Hill and Knowlton

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Hill and Knowlton Offices, Soho Sq, Central London
Twenty-pound-notes.jpg This article is part of the Lobbying Portal, a sunlight project from Spinwatch.

Hill & Knowlton (H&K) was for many years the largest PR and lobbying firm in the world.

It is now part of global communications group WPP. Roughly three quarters of H&K’s work involves routine PR, and a quarter high-profile government lobbying and policy advice[1]

H&K has created and refined many of the industry's key PR strategies and techniques over the years. It was labelled by one former employee as 'a company without a moral rudder'.[2]

The company was renamed Hill+Knowlton Strategies in December 2011 as part of 'a shift in corporate identity' that recognised the 'democratisation of data'.

Hill & Knowlton campaigns

Below are some of H&K's better-known campaigns. For more examples see: Hill and Knowlton: Corporate Crimes

'Smoke & Mirrors'

The tobacco industry has waged a fifty year campaign to hide the health effects of smoking. In 2005, the US Department of Justice's legal case, asking for a staggering $280 billion in damages, finally reached court. They argued that the tobacco industry carried out a fifty year campaign of deception. At its heart was Hill and Knowlton. An Executive Summary of Preliminary Findings notes:[3]

At the end of 1953, the chief executives of the five major cigarette manufacturers in the United States at the time - Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson, Lorillard, and American - met at the Plaza Hotel in New York City with representatives of the public relations firm Hill & Knowlton and agreed to jointly conduct a long term public relations campaign to counter the growing evidence linking smoking as a cause of serious diseases. The meeting spawned an association-in-fact enterprise to execute a fraudulent scheme in furtherance of their overriding common objective - to preserve and enhance the tobacco industry's profits by maximizing the numbers of smokers and number of cigarettes smoked and to avoid adverse liability judgements. The fraudulent scheme would continue for the next five decades.

One of the tactics was to create a controversy over health where there was not one. For example one Hill and Knowlton memo from the sixties says: "The most important type of story is that which casts doubt in the cause and effect theory of disease and smoking". Eye-grabbing headlines were needed and "should strongly call out the point - Controversy! Contradiction! Other Factors! Unknowns!"[4]

The PR industry and Hill and Knowlton have tried to keep the controversy open ever since.

Working for oil giants, the nuclear industry and torturers

Nuclear spin.png This article is part of the Nuclear Spin project of Spinwatch.

The firm helped in the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska and the Three Mile Island nuclear accident.[5]

It has worked for Governments with appalling human rights records, including Egypt, Haiti, Indonesia, Morocco, Turkey - and China after the Tiananmen square massacre.[6]. It has also worked for Saudi Aramco, the state run oil company in Saudi Arabia.[7]

The UK office has worked with the Government of Maldives on promoting the country as a tourist destination, whilst Amnesty International has issued a string of warnings and reports about this and the government's repression of the political opposition.[8]

Paving the way to war

Hill and Knowlton played a leading role in the run-up to the first Gulf War. In August 1990, Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait. Fourteen years ago the American public were reluctant to send troops. Selling the war was not going to be easy.

As many as 20 PR firms were used to mobilize US opinion in favour of the war. Hill & Knowlton, then the world's largest PR firm, served as the mastermind for the Kuwaiti campaign. The Kuwaiti government agreed a $12 million contract under which Hill & Knowlton would represent "Citizens for a Free Kuwait," a classic PR front group which hid the role of the Kuwaiti government and its collusion with the Bush administration.[9]

One PR commentator noted about Hill & Knowlton's unprecedented campaign that: "H&K has employed a stunning variety of opinion-forming devices and techniques to help keep US opinion on the side of the Kuwaitis The techniques range from full-scale press conferences showing torture and other abuses by the Iraqis to the distribution of tens of thousands of 'Free Kuwait' T-shirts and bumper stickers at college campuses across the US."[10]

Hill and Knowlton also devised the defining moment that swung American public opinion in favour of war. It arranged for the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the US to appear as an ordinary Kuwaiti girl in front of Congress. Her written testimony was passed out in a media kit prepared by Citizens for a Free Kuwait. "While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die."[11]

It was a testimony that drove the US to war. It was totally false.

