Weber Shandwick

Weber Shandwick is one of the world's largest public relations companies.

History

Peter Gummer, the British chairman of Shandwick, is candid about why he started a PR firm. "When I started off in public relations, it was a business that people went into because they weren't good at anything else," he wrote. While working at a London venture capital firm in the early 1970s, Gummer observed a parade of his peers establishing their own businesses and making serious money. "So I thought that I'd like to start my own business. And as I wasn't very good at anything, I decided I'd better start a PR firm," he explained. Peter Gummer was knighted in 1996 and is now known as Lord Chadlington. [1]

In October 1998, it was bought by the Interpublic Group of Companies, a U.S. firm that also owns the advertising agencies McCann Erickson Worldwide Group, Ammirati Puras Lintas and The Lowe Group

In May 2001, Weber Shandwick won what was reported to be $2 million issues management account with Dairy Management Inc, a trade association, to promote demand for U.S. dairy products. O'Dwyer's PR Daily reported that Sara Galvin heads the DMI account from Weber Shandwick's Minneapolis office with support from the Weber Shandwick’s Washington, D.C office. The campaign had been expected to focus on concerns raised by foot-and-mouth and mad cow disease in Europe. According to the PR trade newsletter, the Holmes Report, DMI's executive vice president of public and industry relations Jean Regalie said the campaign will be broader than that, taking a long term view of "the way people look at food." Dairy Management Inc. also has accounts with Golin/Harris International and BSMG Worldwide, creator of the ubiquitous "Got Milk?" campaign. [2]

Clients

Some of Shandwick's current or recent clients include:

USA

• 3M,
• Aerospatiale,
• American Cancer Society,
• Bayer,
• Brown and Williamson Tobacco,
• Browning Ferris Industries,
• Central Maine Power,
• Columbia Gas Systems,
• Chase Manhattan Bank,
• Ciba-Geigy
• Coca-Cola,
• Compaq,
• Council for Agricultural Science and Technology,
• U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, *Dairy Management Inc
• Dun & Bradstreet,
• Earth Day USA,
• Eastman Kodak,
• the Falkland Islands,
• Federal Emergency Management Agency,
• Ford Motor Company,
• Gabon General Electric,
• General Motors,
• Georgia Pacific Corporation,
• General Mills,
• Global Climate Information Project,
• Honeywell,
• IBM,
• KPMG Peat Marwick,
• Kraft,
• Lever Brothers,
• Mastercard International,
• Michelin,
• Monsanto,
• Mall of America,
• Microsoft,
• New York State Electric and Gas,
• National Pest Control Association,
• Northwest Airlines,
• Novartis,
• Novo Nordisk,
• Ray-Ban,
• Remington and Sharp Electronics,
• Shell,
• Symantec.

Europe

• Anglian Water
• British American Tobacco
• Corporation of London
• ICI Paints
• Meat and Livestock Corporation
• MCI Worldcom
• Mercedes-Benz
• Nestle
• P&O Cruises
• Reckitt & Coleman
• Shell International
• Tesco
• Unilever

Asia Pacific

• Japanese Whaling Association

New Zealand

• Real Estate Institute of New Zealand
• Professional Firefighters Union
• Southern Cross Healthcare
• Timberlands (contract ended late 1999).

Australia

• Screen Producers Association of Australia,
• Australian Chicken Growers Council.

Books

• Nicky Hager and Bob Burton, Secrets and Lies: the anatomy of an anti-environmental PR campaign, Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine, 2000.

External links

• The entire edition of PR Watch of the first quarter of 2000 was devoted to a profile of Shandwick's activities on behalf of the New Zealand government-owned logging company, Timberlands, with a small additional amount of profile material. The edition of PR Watch is available at http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/index.html
• Nicky Hager and Bob Burton, "Shandwick's Story: From Good-for-Nothing to Global Threat", PR Watch, First quarter 2000, page 7.
• Bob Burton, “Shandwick Works to Save the Fox, Kill the Whale”, ‘’PR Watch’’, First quarter 2001.
• “$2 million Dairy Issues Management Contract Awarded to Weber Shandwick”, ‘’Spin of the Day’’, May 21, 2001.