Fishburn Hedges

This article is part of the Lobbying Portal, a sunlight project from Spinwatch.

Fishburn Hedges London office, 77 Kingsway, London

Background

Fishburn Hedges is a corporate communications company. It offers PR and lobbying services. It is owned by Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO, the UK's largest advertising agency, which is, in turn, ultimately owned by the global communications group Omnicom.

It has worked for some of the most controversial corporations, including Shell and British American Tobacco.

In November 2013 the Fishburn Hedges Group announced it was bringing together its PR agencies, Fishburn Hedges and Seventy Seven, and design business, Further, to form a single company, Fishburn. The new firm comprises four core groups:

• "Strategy, Planning & Insights, which Fishburn describes as “the strategic planning heart of the business in a communications world increasingly driven by research, data and analytics.” A dedicated team will focus on data and research-led insight, strategic consultancy, analytics and evaluation.
• Digital: A newly assembled team will combine the existing digital expertise of all three businesses.
• Creative: A new creative community from across the businesses will bring together brand design, digital creative, PR campaign creative and content creation.
• Client advisory. The new business will provide consultancy expertise from reputation management, financial communication and public affairs, to consumer brand communications, sustainability consulting, employee engagement, brand consulting and corporate reporting".

In November 2015, after much speculation, it was announced that Fishburn Hedges and Fleishman-Hillard would merge their UK operations, including their staff and offices. They will reside at Omnicom's Bankside premises, with over 200 staff. The merged companies are expected to gross £25-£30 million annually.

Origins of the company

Fishburn Hedges was established in 1991 as a corporate communications company specialising in public relations, advising companies on how best to communicate ideas and products to their target audience. Five founders of the company - Neil Hedges and chairman Dale Fishburn, together with Andrew Boys, John Williams and Charles Downing put up £150,000 to start up the company.

'The firm opened for business the day the Gulf War started and in the depths of the recession. But it made more than pounds 1 million profit last year and has picked up top clients such as Barclays, Rothschild and Eagle Star.' In 1996 Fishburn Hedges was taken over by Abbot Mead Vickers ad company for a reported fee of between £4 and 15 million.

The founders

John Williams, an independent consultant specialising in corporate marketing and reputation, was co-founder and its former Chairman, having started his career in consumer advertising with J. Walter Thompson. At Fishburn Hedges, he is said to have developed a particular interest in corporate social responsibility and also built a practice serving the not-for-profit sector. He worked for five years with Shell on their global stakeholder engagement programme.

He is currently chairman of the governance and leadership think tank, Tomorrow's Company, a board member of Business in the Community and was, until recently, deputy Chair of ChildLine. Williams is currently a Commissioner with the Charity Commission, as one of the five non-executive Commissioners responsible for the regulation of 190,000 charities in England and Wales.

PR campaigns

The Fishburn Hedges website outlines the services it provides to clients as:

• government relations and regulatory affairs to campaigning - aka lobbying
• reactive crisis and issue management to planned corporate positioning
• corporate ethics to corporate community involvement

It has used the following techniques:

Front groups

Fishburn Hedges was the organizer of the tobacco industry front group Associates for Research into the Science of Enjoyment, or ARISE.

'Grass roots' involvement

The firm also operates a group called the Pre-school Learning Alliance. It describes itself as "a leading educational charity specialising in the early years". According to its website:

"The Pre-school Learning Alliance is the largest grass-roots movement committed to the education and well-being of children and to the value of education as the means to a better life for the community as a whole."

Fishburn Hedges says of its work with the Alliance:

"As part of our work with the Pre-school Learning Alliance, we combined a major conference on early years education and childcare, addressed by the Education Secretary, with the presentation by pre-school children of a cake to the PM at Number Ten as it was his birthday."

The VP of the Alliance is Graham McMillan — Director of Fishburn Hedges. The Alliance is partly funded by corporate partners including (in 2008) Tesco, Fisher-Price and Abbey Home Media, creators and distributors of pre-school children's programming for broadcast, audio, video, DVD and publishing channels. One assumes the corporate funders are interested in accessing markets.

