P R E S S R E L E A S E

Eurocom Worldwide PR:
Strong increase in global network activity

Eurocom Worldwide marks a year of record growth, as new member agencies join in four markets

April 15 2008

Eurocom Worldwide, the Global PR Network, has announced another year of significant growth in PR projects across the network. In the last year, the number of joint activities among network members increased by over 50%.

Operating as an independent platform for shared market and client activities, Eurocom Worldwide is a network of highly experienced, independently owned communications firms in 64 key locations around the world. The network has been operational since April 2002. Since then, the network has recorded year-on-year growth, both in levels of activity and numbers of international projects across all continents.

Network Director Mads Christensen explained: “Increasingly, companies are looking to promote their activities to a multi-lingual and multi-cultural audience, whilst retaining overall control of both the messages and the programme. Eurocom Worldwide offers unique access to highly committed and experienced international PR resources. Clients are able to reach a global audience through a single and mostly local contact. This operational model has demonstrated its strength year after year, leading to a growth of over 50% in 2007, compared to the previous 12 months.”

Mr. Christensen added: “An increasing number of companies appreciate how member agencies co-operate with a high level of integration and integrity, delivering measurable PR results. Moreover, proven reliability and excellence help to grow the network’s global reach.”

New Member Agencies

Growth was also evident at the network’s recent annual conference, where new member agencies in a number of markets were welcomed:

• Poland: Imago PR – A well established mid-size agency with offices in Katowice and Warszaw, Imago PR conduct media and communications programmes for clients in a number of industries, including technology, real estate, retail and public utilities.
• Greece : ValueCom – a PR agency formed by experienced communications professionals, with particular strength in the technology and fashion markets.
• Finland : Comteam – From its offices in Helsinki, Comteam is an established provider of a range of communications disciplines to Finnish and international companies across a wide range of industries.
• Spain : Ariadne – an agency which was founded in Madrid in 1995 where it has established a leading position in the PR market, with clients across a wide range of industries including technology, manufacturing, entertainment and public government.

Like all existing members, the newly joined agencies have committed to adhere to the Eurocom Worldwide Service Level Standards, which ensure reliability and operational consistency across the network.

Mads Christensen commented: “Companies looking to enhance their international profile, will find that our member companies are able to deliver results second to none, anywhere in the world.”

About Eurocom Worldwide

Eurocom Worldwide is a global alliance of independent, privately owned communications agencies offering unrivalled expertise in international communications campaigns executed by local people. Eurocom Worldwide has 29 member agencies comprising over 1,400 communications specialists and consultants in 64 national capitals and centres of commerce around the globe. For more information, visit www.eurocompr.com

[TPPR subsidiary, Pendry White, is a member of Eurocom Worldwide.  For more information, contact Roger White, Managing Director of Pendry White: +44 (0) 1892 506923 or at enquiries@pendrywhite.com ]

www.pendrywhite.com

[The following news release comes from our strategic marketing subsidary Pendry White]

PENDRY WHITE SHOWS SUSTAINED GROWTH OVER THREE YEARS

· Well positioned in key markets during major market correction

· Gross Turnover up 88% to £338,000 (reported accounts)

· Pre-Tax Profit up 36% to £60,000

Pendry White, the strategic marketing company specialising in international business, reported today that reported accounts for the financial year 2006/2007 showed a three-year track record of continued growth since its foundation in 2004. In the 2006/2007 trading year gross turnover was up 88% to £338,000 on 2005/2006 and pre-tax profits were up 36% at £60,000 – the company has seen increasing profits in each of the three years of its operation.

Roger White, Managing Director of Pendry White, said: “We are well positioned to exploit those markets which will be least affected by the current market correction. In part, this is because, thanks to our own contacts in the financial community, we were able to anticipate current developments and adapt the company ahead of market changes.”

Pendry White’s strategy has emphasised both a commitment to Europe and to Asia and to the application of new social technologies. It has concentrated on clients in the professional services sector and in intermediary marketing, particularly those with international networks and on growth and innovation businesses with international aspirations. Within the last year, it has become a member of Eurocom Worldwide, the tenth largest global independent communications network.

It has also developed an important capability as the agency arm for TPPR’s gateway service to European and Gulf Arab interests requiring bespoke media relations, crisis communications and marketing. It acquired the Press Office services of TPPR, a specialist consultancy in international affairs, in September 2005. Senior Pendry White personnel have attended important client events in France, Switzerland, Italy and Singapore within the last year..

Roger White added: “We have no doubts that 2007/2008 could prove a difficult trading year for British business, given uncertainties in the market, but we have a long term view of our own future and that of our clients. It is at times like these that the mid-sized business in particular needs to feel that they have senior experienced counsel who will maintain their nerve and help them through to the inevitable recovery – which we are confident is far sooner on fundamentals than some media commentators would want us to believe.”

He concluded, “We have invested a great deal of effort in understanding what the new social networking technologies can and cannot do for clients, stripping away the hype in order to see what opportunities lie ahead. We have already been appointed to undertake a feasibility study on a major project and we anticipate further interest in this area from marketeers in the years to come.”

For Further Information on Pendry White & Its Services

Roger White, Managing Director, Pendry White – 07751 051846

www.pendrywhite.com

We close down the Blog three times a year - Christmas/New Year, very briefly at Easter and for the whole of August - so you won't hear from us again until January 7th, 2008.

