I was at this (above) game at Wembley. Until today, it was the most important game in the club’s recent history. We were a couple of minutes away from another season in the third level of English football

I watched the second half of this (above) game though my fingers with increasing amazement. 3-0 down. Down to ten men against a rampant Spurs and…we won.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnWdGYRVCwM&feature=related

And as for today’s game (sorry no embed video available just yet, but link above), well, I am so used to it now that I kind of thought we might do something. Even as I recognised the awful rising despair, a part of me just thought ‘here we go again, this is not over’. And so it turned out. Notice the similarity between Aguero’s goal and that of the legendary Paul Dickov by the way.

Now of course, I am blanking out the opposite phenomena of course. The way we used to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The 4-3 loss to United a few seasons ago for example when Michael Owen beat us with a goal 6 minutes into injury time.

Or the dreadful David Pleat dancing across Maine Road on the last day of the season as his Luton Town relegate us.

I flew back for last year’s FA Cup Final, which was also bloody tense, but I had to watch this game from New Zealand. Distance does not insulate you much I have discovered. What a roller-coaster.

And finally (below), the taunt from United fans that has become a kind of badge of honour for us emotionally battered City fans. This is how it feels to be City.

Edelman Appoints Cornelia Kunze Vice Chairman, Edelman Asia Pacific
New Edelman Germany CEO to be Announced This Month

Cornelia Kunze, new Vice Chairman, Edelman, Asia Pacific

“I worked with Cornelia for seven years in EMEA, during which time she took our business in Germany from $6 million to $18 million and leaves us now with, by far, the most awarded marketing PR offer in that country,” said Brain. “Just two years ago, Cornelia and I started the acquisition of digital agency GoSub, which she and her team have now integrated into the Edelman Germany business to transform their offer into what is arguably the most sophisticated of its kind in Germany. She is a great brands thinker, a terrific corporate counsellor and one of the best managers and leaders of a PR business I have ever worked with.”

Kunze will have a particular remit to help develop the consumer and brand planning offer throughout APAC. She will also be charged with further developing Edelman’s current stable of German clients in the region which includes, BMW, Osram, BASF and TÜV SÜD. Kunze will further support Robert Holdheim, managing director of Edelman India, with the rapid development of that business in the wake of the Tata win, which has made Edelman India’s leading PR firm.

“EMEA’s loss will be Asia’s gain,” said Robert Phillips, president and CEO, Edelman EMEA. “Cornelia is without doubt one of the outstanding PR professionals of her generation. It has been a privilege to work with her for the past eight years. Her legacy is a vibrant, growing, commercially successful and award-winning business of the highest order.”

“Whilst I will miss my fabulous German colleagues and clients, I am very much looking forward to this new challenge in Asia and to being based in India, a market I experienced for a few great weeks last year,” said Kunze.

A new CEO for Edelman Germany has been appointed and will be announced later this month.

About Edelman Edelman is the world’s largest public relations firm, with 63 offices and more than 4,200 employees worldwide, as well as affiliates in more than 30 cities. Edelman was named Advertising Age’s top-ranked PR firm of the decade in 2009 and one of its “A-List Agencies” in both 2010 and 2011; Adweek’s “2011 PR Agency of the Year;” PRWeek’s “2011 Large PR Agency of the Year;” and The Holmes Report’s “2011 Global Agency of the Year” and its 2011 “North American Large Agency of the Year.” Edelman was named one of the “Best Places to Work” by Advertising Age in 2010 and 2012 and among Glassdoor’s top five “2011 Best Places to Work.” Edelman owns specialty firms Blue (advertising), A&R Edelman (technology), First&42nd (management consultancy), DJE Science (medical education/publishing and science communications), and agencies Edelman Significa (Brazil), and Pegasus (China). Visit http://www.edelman.com for more information.

That was the subject of my presentation at last week’s Shanghai Asian Marketing Effectiveness Festival. Here is the deck.

