Ron Finlay

This article is part of the Spinwatch public health oriented Alcohol Portal project.

Ron Finlay was the Chief Executive of Fishburn Hedges before taking a sabbatical in 2010 in order to assist the Liberal Democrats in their 2010 general election campaign. Finlay still features on the Fishburn Hedges website although he has since taken his 25 years of PR and communications experience and started his own company Ron Finlay Communications. Finlay is also one of the backers of Editorial Intelligence and an adviser to Julia Hobsbawm’s venture.

Ron Finlay advised the Department of Health on its Know Your Limits alcohol campaign and also worked in the fields of tobacco control and drug misuse. In March 2011 The Portman Group announced Finlay as one of the new appointees to their Independent Complaints Panel.

Finlay's role at Fishburn Hedges

According to Fishburn Hedges' website, Finlay's role was "hands-on":

We are all client-focused. Everyone, from the chairman down, has client service as their priority. Both Neil Hedges and Ron Finlay, our chief executive, dedicate 75 percent of their time to client work.

And

During the Thatcher and Major years, his focus was financial services, including privatisations, while the Blair era saw him working largely in the public sector, on issues including road pricing, climate change, public health, skills development and the media. In the Brown age, he enjoys shaping the climate of opinion to enable behavioural change, whether in the culture of everyday life, such as smoking, drinking or gambling, or in the world of public service modernisation.