Omnicom earnings announcement for Q1 2012 showed an overall 6.5 percent revenue growth for the company’s PR business during the quarter, totaling $306.9 million. Organic growth was 4.4 percent for the quarter. PR accounts for 9.3 percent of Omnicom’s total revenue. Omnicom’s PR firms include Ketchum, Fleishman-Hillard, and Porter Novelli.
NUK USA, makers of pacifiers, teething rings, and other oral baby products and developmental tools, has chosen Hill+Knowlton Strategies for PR services. The firm’s consumer marketing practice will work on the account.
U.S. Cellular has chosen Ketchum after a competitive pitch that included MSLGroup, Ad Age reports. MSLGroup and a number of local agencies had previously worked on the account. U.S. Cellular has been steadily decreasing its ad spend over the past few years.
August Schell Brewing Co., makers of Schell’s and Grain Belt beers, has selected Padilla Speer Beardsley as its AOR. The firm will focus on brand strategy and an integrated marketing program (advertising, PR, digital) to promote the company’s 15 craft beers.
Ketchum has partnered with market research agency The Modellers on a marketing analytics offering that will illustrate the ROI on a PR investment in order to help determine the best way to spend going forward for maximum effect. The two Omnicom companies will use marketing-mix modeling and other analysis to determine the PR ROI. This offering is in addition to Ketchum’s measurement tools.
David Rockland, partner and MD of Ketchum Global Research & Analytics; Mary Elizabeth Germaine, SVP of Ketchum’s research and analytics group; and Jeff Brazell, CEO of The Modellers will lead the new effort.
Husqvarna, makers of lawn equipment for homeowners, has chosen Ketchum as U.S. AOR. The firm’s Atlanta team will take the lead on this account. [via]
H&R Block has hired Shift Communications for content strategy, specifically the company’s Block Talk blog. On the blog now, an infographic from the company’s Stache Act campaign, included in this morning’s Ticker. [via]
Marcomms company EOS has added six clients to its roster: the city of Dunwoody, G.A.; Dunwoody’s Convention and Visitor’s Bureau; Higher Ground, an initiative launched by Atlanta faith leaders; Millbridge, a new community outside of Charlotte, N.C.; Soleil Laurel Canyon, an adult community outside of Atlanta; and coaching and executive development company Turknett Leadership Group.
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.”
Omnicom Group reported $13.9 billion in revenue for the year ending December 31, 2011, a 10.6 percent increase year-over-year. Domestic revenue was up 5.5 percent to about $7.05 billion. International revenue was up 16.5 percent to $6.82 billion. The U.S. brought in nearly 51 percent of revenue for the year.
Net income for the year was up 15.1 percent to $952.6 million. In 2010, that figure was $8127.7 billion.
PR revenue was up 8.8 percent for the year to $1.22 billion, an organic increase of 1.9 percent. Revenue in the PR area was up 8.1 percent for the quarter to $310.6 million, an organic increase of .6 percent. Omnicom firms include Fleishman-Hillard, Porter Novelli, and Ketchum.
Olga Fleming
Jill Bratina Kermes has been named SVP of corporate affairs in Ketchum‘s Washington D.C. office. She was most recently the VP of brand and corporate communications for Volkswagen of America. Her new job brings her back to Ketchum, where she worked on litigation communications in the late 1990s. She has also worked as comms director for former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and worked with Public Strategies.
In other Ketchum news, Ketchum Pleon Paris has merged with DDB Financial, another Omnicom firm. DDB Financial provides shareholder comms, analyst relations, IR, and other financial comms services. DDB will continue to operate under that name and Fabrice Baron will continue as president with the firm working in the Ketchum Pleon Paris offices. The two firms already collaborate for two clients: Vallourec and Klepierre.
Olga Fleming has joined Cohn & Wolfe as EVP, MD of healthcare in New York. She joins from Chandler Chicco company Biosector 2 where she worked with pharma businesses here and abroad. Among the clients she has worked with are Pfizer and Novartis.
Ketchum‘s Sean Fitzgerald has been named EVP in China and director of the firm’s Shanghai office. The job also comes with responsibility for the Beijing and Guangzhou operations. Fitzgerald is currently partner and MD of Ketchum West. He will relocate to Shanghai in January.
Dave Chapman, who is a partner and director for Ketchum West now, will take up the vacant MD position, managing the operations in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Ketchum announced that it was taking a majority stake in its China operations in January of this year. Fitzgerald will report to Kenneth Chu, partner and CEO, and Jon Higgins, the firm’s senior partner and CEO of international operations.
Don Bartholomew joined Ketchum as SVP of digital and social media research yesterday. Bartholomew was most recently at Fleishman-Hillard’s Washington D.C. office where he managed integrated digital research like social media monitoring and measurement.
In this new role, he’ll manage the Ketchum Global Research Network (KGRN) operations in Ketchum South and Ketchum Midwest, and work with Ketchum Digital, Zócalo Group, the company’s word-of-mouth agency, and Access Communications, which specializes in high-tech and consumer PR.
Bartholomew is also the blogger behind MetricsMan.
Photo: Pennsylvania Attorney General Office via AP
Penn State’s Board of Trustees has hired Ketchum to handle crisis comms, Ad Age reports. The hire was made on November 6, the day after former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky was arrested. The firm has already helped with the press conference announcing that coach Joe Paterno and university president Graham Spanier were leaving their positions.
According to Ad Age, Ketchum has about 50 crisis experts in the U.S.
<< PREVIOUS PAGENEXT PAGE >>
Patrick Coffee
Contributor
Elizabeth Mitchell
Contributor
Jim Thompson
Contributor
Nadine Cheung
Editor, The Job Post
PRNewser Twitter feed loading...