So here, again, is the Edelman take on the rankings. As usual this is collated by the senior people in our business comparing notes on what we have heard from competitors, commentators, analysts and increasingly clients. We don’t pretend it is bang on accurate and I am happy, as always, to be corrected by any agency I mention as long as they provide their own real figures. As has been proven over the years though, we think it is a pretty good approximation.

It is broadly for the period ended December 2011 and so differs a little from the numbers Arun and the Holmes Report have published which report the same period 12 months before.

1. Edelman $615 million up 14% *
2. Weber Shandwick $570 million up 9%
3. Fleishman Hillard $500 million down 2%
4. Burson-Marsteller $450 million up 7%
5. Ketchum Pleon $430 million up 15%
6. Hill & Knowlton Strategies $370 million flat
7. MSL Publicis $370 million up 5%
8. Ogilvy PR $250 million up 5%
9. FTI and Brunswick between $150-200 million
10. Golin Harris, APCO, Waggener Edstrom , Porter Noveli between $100-120 million

* 14% is fixed currency, actual dollar growth is 15.7%

It shows a pretty good performance for the top 8 with an average growth of 7.12% in what in many markets remain uncertain times. Certainly, given the fact that the bulk of these fees will have been earned in EMEA and the US, it does prove the PR agency world has learned to manage the business of its business much better and weather economic storms. That can only mean we have been able to demonstrate value to clients. I wonder how much of that was due to the success of digital however? It’s a big part of our growth as it has meant we get to trade marketing solutions directly to CMOs as well as media and opinion former relations to Communication Managers. Budgets are bigger and competitors are Ad’, Digital and Integrated agencies rather than other PR firms.

Public Affairs and strategic stakeholder management programming seems to find more and more willing ‘C suite’ buyers too, boosting revenue as well as margins.

The other big contributor of course has been Asia and the developing economies. We will grow around 22% in Asia Pacific this financial year (July 1 – June 30) and managed nearly 30% the year before. I know our competitors have also been growing well in the region (though hopefully not that well). And growth is important if you want to hang on to your best staff, because growth fuels careers for the ambitious and talented and in many ways talent is the front line battle in Asia Pacific.

For the top four PR agencies in Asia Pacific, our scale here is beginning to become a strategic asset. By that I mean that when a network of offices in a region gets to around $70 million they begin to see real economies of scale in terms of overheads and margins, but more importantly, as individual offices scale they can develop properly differentiated practices. Bigger practices mean deeper specialisation. Deeper specialisation means better client service which leads to higher fees and stronger retention and client loyalty as well as more rewarding careers for people who want to get expert in one discipline. I experienced this running Edelman’s EMEA business for seven years and it is a big reason for our rush to scale in this region. Size really does matter.

I am hopeful with a little more data to publish my Asia Pacific League table very soon. It seems the right thing to do in an industry that preaches transparency to its clients.

Take an hour and read some of the cases and watch the supporting videos and the creative work. It’s well worth it. For the PR industry in the region the news is less good. The standard of the PR only entries was noticeably lower than those from the ad and ‘integrated’agencies. Now this may well have been because this has traditionally been an ad agency award scheme and because the PR industry has it’s own schemes. Brand communications is only one part of what PR agencies do as well, and so for clients and agencies who see their main role as ‘the task formally known as PR’ this may not have been the main event.

However, brand PR is a huge opportunity for us in the region, and like it or not, this is the show where the big brand and marketing directors are watching and this is the one they want to win. So we need to get better. Some lessons, mostly old, but worth repeating if we want to up our success rate:

* Entry forms need to be well written and concise
* We need to do much more to prove results
* All the big ad agencies provide supporting videos. This is less
expensive than it used to be and we must start showcasing our work
better this way
* You have got to be ‘in to win’. There just were not that many
entries from PR agencies and in-house teams. Some of the best PR
entries were from advertising and ‘integrated’ groups. Inevitably
this meant PR was still seen in a supporting only role, but until
we enter better work in a better way, that is how the marketing
big wigs will continue to see it.
* This is not an Asian Pacific only problem. Cannes provides the
same challenge globally for the PR industry.