Biotechnology industry

In 2007 the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), the world's largest biotechnology organization, selected the team of Hill & Knowlton and Gable PR to manage its public and media relations programs for its 2008 BIO International Convention in San Diego, California.[12]

Corporate Crimes

For further details of Hill and Knowlton's corporate crimes, see Hill and Knowlton Corporate Crimes.

People

  • Richard Millar, global chair, creative strategy and UK CEO Hill and Knowlton
  • Blake Lee-Harwood, Senior consultant on sustainability issues. Lee-Harwood was previously campaigns director for Greenpeace from June 2002 to April 2007. Prior to this role he had been the communications director of Greenpeace from August 1999 to June 2002.

March 2014 - May 2014

Matt Bright | Jonathan Brown | David Chambers | Clare Coffey | Clare Daly | Jason Day | Peter Folland | Rob Foyle | Joshua Glendinning | Suzannah Greenwood | Tess Harris | Joanna Hoare | Edward Jones | Sara Jurkowsky | Douglas McIlroy | Mike McManus | Clare Murphy-McGreevey | Charlotte Nathan | Metin Parlak | Simon Perry | Chris Pratt | Paul Smyth | Michael Stott | Daisy Thomas | Simon Whitehead[13]

December 2013-February 2013

Matt Bright | David Chambers | Clare Coffey | Clare Daly | Jason Day | Peter Folland | Rob Foyle | Joshua Glendinning | Suzannah Greenwood | Tess Harris | Joanna Hoare | Edward Jones | Sara Jurkowsky | Douglas McIlroy | Clare Murphy-McGreevey | Metin Parlak | Chris Pratt | Rima Sacre | Paul Smyth | Michael Stott | Daisy Thomas | Simon Whitehead[14]

September 2013-November 2013

Matt Bright | Danny Calogero | Clare Coffey | Clare Daly | Jason Day | James Dumelow | Peter Folland | Rob Foyle | Suzannah Greenwood | Tess Harris | Joanna Hoare | Edward Jones | Sara Jurkowsky | Douglas McIlroy | Clare Murphy-McGreevey | Metin Parlak | Chris Pratt | Rima Sacre | Paul Smyth | Daisy Thomas | Simon Whitehead | Nicholas Henry Dunn-McAfee | Michael Stott [15]

June 2013-August 2013

Matt Bright | Danny Calogero | Clare Coffey | Clare Daly | Jason Day | James Dumelow | Peter Folland | Rob Foyle | Suzannah Greenwood | Tess Harris | Joanna Hoare | Edward Jones | Sara Jurkowsky | Douglas McIlroy | Clare Murphy-McGreevey | Metin Parlak | Chris Pratt | Rima Sacre | Paul Smyth | Daisy Thomas | Simon Whitehead [16]

March 2013-May 2013

Matt Bright | Danny Calogero | Clare Coffey | Clare Daly | Jason Day | James Dumelow | Rob Foyle | Ross Gillam | Suzannah Greenwood | Tess Harris | Edward Jones | Sara Jurkowsky | Douglas McIlroy | Clare Murphy-McGreavey | Chris Pratt | Rima Sacre | Tara Singh | Daisy Thomas | Simon Whitehead [17]

December 2012-February 2013

Matt Bright | Danny Calogero | David Chambers | Clare Coffey | Clare Daly | Jason Day | Alexandra Earnshaw | Rob Foyle | Ross Gillam | Suzannah Greenwood | Bryan Johnston Edward Jones | Sara Jurkowsky | Chris Pratt | Edward Robinson | Rima Sacre | Tara Singh | Daisy Thomas | Simon Whitehead [18]

  • In November 2013 Michael Stott joined Hill+Knowlton Strategies UK's Energy and Industrials section as a senior associate director after a brief nine month stint with Luther Pendragon and prior to that as EDF Energy's public affairs manager, handling comms for the development and deployment of its nuclear new build strategy. He has also worked for former energy minister Charles Hendry MP and as a press officer for the Tories. [19]