Monitoring activists

Fishburn Hedges also takes a keen interest in activist campaigns if they prompt TV and radio coverage. When a customer (Steve Pardoe) alleged on his website that BT Cellnet "had been making unauthorised debits from thousands of people's bank and credit card accounts, then cynically fobbing off their victims," the campaign grew to attract mainstream media attention and so Fishburn helped out with some of that "reactive crisis and issue management" According to Steve Pardoe:

"BT Cellnet and their PR firm, Fishburn Hedges, visited this site on 16 February, the day before transmission, and later in the week. Fishburn Hedges' visit was presumably to gauge the extent and detail of media exposure of Cellnet's fraud.

The "Corporate use of codes of ethics: 2004 survey" was put together by Fishburn Hedges and it reportedly shows "that responsibility for how corporate codes of ethics operate is increasingly being taken seriously by directors and boards in Britain's biggest companies." Given the Fishburn Hedges approach, it is difficult to know if this is true or the result of a "pretence of sincerity".

Specific campaigns

Specific campaigns Fishburn Hedges has carried out include:

1. "We have helped clients to win competition cases. We worked with J Sainsbury during the “Rip off Britain” furore to ensure that it came out of the Competition Commission inquiry into the major supermarkets with a clean bill of health. For William Hill, we helped to persuade the competition authorities and the Trade & Industry Secretary to block the proposed merger of Ladbrokes with Coral."
2. "We have helped to reposition Powergen with government not only as a respected industry voice but also as leading the way on the environmental and social agenda."
3. FH’s clients have included two of the big five supermarkets: Sainsbury’s and Asda. Whereas the supermarkets have been criticized by food campaigners for being part of the obesity epidemic gripping the UK, FH has been attempting to portray its clients as part of the solution. FH says that the main focus of its activity has been to make sure that Sainsbury’s “is recognised as a leading player in the national debate about nutrition and healthy eating.” The then head of FH’s public affairs Graham McMillan adds “The food industry needs to get on the front foot, and play a prominent role in the [obesity] debate rather than sticking its head in the sand or being defensive”
4. In 2004, the partially privatized secretive government defence company Qinetiq hired FH to generate interest in its products amongst security, commercial defence, aerospace, aviation, transport, health and energy industries.
5. In July 2007, Starbucks UK awarded its PR contract to Fishburn Hedges. The coffee company was under fire - the company faced union-busting allegations in the US. In 2006, Oxfam ran a campaign against it for blocking trademark applications by coffee-growers in Ethiopia. Over 90,000 people sent a message to the company from a Myspace page. The year before, the company had been labelled “arrogant, intrusive and self-centred” by a survey of 8,000 consumers.
6. In 2005 the Electoral Commission hired FH for around £100,000 a year to “increase voter engagement”. Angela Salt of the Commission said at the time: “We need to demonstrate that politics is personal. People must be engaged; we need to show them why this matters”. A misguided statement perhaps given FH’s role in helping clients, like Starbucks, who have been the target of political activism.
7. Transport for London also paid FH a massive £100,000 a month for advice on Ken Livingstone's congestion charge. The total fee amounted to more than £2.4m over two years (2001-03).
8. "Our work for Unilever, one of the world’s largest food companies, has included communicating its approach to sustainable development to government, opinion formers, NGOs and the media. By working towards best practice, Unilever has added strength to its voice on all the major UK/EU policy issues facing food, farming and fisheries. The programme has included: working with Forum for the Future, the NGO led by Jonathon Porritt, which has advised on the development of Unilever’s Sustainable Agriculture Project." Forum for the Future is actually a paradigmatic example of a front group and not actually an independent non-government organisation. According to documents lodged with the Charities commission in 2006 its income from business "as a proportion of total income" increased to "47 per cent of overall income (compared to 42 percent of total income in 2005)". In the circular world of PR, the Forum is itself a client of FH, which in turn runs the Forum's website for it. Tetra Pak, the carton manufacturing company owned by the Rausing family, is a "retail sector partner" of the Forum. The company is also a client of Fishburn Hedges. These connections make it unclear whether the companies involved with the Forum are actually its clients, since they seems to make use of its services for what could be described as lobbying purposes. The Forum's ”business partners" are largely drawn from the UK’s FTSE 250 and include major multinationals such as Alliance Boots, Cargill, Unilever, BP, GlaxoSmithKline, ICI Scottish & Newcastle and Vodafone – all of whom are not known for their environmental sustainability.