These silences are because we think it is important not turn As It Happens into a machine for churning out opinions to meet expectations. Having established an ideological baseline of sorts with our first fifty or so posts, we hope to produce shorter, sharper comments next year, with more items of news as we 'walk the walk' around London's political and commercial streets.

We are closing this year with a guest column from Roger White, Managing Director of our sister company Pendry White. His critique of the corporate mismanagement of Christmas spirit is a critique of a wider failure to understand that using Christmas cards as a sales tool and for faux-relationship building is worse than useless - it can be counter-productive in energy and time.

So, until next year, best wishes from me, Jenina, Roger, Sharon, Laura, Claire and Kathryn (and, if you don't know who these people are, you should) ...

The Roger White Christmas Column - Scrooge Speaks!

It’s the time of the year when the blood of every sensible communications professional runs cold. Seasoned veterans find the Annual Report or the Chairman’s Speech needs an inordinate amount of their personal attention.

Yes, to quote the great Noddy Holder and Slade “its Christmas!!!” …and that means the trauma of the corporate Christmas card has come around once more. Let me share a few painful lessons from bitter experience.

Lesson 1: Avoid the job like the plague.

Now, I know from many years of personal anguish that being tasked with producing the company card is a challenge best avoided completely or, more realistically, rapidly delegated to the newest and/or lowliest member of the communications department.

Many careers have been built on the ashes of dismal festive embarrassment but they leave scars that last you a lifetime – I still wince at the memory of the robin hopping through the pristine snow leaving company logo footprints in its wake.

It seemed such a good idea at the time, the Chairman approved it as such - but a terrible one when he complained about the “rubbish card” less than a week after it was sent out to the largely disinterested client list.

So, Lesson 2; never trust the artistic taste of senior management and Lesson 3: whatever you do it will be your fault .

Over the years I have learned a few other painful lessons in other areas of corporate life but this Christmas has really been a classic one for naffness which has added a few more to my growing seasonal-specific list.

The first question to be asked now is: real card or e-card? Lesson 4: In the great sum of things, it makes no difference!

They all end up in the same place. If it is not personal, nobody really notices if you sent them one or not. Otherwise, nobody remembers or cares about yours because they are all too busy sending out their own unwanted and unloved attempts at politically correct, environmentally friendly, charity-supporting, humourless pieces of corporate bad taste.

OK - so I am being a bit of a 'scrooge' here but, even if all corporate cards seem to be disproportionate effort for the sales reward, we have detected a real polarisation this year between real cards and e-cards. From our conversations with clients, suppliers, friends and my wife’s mum, some new lessons have emerged with a vengeance.

Lesson 5: all e-cards get deleted instantly ... – “it could be a virus” they say when quizzed on why they do this, “better play safe”. But actually, if you are not in the recipient's inner circle (those who give you money or are real friends), your treasured e-card with its donation to the great god Oxfam, just takes up space in an already over crowded inbox. 

There is a high chance that the recipient won’t remember who you are in any case and the obligatory donation looks like meanness rather than generosity - i.e. we'll send cash to a charity this once in a year so we don't have to waste time and money sending you something personal that takes time and trouble to organise.

Lesson 6: ... but real cards do not get binned until the first week in January – of course, “we keep them as a check on who to send to next year”: I have heard this every year for more years than I care to admit but I have never yet seen anybody do it – and how anally retentive,if not disturbed, would it be if somebody really did? 

You should send a real card to someone with whom you have a relationship (as we do) in any case or not at all. If you keep to this rule, you will not have to sit there worrying about whether you should add someone to next year's list after the fact. Mixing sales and Christmas strikes us as missing the point completely.

Oh, we had one exception to Rule 6 this year. Some cheapskate sent us a postcard with a self adhesive address label on one side and completely illegible writing on the other – that one took the e-card route straight into the recycling bin.

OK, before you ask, we did send out Christmas cards but real ones to people we actually knew … the principals of the business avoided all responsibility for design and production, the younger members of the team were given the job (and, of course, it will be their fault if you get one and think it naff), all e-cards have been deleted with effortless abandon, and, yes, we have kept the real cards we received, but not so we can see who to send to next year but to see if we were ungracious or disorganised enough to leave off someone, in error, who matters to us as a friend. 

Personally, I blame our Chairman for everything anyway.

The serious point is that the Christmas message has long lost any meaning in the world of corporate communications. It is just a mess that needs cleaning up. Corporate Christmas cards should be banned in any new company law reform.

Bright young communications upstarts should be given something more meaningful and valued on which to earn their professional scars. And company Chairmen should be prevented by city regulators from having any influence over matters of style and good taste or that impact on corporate communications effectiveness.

Bah humbug, I say.

Lesson 7: Thanks to irritation with naff Christmas cards, somebody always ends up, on his last day in the office, whinging about something nobody else is remotely interested in.

www.pendrywhite.com

The Chairman, Bob Marley, would like it noted that he recognises that he has no taste, that he did delegate the task to the junior team, that they did a fine job and that those who got a card got a really classy job from the Victoria and Albert Museum ... our overseas relationships got something even more personal and very English.