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January 17, 2000 Issue of PRWeek

AOL and Time Warner PR teams face future

NEW YORK: The two PR teams at the center of the America Online/Time Warner merger are waiting to see what fate awaits them, but in the meantime, ...

Buckmaster quits Edelman to take Honeywell top job

NEW YORK: Less than a year after ditching Hill & Knowlton to head up Edelman’s New York office, Tom Buckmaster has hitched up his wagons again.

Shandwick may lose Hong Kong work

WASHINGTON, DC: The government of Hong Kong is in the final stages of a PR review that could result in Shandwick, its current agency of record, being ...

PN grabs Chicago hi-tech shop EBS

CHICAGO: The Porter Novelli Convergence Group (PNCG) entered the Chicago market in a big way last week, snapping up highly regarded tech shop EBS Public Relations.

News Briefs

MINNEAPOLIS: Morgan & Myers has tapped Mary Rosenthal as president of its Minneapolis outpost. Rosenthal, who joins the agency following a stint as VP of sales and ...

House Republicans tap veteran GOP voice Wilkinson

WASHINGTON, DC: Faced with the task of defending a slim five-seat majority in Congress, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) has poached Jim Wilkinson, a top GOP ...

Activists turn up the heat on ExxonMobil

AUSTIN: A boardroom activist group that opposed investments in South Africa during apartheid has turned its attention to global warming and set its sights on the newly ...

[HH]

DALLAS: American Airlines moved to calm any future PR turbulence last week by promoting longtime marketing head Michael Gunn from SVP/marketing to EVP/marketing and planning. The promotion ...

Ketchum catches Combe color job

PITTSBURGH: Combe has tapped Ketchum/Pittsburgh’s health and lifestyle group to lead its dollars 650,000 Just for Men haircolor PR campaign.

Chicago bank targets Latino niche

CHICAGO: Harris Bank, a major midwest financial institution, has stepped up its PR efforts in the Hispanic community.

Cohn & Wolfe top bosses go to 360

ATLANTA: There is no longer a Cohn at Cohn & Wolfe.

Roher expands west to LA

LOS ANGELES: Roher Public Relations, a 32-year-old NY-based agency specializing in hi-tech and telecom, has migrated westward, opening an office in Santa Monica earlier this month.

Roche dumps Stratis KPR, three firms vie for Xenical

NEW YORK: In a move likely to have major implications within the cut-throat healthcare sector, Hoffmann-La Roche has put its Xenical business - rumored to be worth ...

Cobalt splits with Wilson McHenry, tags ConnectPR

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA: After ending its relationship with longtime agency of record Wilson McHenry in late November and temporarily moving its PR in-house, Cobalt Networks has turned ...

Edelman health puts vet at helm

NEW YORK: Edelman Public Relations Worldwide has created a chief for its North American health practice.

Heavy PR in forecast at Weather.com

ATLANTA: Weather.com, the online weather resource for consumers, has split from broadcasting parent The Weather Channel and is emphasizing PR in a multimillion dollar marketing effort.

Diesel fuel might get PR push in US

WASHINGTON, DC: Though its supporters claim that the diesel engine is ’almost the backbone of this country,’ it appears as if it will take an extensive PR ...

Bashe, GTCR kick off health venture

METUCHEN, NJ: Former CommonHealth CEO Gil Bashe and private equity firm GTCR Golder Rauner finally announced the name and details of their joint healthcare marketing venture last ...

Shandwick taps new UK top exec

LONDON: Shandwick has filled a void atop its UK hierarchy, naming Philip Dewhurst as its UK chief executive.

Warner Bros. seeks single UK agency

LONDON: Warner Brothers has put out a call for a single agency to handle PR for both its consumer product and studio store divisions in the UK.

MS&L, GCI eye Argentine firms for Lat Am presence

BUENOS AIRES: The Argentine PR market shook off its post-Y2K torpor last week, with Manning Selvage & Lee buying one local firm and GCI Group moving in ...

Merrill Lynch Asia names Ketchum

HONG KONG: Merrill Lynch Asia Pacific has chosen Ketchum over a host of suitors to serve as its agency of record in the region.