Clients

This article is part of the Spinwatch Fracking Portal and project

This article is part of the Climate project of Spinwatch.

The company's list of clients include some of the UK's and US's biggest controversial corporations. FH handles Shell's "Global reputation management programme"; the Bank of America's "Media relations strategic counsel and public affairs internal communications"; Barclays "Personal finance media relations programme and business banking media relations programme"; BT’s public relations programme with BT Retail; Serco; and IBM.

September 2015 - November 2015

AB Sugar | Aviva | Britvic | Clear Channel | EE | Energy UK | Gatwick Airport | Jaguar Land Rover | L'Oreal | Lend Lease | LV | Mastercard | Mobile Operators Association | Shell | Singapore Airlines | Tetra Pak | Texthelp | Virgin Trains East Coast | Virgin Trains West Coast

June 2015 - August 2015

AB Sugar | Actis | Britvic | Cambridge Nanosystems | Clear Channel | EE | Energy UK | Gatwick Airport | Jaguar Land Rover | L'Oreal | Lend Lease | Mastercard | Mobile Operators Association | OPower | Shell | Singapore Airlines | Tetra Park | Texthelp | Virgin Trains East Coast | Virgin Trains West Coast

March 2015-May 2015

AB Sugar | Actis | Britvic | Cambridge Nanosystems | EE | Energy UK | Gatwick Airport | Jaguar Land Rover | L'Oreal | Lend Lease | Mace | Master Card | Mobile Operators Association | OPower | Shell | Tetra Pak | Texthelp | Virgin Trains East Coast | Virgin Trains West Coast

December 2014-February 2015

AB Sugar | Actis | Body Shop | Britvic | Cambridge Nanosystems | EE | Energy UK | Gatwick Airport | Jaguar Land Rover | L'Oreal | Mace | MasterCard | Opower | Shell | Virgin Trains

September 2014-November 2014

AB Sugar | Actis | BBA | Body Shop | Britvic | Cambridge Nanosystems | EE | Energy UK | Gatwick Airport | Jaguar Land Rover | L'Oreal | Mace | MasterCard | Opower | Shell | Tidal Lagoon Swansea Bay | Virgin Trains

June 2014-August 2014

AB Sugar | Barratt London | Body Shop | Britvic | Cambridge Nanosystems | EE | Energy UK | Gatwick Airport | Gondola Group | Jaguar Land Rover | L'Oreal | Mace | MasterCard | MTR Corporation | Network Rail Property | Opower | Tidal Lagoon Swansea Bay | Virgin Trains

March 2014-May 2014

AB Sugar | Britvic | Cambridge Nanosystems | Digital UK | EE | Energy UK | Gatwick Airport | Gondola Group | Jaguar Land Rover | L'Oreal | Mace | MTR Corporation | Network Rail | Property Opower | SMMT | Tetra Pak | Tidal Lagoon Swansea Bay | Virgin Trains

December 2013-February 2014

AB Sugar | Aimia | Britvic | Digital UK | EE | Energy UK | Gatwick Airport | Jaguar Land Rover | Mace | MTR Corporation | Novartis Vaccines & Diagnostics | Serco | Tetra Pak | Virgin Trains | Weve

September 2013-November 2013

AB Sugar | Aimia | Britvic | Digital UK | Dyncorp International (UK) | Energy UK | Financial Ombudsman Service | Gatwick Airport | Jaguar Land Rover | Mace | MTR Corporation | Novartis Vaccines & Diagnostics | Serco | Tetra Pak | Virgin Trains | Weve

June 2013-August 2013

AB Sugar | Aimia | Britvic | Celesio UK | Digital UK | Energy UK | Financial Ombudsman Service | Gatwick Airport | Jaguar Land Rover | Mace | MTR Corporation | NetJets Europe | Novartis Vaccines & Diagnostics | Serco | Tetra Pak | Virgin Trains | Weve