Former UK lobbyists

  • Oliver Dowden. H&K's top Conservative lobbyist Dec 2007-Nov 2008. Before joining H&K, Dowden was deputy campaigns director of the Conservative Party, working closely with Conservative leader David Cameron. Before this, he was an account director at lobbying firm LLM. From Nov 2008, he returned to Tory HQ as deputy director, political operations, reporting directly to comms director Andy Coulson.[20]
  • Julian Eccles. From 1993 to 1997, Eccles was Senior Public Affairs Consultant at H&K. Eccles is a former special adviser to Chris Smith at the Labour Party and Head of Marketing and Communications at the Football Association (FA).[21]
  • Lord McNally
  • Tara Singh left H&K in early 2013 to advise UK Prime Minister David Cameron on energy.
  • Rishi Saha - previously head of new media at Conservative Party HQ, left his post after less than a year in Downing Street as head of digital communications. Formerly regional director for Hill & Knowlton across Australia, the Middle East, Africa, and South and Central Asia, relocating to Dubai for the role. [22]. Now Head of Public Policy UK at Facebook
  • Elaine Cruikshanks, Chair, Worldwide Public Affairs Practice/Chair and CEO Cont. Former Western Europe/CEO, Brussels, Hill & Knowlton International Belgium.[23]
  • Tim Fallon, former Lead Counsel, International Affairs and Corporate Reputation. Fallon moved into lobbying in 1994 having previously worked as a researcher for Tony Blair. In ‘97 Fallon was briefly seconded back to Blair’s private office during the general election campaign. Fallon gained prominence for his role in representing the repressive government of the Maldives. In 2006 he defended working for President Gayoom: "We are working to assist the government in a process of engagement with international institutions which we believe will ultimately be to the benefit of all the people of the Maldives." His clients in 2009 include Accenture, Toyota Europe, HSBC, The Government of the Maldives and the Dubai Executive Council.[24] Is now CEO & managing partner, capital markets and global corporate affairs at nstinctif Partners.

Clients

UK lobbying clients

March 2014-May 2014

Aon | Axa Life Invest | Carbon Disclosure Project | Dong Energy | Chartered Institute for Purchasing & Supply | Family Investments | Global Peace Index | Hymans Robertson | Renewable UK | Roche Diagnostics | Statoil | SunEdison[13]

December 2013-February 2014

Aon | Babcock International | Carbon Disclosure Project | Chartered Institute for Purchasing & Supply | Dong Energy | Family Investments | Global Peace Index | Hymans Robertson | Renewable UK | Statoil [14]

September 2013-November 2013

Aon | Babcock International | Carbon Disclosure Project | Chartered Institute for Purchasing and Supply | Doosan Power Systems | Family Investments | Global Peace Index | Hymans Robertson | Renewable UK | Statoil [15]

June 2013-August 2013

Aon | Carbon Disclosure Project | Chartered Institute for Purchasing and Supply | Co-Operative Energy | Doosan Power Systems | Family Investments | Global Peace Index | Hymans Robertson | Intercontinental Hotels Group | Renewable UK | Statoil [16]

March 2013-May 2013

Aon | Carbon Disclosure Project | Chartered Institute for Purchasing and Supply | Doosan Power Systems | Family Investments | Global Peace Index | Hymans Robertson | Intercontinental Hotels Group | Nord Stream | Novartis | Renewable UK | Statoil [17]

December 2012-February 2013

Aon | Carbon Disclosure Project | Chartered Institute for Purchasing and Supply | Doosan Power Systems | Family Investments | Global Peace Index | Hymans Robertson | Intercontinental Hotel Westminster | Intercontinental Hotels Group | Napp Pharmaceuticals | Novartis | Nord Stream | Renewable UK | Roche Diagnostics | Statoil [18]

UK lobbying clients listed in 2009

Arlingclose | Ashoka | B&Q | Better Place | Comet | Creation Trust | Doosan Babcock | Government of Singapore | Health Foundation | ICAEW | Intel | Kettle | Kingfisher | Kroll Consulting | London Chamber of Commerce & Industry | London City Airport | MGM UK | Nasscom | National Lottery Commission | Nord Stream | The Passage | Republika Srpska | Roche Diagnostics | Roche Products | Sainsburys | Servier Laboratories | Special Court of Sierra Leone | Toyota | Ultra Motor [25]

