Fleishman-Hillard

Fleishman Hillard London Office above Covent Garden tube station

Background

Fleishman-Hillard [1] is one of the biggest PR companies in the world with over 80 offices worldwide. Its parent company is the Omnicom group Inc [2], which is a huge conglomerate that describes itself as a "global leader in Marketing and Global Communications". It has absorbed the group of firms formerly trading under the name GPC International

Global operation

Headquartered in St. Louis, Fleishman-Hillard has over 80 offices throughout North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East, South Africa, and Latin America. It operates through a variety of networks:

• Allyn & Company
• Fleishman-Hillard Government Relations
• GPC Public Affairs
• GMMB
• Mercury Public Affairs
• Strat@comm
• VOX Global Mandate

UK operation

Fleishman-Hillard has 3 offices in the UK: London, Fleishman-Hillard (Edinburgh) and Dublin.

In April 2005 Kevin Maguire wrote in the New Statesman of F-H distributing a glossy brochure to their clients sketching the likely changes that could be expected under a Labour government led by Gordon Brown. "Warning multinational bosses that the next Labour premier's philosophy is built on - wait for it - equity, the booklet predicts Brown will centralise power around himself," Maguire wrote.

People

• Kevin Bell, Executive Vice President and Senior Partner (UK and South Africa). Bell is described as one of the "great and the good” in the PR industry. He is a former advisor to Margaret Thatcher "Managing a team of 150-plus consultants in Fleishman-Hillard's London, Edinburgh and Johannesburg offices, Kevin specialises in advising senior executives of leading blue-chip companies, as well as senior politicians on their communications strategies."

• Paul Borge

Clients

• government of Turkey

Scotland

Nirex Pfizer

Specific lobbying campaigns

Biotech

In 2003, it was reported that “Fleishman-Hillard has been getting more and more deeply involved in the biotechnology sector, helping the Biotechnology Industry Organisation and the Council of Biotechnology Information communicate the benefits of the technology to consumers and opinion leaders.” In April 2006, US biotechnology firm Genzyme appointed Fleishman-Hillard to boost its profile among British policymakers and lobby the UK Government to commit more funding to biotech.;

Turkey

On 10 October 2007, the US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs passed Resolution 106, which accuses the Turkish rulers in 1915 of genocide. There was an intensive on behalf of the Turkish government to sway the committee, described by Ali H. Aslan as follows:

Both the Turkish and the US governments strongly opposed the resolution and were joined by DLA Piper, the Livingstone Group, public relations company Fleishman-Hillard and other companies that officially conducted lobbying activities on behalf of Turkey as well as by big corporations that have sizable commercial deals with Turkey such as Boeing and BP.

ID cards

In June 2005, Kevin Bell from the UK arm of Fleishman-Hillard spoke at a one-day conference in London called ID Cards: Towards Procurement and Implementation. The title of his talk was "Achieving public acceptance".

Contacts

UK 40 Long Acre, London WC2
http://www.fleishman-hillard.co.uk

Global website
http://www.fleishman.com

External Resources

• GPC International UK Staff and Clients 1.12.03 to 31.5.04
• Fleishman-Hillard UK Staff and Clients 31.11.04 to 31.5.05
• Fleishman-Hillard, PRCA Yearbook 2004
• Fleishman-Hillard UK Staff and Clients 1 June 2005 to 30 Nov 2005
• Fleishman-Hillard UK Staff and Clients 1 December 2007 to 29 February 2008

[3]

F-H website, accessed Feb 2009

Holmes Report

PR Week, “F-H Wins UK Job for Biotech Genzyme”, April 14, 2006, p7

Ali H. Aslan, How did last-minute hopes turn into disappointment?, Zaman, 10 October 2007.

[4]