March 2013-May 2013

Aimia | Avanta | Britvic | Celesio UK | Digital UK | Energy UK | Financial Ombudsman Service | Gatwick Airport | Jaguar Land Rover | Mace | MTR Corporation | NetJets Europe | Novartis Vaccines & Diagnostics | Serco | Tetra Pak | Virgin Trains | Weve

December 2012-February 2013

Avanta | Britvic | Celesio UK | Digital UK | Energy UK | Financial Ombudsman Service | Gatwick Airport | Jaguar Land Rover | John Lewis Partnership | Mace | MTR Corporation | NetJets Europe | Novartis Vaccines & Diagnostics Tetra Pak | Virgin Trains | Wyld

Client list in 2008

Lobbying clients declared in 2008:
ABPI | Atos Origin | Aviva | British Dental Association | Capital One | Carbon Trust | Construction Skills | Digital UK | ERSA | EEDA | Investors in People | Job Centre Plus | JPMorgan | Laing O’Rourke | Norwich Union | Pension Protection Fund | ResCare | Sainsbury’s | Starbucks | Tetra Pak | Virgin Trains | West Midlands Passenger Transport Authority / West Midlands Metropolitan Authorities | WRAP

Client list 2007

Amway | ASDA | Association of British Pharmaceutical Industries | Bank of America | Barclays | British Library | British Marine Federation | Barrow Cadbury Trust | Carbon Trust | National Express | National Treatment Agency | Powergen | Pre-school Learning Alliance | Royal College of Nursing | Scottish Widows | Shell International | South Bank Centre | Transport for London | TetraPak | Unilever

Registrar of consultant lobbyists

Fishburn has been registered with the registrar of consultant lobbyists since April 2015. The registrar documents all clients on behalf of which the agency has met with a minister. Fishburn's listings for 2015 by quarter are as follows:

January-March 2015

EE

April-June 2015

[[EE] | | Jaguar Land Rover | OPower | Virgin Trains

July-September 2015

Britvic Soft Drinks | EE | Virgin Trains East Coast | Virgin Trains West Coast

October-December 2015

Virgin Trains East Coast | Virgin Trains West Coast

People

FH's people come from a range of backgrounds:

Typically our client teams will mix career PR practitioners with consultants who have professional experience in that client’s field. Our consultants include former bankers, advertising planners, authors, civil servants, trade unionists, stock brokers, charity fund raisers and, of course, journalists.

According to Fishburn Hedges’s own website: "all PRs should take note that purple type on their CV, a thorough knowledge of EastEnders and frequent pretence of sincerity goes a long way".

Senior team

• Ali Gee, CEO. Former executive vice president at Edelman.
• Nadia Gabbie, managing director, consumer
• Paul Farrow, managing director, financial and professional services
• Heather Jones, chief financial officer
• Leah Katz, chief client and operations officer
• Peter Meikle, head of news. Has worked on Channel 4 News, ITV News, GMTV and Daybreak
• Simon Matthews, chairman
• Jessica Morris, managing director, Fishburn New York
• Theresa O’Sullivan, operations manager
• Dominic Pendry, managing director, corporate
• Rory Scanlan, managing director, public affairs
• Jessie Wixon, vice president
• Debi Warman, head of production

Lobbyists

• Rachel Barratt, senior consultant. Joined FH in November 2010. Previously worked at DeHavilland Political Intelligence and volunteered for Andy Burnham during the Labour leadership campaign.
• Jordan Bickerton, consultant. Former intern at BP, as a summer organiser for Obama for America in Virginia, July 2012 to September 2012.
• William Blair, associate director. Former Parliamentary assistant to Damian Green MP, policy officer at General Medical Council, account manager at Weber Shadwick and account director at Bell Pottinger Communications.
• Ben Crosland, associate director. Joined Fishburn from 10 Downing Street, where he worked in the PMs press team, has also worked at the HM Treasury.
• Rachel Galvin, consultant
• Ross Gill, consultant. Former policy intern for David Lammy MP.
• Matthew Keirle, senior consultant. Previously worked for Lexington Communications and Burson Marsteller.
• Ben Lyons, senior consultant.
• Isabella Miller, trainee consultant. Has worked in the European Parliament with Struan Stevenson MEP and Timothy Kirkhope MEP, as a parliamentary intern with Sir Menzies Campbell MP and Andrew Mitchell MP and at think tanks ResPublica and Reform.
• Dominic Pendry, managing director, corporate. Former senior director at Edelman and head of communications for national infrastructure projects at Network Rail.
• Joe Rankin, consultant
• Leigh Renders, consultant
• Holly Rouse, associate director.
• Rory Scanlan, managing director public affairs. Worked on Tony Blair's press team during the 2001 and 2005 general elections.
• David Skelton, senior adviser. Former Conservative Party candidate for North Durham in the 2010 General Election, and deputy director of Policy Exchange.

