Edelman

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Edelman is the largest independently owned PR company with 40 offices and 50 affiliates around the world.

History

Founded in 1952, the company employs approximately 1856 people worldwide and in 2002 generated revenues of $206 million.

According to O'Dwyers PR Services listings, the largest contributors to Edelman’s 2002 earnings were from its healthcare practice ($56.71 million), high technology ($44.1 million), financial and investor relations ($33.1 million) and food ($21.46 million). [1]

According to Edelman’s it is currently ranked the sixth largest of all PR companies based on 2001 turnover figures. [2]

Edelman’s tops O’Dwyers rankings as the leader in environmental PR of all companies, earning $9.5 million in 2002. (However, it is worth noting that a number of the largest PR companies do not participate O’Dwyer’s rankings.)

Edelman extols the benefits of working with NGOs

Edelman has been one of the leaders in the PR industry in advocating the benefits of corporations ‘engaging’ with non-government organisations. “We recognized before anyone that NGOs, such as Greenpeace and Amnesty International, were influencing corporate social responsibility by highlighting environmental and labor practices”, Edelman’s claims on its website. [3]

Edelman PR tells clients that activists are winning because “they play offense all the time; they take their message to the consumer; they are ingenious at building coalitions; they always have a clear agenda; they move at Internet speed; they speak in the media's tone.”

The solution, it argues, are partnerships between NGO’s and business. “Our experience to date is positive,” they say, citing examples such as “Chiquita-Rainforest Alliance” and “Home Depot-Forest Stewardship Council.” [4] (Download a copy of the February 2001 Edelman presentation 347k pdf file).

A media release issued by Edelman touting for business described their advocacy of ‘partnerships’ between business and environmental groups more bluntly. “You've got an environmental disaster on your hands. Have you consulted with Greenpeace in developing your crisis response plan? Co-opting your would-be attackers may seem counter-intuitive, but it makes sense when you consider that NGOs (non-governmental organizations) are trusted by the public nearly two-to-one to 'do what's right' compared with government bodies, media organizations and corporations." [5]

In 2001 they launched a short-lived series of “Edelman NGO Seminars” to “discuss the ramifications of the NGO phenomenon”. [6]

U.S. Government PR Contracts

According to the U.S. House Committee on Government Reform Minority Office, Edelman received the following amounts per year, for federal PR contracts: [7]

  • $50,200 in 2002
  • $35,588 in 2004

Some of Edelman's campaigns

Edelman works for the Mormon Church (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). While details of their work on the account are scarce, in 1997 Edelman did the PR for re-enactment of thousands of Mormons travelling from Illinois to Utah in covered wagons. [8]

Hustling for Microsoft

In April 1998 the Los Angeles Times revealed that Edelman had drafted a campaign plan to ensure that a dozen state attorney-generals did not join anti-trust legal actions against Microsoft. Documents obtained by the LA Times revealed that the plan included generating supportive letters to the editor, opinion pieces and articles by freelance writers.

According to the doucments a goal of the campaign was to counter “negative, reactive coverage that is driven by state attorneys general”. According to the documents the press clippings that would be generated were described as “leveragable tools for the company's state-based lobbyists" for use by state-based political consultants in their lobbying. The supportive clippings were intended to complement other materials – such as consumer surveys and economic studies – supporting Microsoft’s contributions to regional economies.

According to the documents, Edelman – which boasts on its website that it was the PR company that pioneered litigation PR – planned to time one phase of stories to “will coincide with April 21 oral arguments before U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Microsoft motion to disqualify Lawrence Lessig as special master in Microsoft antitrust case.”

The internal documents identified Rory Davenport, Edelman's director of "grass-roots and political programs" in Washington and Neal Flieger as having been involved in the preparation of the strategy and scheduled to appear at a meeting to co-ordinate the implementation of the plan. When contacted by the LA Times, Davenport stated only that “there is no agreement for a campaign like that” while Fleiger said “I'm not prepared to amplify on that at all.”

Boosting the dot.coms

In May 2001, Richard Edelman, the President & Chief Executive Officer of Edelman, said that PR companies had to accept part of the blame for the over-hyping of the tech-sector that led to its eventual melt-down. “We willingly canonized CEOs, created buzz and relied on hype”, Edelman told the Reputation.com conference in London. According to O’Dwyers PR Services, Edelman said PR companies conducted "whoopee-cushion PR."

