The PRovoke podcast lifts the lid on key PR industry stories and trends. P/k/a as the Holmes Report's Echo Chamber.
Long-form journalism that analyzes the issues, challenges and opportunities facing the business and practice of PR.
PRovoke's coverage of the Covid-19 crisis, focusing on corporate communication, public affairs & PR industry fallout.
Dedicated to exploring the new frontiers of PR as it dives deeper into social media, content and analytics.
Our coverage of key technology PR trends and challenges from around the world of digital communications.
From brand marketing to conscious consumerism, coverage of key marketing and PR trends worldwide.
Coverage of global corporate reputation and communications news and trends, from the leading online corporate PR news website PRovoke. Subscribe today!
PRovoke's coverage, analysis and news around the rapidly-shifting area of employee engagement and internal communications.
Sports PR news, diversity & inclusion trends, views and analysis from PRovoke. Subscribe today for the very latest in the world of sports communications.
PRovoke Media's definitive global benchmark of global PR agency size and growth.
PRovoke's annual selections for PR Agencies of the Year, across all of the world's major markets.
PRovoke profiles marketing and communications innovators from across North America, EMEA and Asia-Pac.
In-depth annual research into the PR industry's efforts to raise creative standards.
The world's biggest PR awards programme, dedicated to benchmarking the best PR work from across the globe.
The biggest PR conference of the year, a high-level forum designed to address the critical issues that matter most.
A global network of conferences that explore the innovation and disruption that is redefining public relations.
Unrivalled insight into the world's best PR agencies, across specialist and geographic categories.
Our Next 20 initiative brings together in-house comms leaders with PR firms to examine the future of communications.
The PR industry’s most comprehensive listing of firms from every region and specialty
Find the latest global PR and communications jobs from PRovoke. From internships to account executives or directors. See all our PR jobs here.
PRovoke's editorial series published in collaboration with partners.
Since its inception in 2010, EM has made a significant impact on the financial PR and IR landscape — in particular in Russia (its HQ is Moscow and the firm has offices in London, New York and Beijing). For its backstory, EM started as the Russian unit of M:Communications before completing a successful management buy-out in 2013. This deal, in fact, took place just months before the Russian market fell off a cliff with sanctions, tumbling oil prices and a sharp currency devaluation. But EM stuck it out and has thrived, growing by double digits every year since. In 2019, the firm’s revenue rose 30% on an organic basis to $6.7m, doubling its profit and growing headcount to 26 serving Russian clients in the international markets — for instance, advising on a significant number of Russian IPOs and ECM transactions, as well as M&As.
New clients in 2019 included Baring Vostok, M Video Eldorado, Ozon, Sibur, SEMrush, ChelPipe, Familia and Sovcombank — joining an existing roster that features International Paper, Aeroflot, Moscow Exchange, Tinkoff Bank, PhosAgro, Etalon, MD Medical Group, VTB. And the work spans more than just transactions and investor relations, including crisis comms, ESG consultancy, perception research and reputation management. Campaign highlights included the first Russian M&A purchase by a Western company, (TJX) since sanctions began in 2014; and a string of other major M&A deals including the sale of 51% of CRT to Sberbank and the sale of 25% in Etalon. In addition, EM worked with Sibur to develop its ESG messaging, around its ‘Clean Water’ campaign.
Tom Blackwell, founder and CEO of EM, has worked in Russia communications for more than 15 years. The leadership team includes also Sam Vanderlip and Tom Kiehn, Denis Denisov and Anna Glikman, while new hires included former WSJ tech reporter Olga Razumovskaya and Alexandra Astapenko. — AS
Hering Schuppener (Germany/WPP)
It’s a tribute to Hering Schuppener’s management depth—managing partners Folker Dries, Alex Geiser, Brigitte von Haacke, Phoebe Kebbel, and Tina Mentner preside over what might be the deepest bench of senior consulting talent anywhere in Europe—that the firm has maintained its status as the leading German advisor on mergers and acquisitions and other “special situations” (it advised on 40 deals worth close to $42 billion in 2019) for the past decade while also seeing fee income top $60 million last year—enough to rank Hering Schuppener among the world’s top 40 PR agencies.
