 | |
| Company type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Industry | Communications |
| Founded | 1 August 1991 in London, England [1] |
| Headquarters | London, United Kingdom [2] |
Number of locations | |
Key people | Simon Whale (Managing Director) |
| Services | Public relations |
| Parent | Octopus Group |
| Website | luther |
Luther Pendragon Limited [2] is a London and New York-based public relations and communications agency.
Founded in 1992 by media journalist George Pitcher and television journalist Charles Stewart-Smith, [3] and so named due to Pitcher's interest in Arthurian legends, [4] the firm grew through the 1990s off the back of major and often controversial clients such as British Gas, Kimberly Clark, Holocaust Memorial Day and the Hinduja family. The company handles all media inquiries for the London and Winchester dioceses of the Church of England. [5] [6] Luther Pendragon lays claim to having developed the professional practice of issues management, but this is disputed in the PR industry.
In 2004 ex-civil servant Mike Granatt joined the consultancy. [7] [8] His clients included the Speaker of the House of Commons Michael Martin, a position from which Granatt resigned in February 2008, saying he had been misled over a scandal involving the Speaker's expenses. [9] One of his clients in 2007 was the BBC Trust. [10]
In 2005, the firm was subject to a management buy-out, said to be worth £11 million by the trade magazine PR Week. Current clients include Reuben Brothers. [11]
Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organization to the public in order to influence their perception. Public relations and publicity differ in that PR is controlled internally, whereas publicity is not controlled and contributed by external parties. Public relations may include an organization or individual gaining exposure to their audiences using topics of public interest and news items that do not require direct payment. The exposure is mostly media-based, and this differentiates it from advertising as a form of marketing communications. Public relations aims to create or obtain coverage for clients for free, also known as earned media, rather than paying for marketing or advertising also known as paid media. But in the early 21st century, advertising is also a part of broader PR activities.
Michael John Martin, Baron Martin of Springburn, was a Scottish politician who served as Speaker of the House of Commons between 2000 and 2009. A member of the Labour Party prior to becoming speaker, he was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Glasgow Springburn from 1979 to 2005 and for Glasgow North East until 2009. He was elected as Speaker of the House of Commons in 2000, remaining in the office for nine years until his involuntary resignation in 2009.
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George Pitcher is a British journalist, author and an Anglican priest. He is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics, specialising in the future of journalism. He was most recently Editor-in-Chief of International Business Times UK, Associate Editor at Newsweek Europe and head of its editorial panel, positions he quit after his 60th birthday in 2015. He co-founded Jericho Chambers, a radical development of communications consultancy modelled on a set of legal chambers, with Robert Phillips, a former CEO at Edelman, in June 2013. Previously, he was appointed Secretary for Public Affairs to the Archbishop of Canterbury in October 2010 and left the post a year later. He was Religion Editor of Telegraph Media from May 2008 and wrote a regular column and occasional leaders for the Daily Telegraph and a contentious blog for telegraph.co.uk. He left the paper in June 2010, six weeks after editor-in-chief Will Lewis abruptly departed after a strategic disagreement. He serves on the Advisory Board of communications consultancy Cast From Clay
APCO Worldwide is an independent global public affairs and strategic communications consultancy. With 680 employees in 35 worldwide locations, it is also the fifth largest independently owned PR firm in the United States. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., APCO was founded in 1984 by Margery Kraus, who is now the firm's Executive Chairman.
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Allan Briggs is a Melbourne-based crisis communication expert. He is the Chief Executive Officer of Crisis Shield and a sessional lecturer at RMIT University.
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Vocus was a public relations software company based in Beltsville, Maryland, United States, serving clients worldwide from 1992 to 2014. In addition to its web-based PR software suites, the company owns the online publicity services, PRWeb and Help a Reporter Out (HARO). Vocus was founded in 1992 by Rick Rudman and Bob Lentz and was a publicly held company until June 2014 when it was taken private by Chicago-based private equity company GTCR. The company operates additional offices in the United States, Europe and Asia. Since late 2014, the company merged with Cision AB to form Cision Inc. as the succeeding company.