History

After an 18-year career as a reporter, editor, and financial columnist, John W. Hill founded his public relations company in 1927 in Cleveland, Ohio. His early clients were banks, steel manufacturers, and other industrial companies in the Midwest. Hill, managed the firm until 1962, and remained active in it until shortly before his death in New York City in 1977. During the Depression, Hill entered into a partnership with Donald Knowlton, previously the PR director of a client’s bank. The firm's headquarters moved to New York in 1934, to be closer to its client the American Iron and Steel Institute, while Knowlton stayed in Ohio and operated Hill and Knowlton of Cleveland.

Despite the Depression, Hill and Knowlton grew rapidly and the firm's business continued to expand through the 1940s attracting major corporate clients including leaders in the steel, aircraft manufacturing, petroleum and shipbuilding industries.

Hill and Knowlton was the first American public relations consultancy to establish itself in the newly formed European Economic Community. In 1952 Hill and Knowlton began to assemble a network of affiliates across Europe and by the middle of the decade had become the first American public relations firm to have wholly-owned offices in Europe. John Hill had realised that the growing multinationalism in many business sectors opened up a market for a multinational company. H&K was the original multinational PR company, an audacious business move closely followed by Burson-Marsteller, and it brought huge new revenues. Throughout the 1980s and early 90s the two companies played leapfrog for the world number one spot.

The second major innovation in PR practice pioneered by H&K was to offer both PR and lobbying services. By the early 1960s lobbying had developed a very seedy reputation and John Hill had a very low opinion of the practice. This was to change however, with his appointment of President Eisenhower’s former Press Secretary, Robert Keith Gray, to the Washington DC office, in 1961. During the 1950s the DC office had only three staff. Gray, a man of tremendous political experience and ambition, persuaded Hill to let him conduct lobbying operations, and soon began to pull in a great deal of new work [see below], and by the mid-70s the hugely profitable Washington office employed 30 people.[26] This was the first ever fusion of lobbying and PR services, a move that other major PR companies have since followed, and one that has arguably changed the nature of politics in the USA and the rest of the world. Joseph Goulden commented in The Washingtonian in 1974, “Nothing quite like Hill and Knowlton exists anywhere else in the city’s lawyer-government-lobbyist establishments. What H&K sells… is manipulation of the governmental process – in Congress, the regulatory agencies, the executive departments”

In July 1980, J Walter Thompson, the advertising agency, bought H&K. In 1987, the communications conglomerate WPP Group in turn, acquired JWT.

H&K’s acquisition by the WPP Group brought many changes to its existing culture. John Hill had a reputation for sticking to his (highly conservative and business friendly) principles and refusing jobs of which he did not approve. However, as part of the debt-laden WPP Group and under the leadership of new CEO Robert Dilenschneider, profitability became the paramount concern. A string of controversial accounts such as that for the National Conference of Bishops and the Church of Scientology [see below] caused considerable internal dispute within H&K leading to resignations and a tarnishing of its image. As a result of these troubles, H&K began to lose business and revenue in the early nineties, particularly in the USA. Under new management structures it has now largely recovered from these difficulties.[27]

As a member of the WPP group [www.wpp.com], Hill and Knowlton now participates within “a comprehensive and, when appropriate, integrated range of advertising and marketing services to national, multinational and global clients.” Which is to say that H&K’s expertise in lobbying and PR can now be coordinated with that of other leading PR companies such as Cohn & Wolfe or their old rivals Burson-Marsteller, and with marketing, advertising and business consultancy companies.[28]

But as the first multinational PR company and for a long time the largest in the world, Hill and Knowlton has created and refined many of the key techniques and strategies of public relations. H&K has over the years developed extremely close relations with many branches of government in the USA and around the world.

H&K fell from the world number one spot in the early nineties when it became embroiled in a series of scandals and internal conflicts. In recent years, under the leadership of CEO, Howard Paster, it has shown strong growth and has re-emerged as one of the industry leaders.