Edelman said “We must have transparency, disclosing sources of information and revealing our presence in chat rooms. … We must also offer fact-based information, not hype or spin … We need to encourage dialog and inform all stakeholders simultaneously as information becomes available”. [9]

In an on-line response to the article, Jim Monahan, from PR IMPACT in Illinois, challenged Edelman’s speech as blame-shifting. “Richard Edelman would like to put a blanket of guilt over the entire public relations industry because his agency and others over-hyped the dot.com businesses that are failing faster than physical flatulence. Keep the blame yourself, Richard. And, for all the guilt you feel and admission you took client money and then let them down --- hey, start up a foundation with the forum topic being How PR Practitioners Should Point Guilty Fingers at Themselves First and Foremost---and Return Fees to Clients Upon Admission of Major Failure”, he wrote.

Other campaigns

In November 2001 Edelman was called on to advise the Red Cross is America after it decided to set aside $264 million of the $564 million it raised for its Liberty Fund in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks for victims of any future terrorist attacks. It was a decision that angered the families of victims and legislators. [10]

Edelman was hired in February 2002 by financial services companies to organise Americans for Sensible Estate Tax Solutions, a front group to reduce estate tax. The campaign argued that the reduction of the tax would reduce the need for the rich to resort to tax shelters and increase donations to charities. [11]

Edelman was called on to assist Wampler Foods after a US federal investigation into products from the poultry packing company were identified as likely to have caused a fatal outbreak of listeria. According to a report in O’Dwyer’s PR Services Report, the Centers for Disease Control, the US Department of Agriculture and local authorities identified that precooked turkey deli meat was the likely suspect of the outbreak which infected 46 people, killing seven, since July. The agencies said one food product and 25 environmental samples taken at a Pilgrim's Pride plant in Pennsylvania tested positive for listeria.

Wampler had claimed in a media release that "no illnesses associated with the listeria strain in the Northeastern U.S. outbreak have been linked to any Wampler products" and argued that listeria often occurs naturally in the environment. [12]

The American Council for Fitness and Nutrition (ACFN) – a coalition of food and beverage companies – in November 2002 selected Edelman and Dittus Communications to counter calls for regulatory action to deal with the obesity epidemic in the US. ACFN funders include American Frozen Food Institute, Kraft Foods, Chocolate Manufactuers Assn., Sugar Assn., Grocery Manufacturers of America, National Restaurant Assn., National Council of Chain Restaurants, and the Assn. of National Advertisers. [13]

In October 2002, Edelman signed a pledge that it would not work for tobacco companies when it won the account with the non-profit group, the National Dialogue on Cancer. However, the specialist publication, The Cancer Letter (TCL), revealed in July 2003 that Edelman had undertaken work for British American Tobacco’s Malaysian subsidiary in promoting its social reporting project. Edelman’s Vice Chairman, Leslie Dach, told TCL that the contract with BAT Malaysia had “slipped through the cracks” and had been cancelled when it was drawn to their attention. [14]

Edelman was called on by the French-owned Sodexho Alliance to defeat proposals by a Republican congressman to strip the company of its $880 million food service contract with the Marines and award it to a US owned company. [15]

As the leader in pharmaceutical PR, Edelman is a leader in managing crises for clients and development partnerships between drug companies and patient groups. “So what does PR stand for?” asked Nancy Turett, the president and global director of Edelman Health. “It stands for powerful relationships. The heart of PR is third-party credibility,” Turett wrote in Pharmaceutical Executive in September 2002. “Third-party messages are an essential means of communication for validating scientific credibility, for legitimizing products, for building brand and disease awareness, and for building defenses against crises,” Turett wrote. “As advocates develop louder voices, pharma companies must forge alliances and win allies.” [16]

In February 2004 the Chicago Sun-Times reported that Edelman's Chicago office had contributed $32,600 to Illinois Democratic Party Governor Rod Blagojevich. The story also reported that Edelman's contract with the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Development (DCED) to promote tourism had been renewed despite competition from rival PR companies Ketchum and Ruder Finn. The three-year contract was reported to be worth $6.2 million with $12.2 million having been paid to the company since 2000.

While the Chicago Sun-Times reported that Edelman was not the lowest bidder, the director of communications for the department, Laura Hunter, told PR week the contract renewal was "entirely based on their qualifications." [17]

Edelman Chicago's general manager of consumer practice and tourism practice leader within the agency told PR Week defended making political contributions as a part of a strategy to win contracts. "It's really a part of doing business ... We have made contributions throughout the history of the company really because we're a part of the community," she said. [18]

In March 2004 the US Department of Commerce hired Edelman and M&C Saatchi was hired by to manage a advertising and PR campaign to boost the numbers of visitors from Britain. According to PR Week, the campaign is aimed at overcoming America's 'brash' image and opposition to America's foreign policy. Edelman's UK joint chief executive Nigel Breakwell told PR Week that at least 10% of the $US6m would be for PR. [19]

