What Cohn & Wolfe's Homepage Taught Every PR Agency

Edited on Jun 27, 2026.

In late 2015, the website for Cohn & Wolfe — then one of the largest PR firms in the world, since merged into Burson Cohn & Wolfe and now part of the consolidated Burson — featured a homepage banner that played audio on load. The animation showed coffee being placed in front of the visitor with an audible clatter, accompanied by the message, "Hello. We've been expecting you…"

The banner was striking. It was also a useful negative example of a principle every communications firm and brand was already on notice about by 2015: a website that plays sound the user did not request is a website that tells the user the brand does not respect their context.

Why an agency's own site is a credibility document

The work product a PR firm ships to its own homepage is the closest thing to a portfolio piece a client will see before deciding to engage. A firm that argues for restrained, brand-appropriate design in client work and ships an attention-grabbing audio banner on its own site is signaling that it operates differently when there is no client review process in the room. That signal does damage the firm cannot undo with deck pages.

The same principle applies to client-side brand websites. The brand experience the visitor encounters in the first ten seconds is the brand. Marketing copy describing what the brand "stands for" is downstream of what the visitor actually experiences.

The specific failures in the 2015 banner

1. Audio on load. The visitor has to find the volume control before they can engage with the page. A first interaction that requires the visitor to fix something the site did is a hostile first interaction.
2. Attention without payoff. The banner produced novelty but no proof. There was no portfolio, no result, no client name, no award, no testimonial — just an invitation to click "tell me more." The novelty produced no compounding return.
3. Wrong volume of effort on wrong target. The animation and audio implementation took meaningful development time. That time would have been better spent on case studies, named results, or a measurement framework the visitor could see.

The principle

A PR firm's website is not where the firm tells the visitor what it does. It is where the firm shows the visitor how it works. The site itself is the deliverable. A firm whose own site disrespects the visitor's context, withholds the proof points the buyer is looking for, or substitutes novelty for substance has demonstrated how it will execute on a paying client. Buyers correctly discount accordingly.

What a credible agency site does

1. Names clients and shows results. Logos without case studies are wallpaper. Case studies with named clients, named goals, and measurable outcomes are the asset.
2. Names senior practitioners. The buyer is hiring the people. The people should be visible, named, accessible, and credentialed.
3. Holds a point of view. A firm with an opinion about the category produces published work that demonstrates the opinion. Buyers prefer firms with conviction over firms with positioning statements.
4. Respects context. No autoplay audio. No takeover modals. No interstitials that delay the visitor from doing what they came to do. The site that respects the visitor's time is the site that demonstrates the firm will respect the client's audience.

The takeaway

The Cohn & Wolfe 2015 banner is a small example of a large principle. The work that brands and agencies ship to their own homepages is read by the audience as a demonstration of judgment. The firm that ships restraint, proof points, and named results is read as the firm that will produce restraint, proof points, and named results for its clients. The firm that ships novelty and audio is read as the firm that will produce novelty and audio for its clients. Buyers are correct to read it that way.