The firm brought in additional talent in the past year, with new hires including Robert Vollrath, former deputy global head of investor relations at Deutsche Bank; Lutz Stroppe, former State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Health; and Gregoire Verdeaux, from his position as international policy director at Vodafone, to strengthen the Brussels office.
In addition to leading the German M&A ranking, Hering Schuppener continues to work with UK partner Finsbury (owned by WPP, which also holds a majority stake in the German agency) to rank number one in Europe, working on 145 deals, while globally the partnership was involved in 200 transactions. Highlights included representing Bayer in its acquisition of Monsanto.
But while the M&A work is high profile, Hering Schuppener’s expertise goes far beyond its capital markets work to include crisis communications (it continues working with Volkswagen on the aftermath of the “deiselgate” crisis, has helped Deutsche Bank with reputation management as its name continues to surface in investigations into Donald Trump’s financial dealings); public affairs, with the Berlin-led business doubling in size in recent years; employee engagement and management consulting services.—PH
Kirchoff Consult (Germany/Independent)
For many, corporate and financial communications is considered the drier side of the business, driven by facts and figures and corporate-speak — minus the creative flair. But Kirchhoff, one of German-speaking Europe’s leading financial and corporate communications agencies, refutes that idea; that’s because members of the agency’s 60-person team — a well-mixed crowd including lawyers, analysts, project managers, journalists, designers and digital gurus — enjoy financials more than most. As chairman Klaus Kirchhoff describes it, the firm finds even the utmost in arid material, and the challenge of making it sing, downright inspirational.
Which, perhaps, is one of the reasons that Kirchhoff has emerged as a regional leader in handling communications surrounding IPOs, annual reports, CSR and investor relations. Active in Austria, Switzerland, Romania and Turkey as well as Germany, the agency in 2019 rose to €6.4m in fee income. With a commitment to “absolute precision” (although humor is apparently encouraged), Kirchhoff has built a client roster populated by big-name clients including Munich Airport, TUI Group, Lanxess, Volkswagen, Vibracoustic, PfeifferVacuum. Many of the clients have been partners for a decade-plus, a testament to the firm’s ability to grow and adapt with them. — DM
LLYC (Spain/Independent)
While well-known for its work in Latin America, LLYC (the former Llorente & Cuenca changed its name in April of last year) in 2019 derived roughly 44% of its $48 million revenue from its European operations, and has established itself as the largest firm in the Spanish and Portuguese speaking markets of the world, with extraordinary depth in financial communications (it joined the Finsbury-Hering Schippener partnership last year), corporate and public affairs, as well as in key sectors ranging from financial services to the extractive industries. The European network includes owned and branded offices in Barcelona, Madrid and Lisbon.
LLCY’s client list is impressive, a mix of Spanish, Latin American, and global brands including Coca-Cola, Multiópticas, Repsol, McDonald’s, TOUS, Sonae Arauc, Siemens-Gamesa, Mercadona, Bayer-Monsanto and Caixabank, with new additions over the last 12 months including, Mercedes-Benz, Ikea, Free Now, Aldi, Lilly and Spanish LaLiga. The firm’s 2019 name change was part of a larger rebranding effort designed to reflect LLYC’s stature as a client-focused agency offering clients solutions based on innovation, technology and combining a global vision and scope. LLYC’s high-profile work last year included a campaign for optical company Multiópticas, highlighting the harm caused by the number of hours we spend every day looking at screens. The initiative included a website with advice and eye-saving prevention measures, as well as a series of public awareness sessions in schools across Spain. — PH/DM
The PR industry’s most comprehensive listing of firms from every region and specialty.
We feel that the views of the reader are as important as the views of the writer. Please contact us at [email protected]
Signup For Our Newsletter Media Kits/Editorial Calendar Jobs Postings Sitemap© Holmes Report LLC 2021