In April 2005 the PR trade publication PR Week revealed that Andrew Merrill, the global managing director of Edelman's financial communications practice, was heading up a team campaigning on behalf of eight former Morgan Stanley executives to topple the chairman CEO Philip Purcell. According to the report Merrill and five other staff in Edelman's New York office were working on the campaign.[20]

In October 2005, Reuters reported that Edelman is to mount an aggressive campaign against Robert Greenwald's new documentary Wal-Mart: The High Cost of a Low Price. In what is reported to be a movie industry first, Edelman's representatives emailed reporters press kits containing a point-by-point rebuttal of the film's trailer, which Wal-Mart is demanding be altered or removed from the walmartmovie.com website. (The trailer is under fire because the documentary itself will not be released until November 1, 2005.) "The press kit includes snippets from negative reviews of Greenwald's earlier works - one dating as far back as 1980 - and three examples of what the retailer calls factual errors in the latest documentary." [21]

Edelman "is working with the American Petroleum Institute (API), the oil industry's primary lobbying group, on a public issues campaign aimed at convincing Americans that the industry is facing severe challenges, even as its members pull in record quarterly profits," PR Week reported in November 2005. [22] Print ads designed by Edelman's advertising unit, Blue Worldwide, "have run in major daily newspapers across the nation, as well as in Roll Call and The Hill." The print ads urge "consumers to adopt conservation measures this winter" and push for the removal of "barriers on the production of natural gas on federal lands." Blue Worldwide also launched "a new TV campaign that will run during news and public affairs programming, which started with NBC Nightly News" on November 10.

Blog Watchers

In April 2005, Edelman and the "marketing intelligence" firm Intelliseek released a directory of the most influential bloggers and a white paper detailing the importance of blogs to marketing and PR. The directory "profiles bloggers in business, consumer packaged goods, consumer technology, healthcare, and marketing and public relations," and also "gives advice on blogger behavior and jargon."

"Clients are calling us with increasing regularity, asking what's going on [with blogs] and how is this affecting the business," said Edelman executive vice-president and GM of diversified services Rick Murray. Murray also warned that companies face risks when "attempting to communicate with the blogosphere -- you will do yourself harm." [23]

Edelman's white paper on blogs [24], called "Trust MEdia?: How Real People Are Finally Being Heard," was a little less ominous. "For companies, bloggers represent an immediate source of information and feedback, but also an opportunity to engage a rapidly expanding global network of influential, credible, passionate and involved group of real people who communicate constantly," said Pam Talbot, the head of Edelman U.S. The paper also notes that Edelman was the first major PR firm to launch a corporate blog, that of CEO Richard Edelman.

Personnel

  • Richard Edelman
  • Michael Morley, is Deputy Chairman of Edelman Public Relations Worldwide and author of “How to manage your global reputation: a guide to the Dynamics of international public relations”, New York University Press, NY 2002.
  • Nancy Turett, President and Global Director, Health.
  • Kenneth Adelman, a senior counselor to Edelman, is a member of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, a government-appointed group that advises the Pentagon. [25].
  • Michael Deaver, Vice-Chairman.
  • Leslie A. Dach, Vice-Chairman (Public Affairs specialist)
  • Michael Burrell, European Chairman
  • Mike Seymour, Global Leader, Crisis and Issues Management

According to CPI, Adelman is “currently a national editor for The Washingtonian magazine. From 1981 to 1983, he served as deputy U.S. representative to the United Nations. He was director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency from 1983 to 1987 and he also headed the U.S. team on annual arms control discussions to China from 1983 through 1986”.

Clients

Edelman's clients - compiled from the online PR company directory of O’Dwyer’s PR Services as at October 2003 and other sources as referenced - include: [26]

In 2002 Edelman won a $400,000 tourism promotion contract from the Cancun Convention & Visitors Bureau. It has done travel PR campaigns for the Government of Mexico Egypt Scotland Texas Wyndham Hotels and Resorts and the Bitter End Yacht Club in the British Virgin Islands. [28]

In July 2002 Edelman also won a $1 million issues management and government affairs account with the Puerto Rico Tourism Co. According to O’Dwyer’s PR Services Report one issue likely to be included in the work is the controversy over the US Navy’s use of one of the islands for target practice. [29]

In May 2001 O’Dwyers reported that Edelman were working for the government of Jordan to promote trade and economic development. [30]

Other SourceWatch resources

Contact Information

1500 Broadway
New York NY 10036
Phone: 212 768-0550
Fax 212/704-0128
Email: ny AT edelman.com
Web: http://www.edelman.com

External Links

Websites

Brussels office [32]

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