Market Share/Importance

H&K’s 2000 revenues totalled $306m, with $177m earned in the USA, giving it the third highest revenues for 2000 behind Fleishman-Hillard, and Weber-Shandwick Worldwide.[29] Whilst it maintains long-term relationships with many major corporate clients, H&K is also one of the first choices for companies or governments in need of crisis management.[30]

Affiliations

In 2008, Hill and Knowlton Nederlands is listed as an affiliate of Precom[31]


Contacts

Hill & Knowlton 20 Soho Square, London, W1
www.hillandknowlton.co.uk


Powerbase Resources

Foodspin badge.png This article is part of the Foodspin project of Spinwatch.

External resources

Tells how Hill and Knowlton, on behalf of the tobacco industry, founded the "Manufactured Doubt" industry.

References

  1. ↑ Diane Francis Business Profiles, Hill & Knowlton Paul Taaffe, August 8, 2006
  2. ↑ Andrew Rowell, Green Backlash – Global Subversion of the Environment Movement, Routledge, 1996, p122
  3. ↑ United States District Court for the District of Columbia, Civil Action No. 99-CV-02496 (GK) - United States' final proposed findings of fact (pdf), US Department of Justice website, August 15, 2005
  4. ↑ 'The plot to keep us puffing'Nick Cohen, New Statesman, 17 January 2000
  5. ↑ Andrew Rowell, Green Backlash - Global Subversion of the Environment Movement, Routledge, 1996, p121-123
  6. ↑ Andrew Rowell, Green Backlash - Global Subversion of the Environment Movement, Routledge, 1996, p121-123
  7. ↑ Hill and Knowlton - O'Dwyer's public relations news website, undated, accessed March 2006.
  8. ↑ The President's Office, Maldives,'Strategic Communications Seminar concludes', June 3, 2004
  9. ↑ 'How the public relations industry sold the Gulf War to the U.S. - The mother of all clients' - available on PRWatch website, John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, undated, accessed March 2006.
  10. ↑ 'How the public relations industry sold the Gulf War to the U.S. - The mother of all clients' - available on PRWatch website, John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, undated, accessed March 2006.
  11. ↑ 'How the public relations industry sold the Gulf War to the U.S. - The mother of all clients' - available on PRWatch website, John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, undated, accessed March 2006.
  12. ↑ BIO Selects Hill & Knowlton and Gable PR Team For 2008 BIO International Conference, Gable PR press release, 22 October 2007, accessed March 14 2009.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 PRCA register March 2014 to May 2014, accessed September 2014
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Consultancies – December 2013 to February 2014 PRCA, accessed 30 September 2014
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Consultancies September 2013 to November 2013 PRCA, accessed 30 September 2014
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 Consultancies June 2013 to August 2013 PRCA, accessed 30 September 2014
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Consultancies March 2013 to May 2013 PRCA, accessed September 2014
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Consultancies December 2012 to Februaryy 2013 PRCA, accessed September 2014
  19. ↑ John Owens, Hill+Knowlton Strategies hires nuclear expert Michael Stott, PRWeek, 28 November 2013, acc 1 December 2013
  20. ↑ H&K loses top Tory, PR Week, 25 Nov 2008
  21. ↑ Alec Mattinson, "The FA appoints Ofcom's Julian Eccles to its top comms job", PR Week UK, accessed 24.09.10
  22. ↑ David Singleton, Rishi Saha to quit Downing Street for Hill & Knowlton role, prweek, 16 June 2011, accessed 27 June 2011
  23. ↑ H& K website, accessed Feb 2009
  24. ↑ H&K website, accessed Feb 2009
  25. ↑ [APPC register], to Nov 2008
  26. ↑ Trento S, 1992, ‘The Power House: Robert Keith Gray and the Selling of Access and Influence in Washington’, pp 61-77
  27. ↑ Holmes Report, date viewed 3-5-2002
  28. ↑ H&K web site, date viewed 3-5-2002
  29. ↑ Council of PR Firms Top 50 Worldwide and US and Worldwide Ranking for 2000
  30. ↑ Information mostly from H&K’s web site ‘company history’ section except where referenced, date viewed 8-5-2002
  31. ↑ Precom, Aangesloten bureaus Accessed 25th february 2008
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