000

On February 15, we reported on APCO Worldwide‘s purchase of ad agency StrawberryFrog. On Friday, we had news that Bailey Gardiner, a PR and integrated marketing agency, and Fishtank Brand Advertising had come together to create i.d.e.a., a “full-service creative group.”

All across PR, advertising, and marketing, there’s been much talk about the “blurring” of marketing disciplines. Fleishman-Hillard‘s chief exec has talked with us about how their work is cutting across a variety of marketing areas. And firm leaders Richard Edelman (Edelman), Fred Cook (GolinHarris), and Rob Flaherty (Ketchum) all spoke at the last PRWeek NEXT conference about the competition between advertising and PR, and the client’s new openness for “big ideas” that come from the PR agency.

Increasingly, PR firms are tackling their work with this sort of boundary-free approach that opens doors for more business as well as greater integration. Indra Gardiner, founder and chief influence officer at i.d.e.a., says the relationship between BG and Fishtank started with eight months of joint pitching and business wins. Eventually, blending the two together “started making more and more sense.”

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Firm Leaders Advise, ‘Be Bold’

Tonya Garcia — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 18:15:19 +0000

For its final act, the PRWeek NEXT conference gathered three firm heads — Edelman’s Richard Edelman, Ketchum’s Rob Flaherty, and Fred Cook of GolinHarris — to talk about what it means to not just have the “seat at the table,”* but to maximize it.

The consensus among the three can be summed up simply: “Be bold.” In fact, Cook used those words specifically. Flaherty used a quote, that we’ll quote in part here: “Try not to be the understudy in your own life… We have all the permission we need to step to center stage.”

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For PR Staff Titles, A Little Creativity Goes a Long Way

Tonya Garcia — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 15:15:18 +0000

Last week’s PRNewser Poll asked “How creative can publicists be with staff titles?” The votes are in, and the majority said, “Somewhat.”

Nearly half, about 48 percent, said PR firms can add a touch of whimsy to PR titles, going a little farther than the traditional account executive and VP labels we’re used to. One comment on Twitter said titles could have a little imagination, but should stay “professional sounding to outsiders. Perception ≥ Reality.”

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PRNewser Poll: Should PR Firms Get Creative with Staff Titles?

Tonya Garcia — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 15:54:08 +0000

In response to yesterday’s GolinHarris news that they would be reorganizing the company, our first thought was how someone at the SVP level, for instance, would respond to these changes.

“We’re very sensitive to this,” Fred Cook, the firm’s president and CEO, told us. “We’ve been around for 56 years and people are used to a certain structure. And we have a lot of people working for 10 or 15 years and we’re trying to make sure everybody understands their new roles and titles.”

Internally, staffers might be getting used to it, but the titles and the four new groups that are part of the g4 model — strategists, creators, connectors, and catalysts — caused some discussion externally.
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GolinHarris Launches New Agency Model

Tonya Garcia — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 12:18:57 +0000

PRevolve. The Future of PR at GH from GolinHarris on Vimeo.

GolinHarris has introduced g4, the firm’s new global agency model designed to function in a digital and social media world. With the model, the firm will be changing its business over the next decade, providing services not just in earned media but, according to the firm’s president and CEO Fred Cook, “equally distributed” across earned, shared, owned, and purchased media.

“If you started an agency today, you wouldn’t structure it the way a traditional firm is structured,” Cook told PRNewser as he was heading out to join the firm’s day of community service to celebrate founder Al Golin‘s birthday. “We felt we had to move to something a little more streamlined and in tune with what’s happening in the outside world.”

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Which Agency Has The Most “Social” CEO?

Joe Ciarallo — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 14:46:20 +0000

All of the major PR agencies continue to move aggressively in regards to social media offerings for their clients. But how active are agency CEOs in social media?

PRNewser decided to take a look at major agency CEOs to see just how “social” they are. We’re not saying these CEO’s have to “walk the walk,” but we were a bit curious to see who is active, and where.

After the jump, our social media audit on 12 agency CEOs. The results may surprise you.

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