Former lobbyists

• Phil Drew, associate director, head of corporate responsibility and sustainability communications and director. Formerly senior account manager at Unite and head of communications for Climate Week. Began work as a director on the Blaise Projects at the Brunswick Group in January 2015.
• Bex Bailey, researcher. Joined FH straight from from university. Whilst at university Bailey worked as a Parliamentary assistant to Graham Allen and an intern for Ed Balls. Is now a political advisor to Liz Kendall MP
• Rupert Lewis, current director of public affairs at Ketchum Pleon. Lewis is a former researcher for the Conservatives' current policy chief Oliver Letwin, he assisted the leader of the Conservative home affairs team in the House of Lords, Baroness Anelay of St John's, as well as former environment minister Sir Paul Beresford. Join FH from Bell Pottinger Public Affairs in 2006, was appointed consultant at Mandate Communications in 2010.
• Laura Montgomery. Ex-Lexington Communications lobbyist and former Conservative Party staffer Laura Montgomery joined FH in 2007.
• Jo Murray, currently head of communications at Guardian News & Media. Worked at Fishburn Hedges as associate director from April 2008 July 2010. Was formerly The Labour Party's head of press and broadcasting a role Murray had held since 2005.
• Lucy Burns, currently a partner at Pagefield. Was head of public affairs at FH between October 2000 and March 2010, also a former researcher for Estelle Morris MP.

Revolving door

• Paul Hodgson. Became special adviser to the Energy and Climate Change Minister Ed Davey until the 2015 election.

Staff

September 2015-November 2015

Kelly Baker | Rachel Barrett | William Blair | Jack Carnell | Rachel Galvin | Matthew Keirle | Ben Lyons | Isabella Miller | Dominic Pendry | Joe Rankin | Holly Rouse | Rory Scanlan | Emma Tobin

June 2015-August 2015

Kelly Baker | Rachel Barratt | Jordan Bickerton | William Blair | Jack Carnell | Ben Crosland | Niamh Fogarty | Rachel Galvin | Matthew Keirle | Ben Lyons | Isabella Miller | Dominic Pendry | Joe Rankin | Holly Rouse | Rory Scanlan

March 2015-May 2015

Kelly Baker | Rachel Barratt | Jordan Bickerton | William Blair | Jack Carnell | Ben Crosland | Rachel Galvin | Matthew Keirle | Ben Lyons | Isabella Miller | Dominic Pendry | Joe Rankin | Holly Rouse | Rory Scanlan | David Skelton | Katherine Taunton

December 2014-February 2015

Rebecca Bailey | Rachel Barrett | Jordon Bickerton | William Blair | Ben Crosland | Phil Drew | Rachel Galvin | Ross Gill | Matthew Keirle | Ben Lyons | Isabella Miller | Dominic Pendry | Joe Rankin | Leigh Renders | Holly Rouse | Rory Scanlan | David Skelton | Katherine Taunton

September 2014-November 2014

Rebecca Bailey | Rachel Barrett | Jordon Bickerton | William Blair | Ben Crosland | Phil Drew | Rachel Galvin | Ross Gill | Matthew Keirle | Ben Lyons | Isabella Miller | Dominic Pendry | Joe Rankin | Leigh Renders | Holly Rouse | Rory Scanlan | David Skelton | Katherine Taunton