Fleishman takes High Road for tech

TORONTO: Fleishman-Hillard has bolstered its Canadian hi-tech practice by purchasing High Road Communications, a dollars 3.5 million Canadian (nearly dollars 2.5 million US) firm.

Post Cassidy deal, Shandwick goes global with public affairs

WASHINGTON, DC: Shandwick has finally unveiled the first phase of its ’1,000-day plan,’ introducing a new global public affairs group to be based in Washington, DC.

L. Karno launches new offices in NH

HILLSBORO, NH: Hoping to bring a Web component to the PR efforts of the hospitality, not-for-profit, import and tourism industries, L. Karno & Co. has opened its ...

List of DC hi-tech players is dismissed as incomplete

WASHINGTON, DC: A newly released list of 11 DC-area PR firms ’people are talking about’ has Washington insiders talking. Unfortunately for Washington Business Forward (WBF), the magazine ...

Briefs

SAN FRANCISCO: Versaggi Biocommunications has kicked off the new year with a full portfolio of new accounts worth around dollars 350,000. They include Optimize, a privately held ...

Newstream.com debuts, 6,000 journos signed on

NEW YORK: Business Wire and Medialink are finally ready to pull back the curtain on their Newstream.com Internet portal.

Spark ignites Linux’s IPO, passes PR torch to Access

PALO ALTO, CA: Just months after its headline-making Wall Street debut, VA Linux has shifted its PR business from Palo Alto boutique SparkPR to San Francisco-based Access ...

Weber shuffles its operations in SF

SAN FRANCISCO: The Weber Group is shaking up its West Coast operations by spinning its San Francisco office into a separate company and opening another area office ...

R ’n R Hall of Fame to up PR beat with new agency hires

CLEVELAND: The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is all shook up about its image.

Editorial: PR ready for age of mega-mergers

’The death of old media’ was the way The Wall Street Journal spun last week’s astonishing news that America Online had agreed to buy entertainment and media ...

The Big Pitch: How can Sean ’Puffy’ Combs repair his image in the wake of his recent arrest?

ED CAFASSO

Analysis: Client profile - PR troops hurl Cisco into tech mainstream/If hi-tech companies are today’s media darlings, Cisco Systems is the Shirley Temple of the bunch. The networking giant can seemingly do no wrong, but its success goes far beyond

Nothing better illustrates Cisco’s transformation from obscure networking technology manufacturer to household name than an incident last fall at a press conference for NetAid.

Thinkpiece: Being proactive requires more than just saying the word - you need to learn what it means first

The other day I caught myself writing the words ’be proactive.’ I hated myself for it, but wrote them anyway, and I’ve been sick about it ever ...

Inside The Beltway: Once upon a time, a sagging economy meant PR budget cuts. Welcome to the new century

Now, it used to be an article of faith in the American business community that the slightest dip or tremor in the economy - unemployment up, the ...

Analysis: Agency Mergers - FRB, BSMG: still happy couple after one year/BSMG’s dollars 33 million acquisition of The Financial Relations Board last January drew rave reviews, but are things still as rosy 12 months later? As John Frank discovers, t

Corporate mergers often follow the same path as some marriages.

Profile: Lee Duffey: outspoken leader of PR herd - In 1999 Lee Duffey rode the roller coaster of success. His agency broke the dollars 5 million barrier, but he lost a heated race for the PRSA presidency And oh yes, he turned 40. On the cusp of a new era,

Fresh off the Serengeti, Lee Duffey is sporting a jaunty beard and a relaxed expression. Always friendly but usually running at hi-octane speed, today he is remarkably ...

Weekly Web Watch: Online shopping soared in ’99, but fell short of expectations

The 1998 holiday season was the first real e-Christmas. This time a year ago, a lot of people were thinking, ’This Internet thing really is going to ...

Media: A magazine for women that lives la vida Latina - Latina magazine rides the divide between serious features and light lifestyle stories - reaching upwardly mobile Latina women. Claire Atkinson reports

Latina magazine has managed to capture all the magic of America’s Hispanic culture. From actress Jennifer Lopez to author Isabel Allende, the three-year-old monthly title champions Hispanic ...

Media: Media Watch - Billions well spent on Y2K resulted in ’non-event’

The apocalyptic doom expected to be caused by malfunctioning computers at the change of the millennium now appears laughable, and in the early days of the new ...