The Public Affairs Awards are dedicated to celebrating the best work that the Public Affairs industry has to show. As Media Partner, PubAffairs will be highlighting the entries of finalists in the Consultancy of the Year and In-House Team of the Year categories.
The below entry was Open Road’s submission in the Consultancy of the Year category.
This time last year, Open Road was one of the leading independent public affairs agencies in London, with strong fee income, a growing team, and an enviable client list. But we weren’t content with this. In February, we teamed up with Blue Rubicon to offer some of London’s best public affairs and corporate communications consultants under one roof. Our belief in coming together with Blue Rubicon was that one plus one would equal three. So it has proved. Since announcing the deal, we have won significant organic growth from a third of our clients, who see the value in our integrated work. We know that we have made an impact on the industry: the announcement of our merger has been one of the most widely read stories in PR Week this year. Knowledge is at the heart of the new business and together we have been able to invest in the Ecosystem, a tool to share insight and ideas among our 200 people in London and four offices around the world. We have kept the same emphasis on client service, creative thinking and strategic excellence from our launch with just four people in 2007. Some of our largest clients, among them Eurostar, Prudential, and National Grid, have seen this evolution for several years; and this year along we have added some of the world’s biggest brands, including Google, Vodafone and HSBC. This allows us to hire the very best staff – this year, people have joined us from other agencies, Downing Street, the civil service and in-house teams. Excellent people stay with us because we are an award winning place to work: we promote within, which means that we need to provide first-rate training (on which we spend time equivalent to £120,000 each year), our benefits package is one of the best in the industry; staff at all levels can contribute their ideas to the running of the agency, and all staff are given a day each year to volunteer for charity. We help our clients to achieve public policy wins and protect their bottom line and reputation. This year:
This brings us financial success. We have increased our fee income every year, and we have remained consistently profitable. Our fee income has gone up 30% in the last year to £3m, and profit before tax has increased 72%. |
We helped AstraZeneca win a change in NHS policy, ending a system of fining hospitals for missing infection targets which distorted the drugs they prescribed.