June 2014-August 2014

Rebecca Bailey | Rachel Barrett | Jordon Bickerton | William Blair | Ben Crosland | Phil Drew | Jennifer Edwards | Rachel Galvin | Ross Gill | Matthew Keirle | Andrew Lewin | Ben Lyons | Joe Rankin | Leigh Renders | Holly Rouse | Rory Scanlan | David Skelton | Katherine Taunton

March 2014-May 2014

Rebecca Bailey | Rachel Barrett | Jordon Bickerton | William Blair | Phil Drew | Jennifer Edwards | Rachel Galvin | Ross Gill | Matthew Keirle | Andrew Lewin | Ben Lyons | Lewis Mooney | Joe Rankin | Leigh Renders | Holly Rouse | Rory Scanlan | David Skelton | Katherine Taunton

December 2013-February 2014

Bex Bailey | Rachel Barrett | Natalie Bateman | Jordan Bickerton | Martin Brown | Phil Drew | Jennifer Edwards | Rachel Galvin | Ross Gill | Andrew Lewin | James Lusher | Ben Lyons | Lewis Mooney | Leigh Renders | Holly Rouse | Rory Scanlan | David Skelton | Katherine Taunton | Tom Wadsworth

September 2013-November 2013

Bex Bailey | Rachel Barrett | Natalie Bateman | Jordan Bickerton | Martin Brown | Phil Drew | Jennifer Edwards | Rachel Galvin | Ross Gill | Jim Godfrey | Natasha Jones | Andrew Lewin | James Lusher | Ben Lyons | Lewis Mooney | Leigh Renders | Holly Rouse | Rory Scanlan | David Skelton | Katherine Taunton | Tom Wadsworth | John Williams

June 2013-August 2013

Lauren Arthur | Bex Bailey | Rachel Barrett | Natalie Bateman | Jordan Bickerton | Martin Brown | Phil Drew | Jennifer Edwards | Rachel Galvin | Ross Gill | Jim Godfrey | Natasha Jones | Andrew Lewin | James Lusher | Ben Lyons | Leigh Renders | Holly Rouse | Rory Scanlan | David Skelton | Tom Wadsworth | William Wallace | John Williams

March 2013-May 2013

Lauren Arthur | Rachel Barrett | Natalie Bateman | Jordan Bickerton | Martin Brown | Harry Bush | Phil Drew | Jennifer Edwards | John Fingleton | Rachel Galvin | Ross Gill | Jim Godfrey | Shirin Homawala | Natasha Jones | Andrew Lewin | James Lusher | Ben Lyons | Leigh Renders | Holly Rouse | Rory Scanlan | Tom Wadsworth | William Wallace | John Williams

December 2012-February 2013

Lauren Arthur | Rachel Barrett | Natalie Bateman | Ayesha Bharmal | Jordan Bickerton | Martin Brown | Harry Bush | Jennifer Edwards | Rachel Galvin | Ross Gill | Jim Godfrey | Paul Hodgson | Shirin Homawala | Natasha Jones | Andrew Lewin | James Lusher | Ben Lyons | Thomas Morris | Leigh Renders | Holly Rouse | Rory Scanlan | Tom Wadsworth | John Williams | Laura Wyld

Affiliations

• In 2008, Fishburn Hedges was reported to be a member of the Global Financial Communication Network, (GFC/Net), a "financial and corporate communications network linking leading independent public relations consultancies in major financial markets around the world."

• Fishburn Hedges is one of the main backers of Editorial Intelligence, with chief executive Ron Finlay an adviser to the project. Editorial Intelligence goes further than perhaps any other organisation in blurring the lines between journalism and PR.

Contacts

77 Kingsway, London WC2B 6SR

Affiliated pages

• Fishburn Hedges UK Clients and Staff 30.11.03 to 3.05.04
• Fishburn Hedges UK Staff and clients, 1 June 2005 to 30 Nov 2005

Resources

See: Fracking lobbying firms

See: Fracking Spads

• Melissa Jones and Andy Rowell, Access all areas: Westminster's (vast) fracking lobby exposed, 29 April 2015.

Notes

Back to Lobbying Portal