BCW to Burson twice in six years, FGS Global's four-brand merger, and why Weber Shandwick and FTI never bothered. A decade of PR firm renames, ranked by what worked.
John W. Hill (1890-1977) founded Hill and Knowlton in Cleveland in 1927 and built the first multinational public relations firm. His two books formalized corporate PR as a management discipline. The EPR In Memoriam canonical record.
Group SJR was one of the firms that proved a communications agency could build editorial-quality content at agency speed. In 2012, the argument was contested. A structural case study in how a service category gets established.
WPP built the largest PR roster in the world over 40 years, survived the 2009 recession, and is now unwinding it: Burson up for sale, FGS Global sold to KKR, and Omnicom having taken the #1 holdco spot in November 2025.
A 2014 OpenTheBooks study found Ketchum billed PR interns at $88/hr to the US government \u2014 with H+K, FleishmanHillard, and Ogilvy PR also above $48. A decade on, federal PR contracting still operates by the same rules.
Hill+Knowlton's 'Flight School' crisis preparedness program puts companies through a fully simulated media crisis — social feeds, live callers, SMS alerts — before the real thing hits. Here's what crisis readiness actually looks like.
Everything PR has highlighted some of the biggest Public Relations Firms currently operating and offer PR services in China.
