Top 10 Global
PR Agency Ranking 2021

2021	2020	Agency	HQ	Fee Income 2020 ($)	Fee Income 2019 ($)	Growth (Constant Currency)
1	1	Edelman ^nb	USA	840,022,000	892,039,000	-5.8%
2	2	Weber Shandwick ^nb	USA	820,000,000	865,000,000	-5.2%
3	3	BCW	USA	715,000,000	740,000,000	-3.4%
4	4	FleishmanHillard ^nb	USA	615,000,000	605,000,000	1.7%
5	5	Ketchum ^nb	USA	500,000,000	535,000,000	-6.5%
6	10	Brunswick	UK	367,160,000	335,280,000	5.5%
7	6	MSL ^nb	France	365,000,000	365,000,000	0.0%
8	9	BlueFocus ^nb	China	363,988,458	329,123,818	4.1%
9	15	Real Chemistry ^nb	USA	360,000,000	222,000,000	62.2%
10	7	H+K Strategies	USA	345,000,000	360,000,000	-4.2%

Global PR Agency Rankings 2021: Top 10 Demonstrate Resilience With 3% Decline

Rankings: Top 10 | Top 250 | Fast Movers | Holding Groups / Networks
Analysis: Resilient Global PR Industry Declines 4% Amid Covid-19 Pandemic

Despite the ravages of the pandemic, the global PR industry's top 10 firms demonstrated why diversification is an effective mitigation strategy, underpinning a resilient performance in 2020. This year's top 10 group reports estimated fee income of $5.27bn, which is down 3% compared to the revenue reported by last year's top 10 group ($5.45bn), although there are some significant changes in the composition of this year's top of the table ranking.

When comparing the revenue of this year's top 10 to the revenue reported by the same 10 firms in 2020, revenue dropped by just 1.9% in USD terms, or -0.9% in constant currency terms. That was largely down the stellar performance of Real Chemistry (p/k/a W2O Group), whose acquisition-fuelled growth of 62% saw it jump into the top 10 for the first time in its 20-year history, moving from 15th to ninth to cap off two decades of consecutive double-digit expansion.

While many of the firms on this list registered single-digit declines (Edelman, Weber Shandwick, BCW, Ketchum, and H+K Strategies), there was also significant growth at Brunswick, which moves from 10th to sixth after expanding 5.5%. Chinese communications giant BlueFocus, a consistent source of growth during the past decade, performed credibly too — up 4% to move into eighth spot, although that ranking will no doubt change next year after it sold a majority stake in its international operations.

The growth reported by this trio of firms means that, while the top five remains the same, MSL drops from sixth to seventh, H+K from seventh to 10th and Ogilvy PR exits the top 10 for the first time since this Ranking launched more than a decade ago, a period in which low growth became the new normal for publicly-held PR networks.

All growth figures are on a reported (rather than organic) basis. Overall, we estimate that the top 10 global PR firms generated fee income of around $5.27bn. A fuller picture of global PR industry size is provided by the analysis of our Global Top 250, based on submissions from almost 400 PR firms from across the world.

Date: 12 May 2021

Rankings: Top 10 | Top 250 | Fast Movers | Holding Groups / Networks
Analysis: Resilient Global PR Industry Declines 4% Amid Covid-19 Pandemic