PRovoke Media 12 May 2024 // 3:32PM GMT
NEW YORK—Edelman still has the strongest employer brand of any North American public relations firm, based on responses to our Best Agencies to Work For research, which asked respondents which firm they most like to work for if they could not work for their current employer.
Edelman garnered more than twice as many points as any other agency in the survey, which attracted more than 2,500 individual responses. Points were allocated based on whether agencies were listed as the first, second, or third choice by respondents.
While Edelman was the first choice by a wide margin, almost as many respondents indicated that if they could not work for their current agency, they would either leave the industry or seek a position on the client side of the business. Edelman's status as number was unchanged from last year, and indeed from 2016, the previous time we published Employer of Choice rankings.
The rest of top 10 employer brands are dominated by large multinational agencies owned by the giant holding companies, with Weber Shandwick, Ketchum, Ogilvy, Golin, FleishmanHillard, BCW, Zeno Group, Real Chemistry and GCI Health rounding out the top 10.
“Obviously, there is a strong correlation between size—and therefore brand recognition—and the strength of the employer brand,” said Paul Holmes, founder of PRovoke Media. “But even so, there are some firms like Golin that punch considerably above their weight and others, notable BCW, that fall short of the ranking their size would suggest.”
Among those large multinationals, Ketchum moved up one spot from fourth to third, while Ogilvy jumped two spots from sixth to fourth. FleishmanHillard declined from fourth to sixth—akthough in all cases the margins were relatively small.
GCI Health, 12th last year, jumped into the top 10, while Porter Novelli and Highwire broke into the top 15. Allison+Partners dropped from number 10 last year to number 21 this year, while Inizio Evoke declined from 13th last year (which it was Evoke Kyne) to 19th this year.
“One factor is that the firms at the top of our Best Agencies to Work For rankings do tend to do well in this survey,” said Holmes. “Golin is one example, but some midsize firms like M Booth and Finn have a high ranking in this survey that reflect the way their own employees rate them in our research.”
The complete top 25 are:
- Edelman -- 1040
- Weber-Shandwick -- 561
- Ketchum -- 275
- Ogilvy -- 266
- Golin -- 221
- FleishmanHillard -- 201
- BCW -- 166
- Zeno Group -- 150
- Real Chemistry -- 123
- GCI Health -- 103
- Finn Partners -- 99
- Hunter PR -- 95
- M Booth -- 94
- Porter Novelli -- 91
- Highwire -- 85
- MSL -- 76
- Small Girls PR -- 76
- Berlin Rosen -- 69
- Inizio Evoke -- 68
- WE Communications -- 66
- Allison & Partners -- 65
- Hill&Knowlton -- 61
- InkHouse -- 59
- Praytell -- 59
- APCO Worldwide -- 57