LONDON—The strongest employee brands in the UK public relations business belong to independent public relations firms with strong creative reputations, not to giant multinationals with offices all over the world—according to respondents to our recent Best Consultancies to Work For survey, who were asked where they would most like to work if they could no longer work at their current consultancy.

The strongest employer brand of all belongs to Hope & Glory, which also happens to have been named by its employees as the Best UK Consultancy to Work For in our 2023 research, suggesting that word about the firm’s culture has filtered through to the rest of the industry.

Hope & Glory finished ahead of The Romans and Edelman (the highest ranked multinational in the survey), with Milk & Honey and W Communications rounding out the top five.

It is worth noting that in both the UK and continental Europe, the most common response to the question of where people would like to work if they had to leave their current employer, so version of “no other agency” was the top response. But among those who were willing and able to state a preference, the top ranked employers of choice in the UK were:

  1. Hope & Glory
  2. The Romans
  3. Edelman
  4. Milk & Honey
  5. W Communications
  6. Freuds
  7. Weber Shandwick
  8. Ogilvy
  9. Tin Man
  10. Hill+Knowlton
  11. John Doe
  12. Headland
  13. Blurred
  14. Taylor Herring
  15. FleishmanHillard

In continental Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Edelman has the strongest employer brand, with multinational brands dominating the ranking—perhaps as a result of the fact that single market agencies were disadvantaged by the wide dispersal of participating firms (markets such as Germany, Spain and South Africa were over-represented in our EMEA sample).

In some countries, participation in the survey was so patchy that participating agencies might have been disadvantaged (since employees were being asked which other agencies they would prefer to work for.)

Edelman finished ahead of Ogilvy, Weber Shandwick, Hill+Knowlton Strategies and BCW Global. Spanish agency LLYC finished sixth—the highest ranked single-market firm on the continent.

The top ranked employers of choice in continental Europe, the Middle East and Africa:

  1. Edelman
  2. Ogilvy
  3. Weber Shandwick
  4. Hill+Knowlton
  5. BCW
  6. LLYC (Spain)
  7. FleishmanHillard
  8. Havas
  9. Brunswick
  10. TRY råd (Norway)
  11. Ketchum
  12. Ayrevia (Spain)
  13. Fishcher Appelt (Germany)
  14. Apple Tree (Spain)
  15. Omnicom PR Group