PR company Edelman in London – the workplace of South West Devon Labour Prospective Parliamentary Candidate Luke Pollard – was targetted by naked climate campaigners this week.
PRSD wanted to find out more about how Luke spends his days, what sort of clients he might be working for, and whether the campaigners had a point.
Luke’s dizzying career trajectory has taken him from working in children’s TV (as a studio manager for ITV) to Senior Account Manager at Edelman and standing for the Labour party in South West Devon at the next General Election.
Oh, and don’t forget that he’s also one of the most influential Labour people on the web – which makes sense considering Edelman was the first major PR firm to launch a corporate blog and produced a white paper on blogs called Trust MEdia?: How Real People Are Finally Being Heard.
Founded in 1952, Edelman is the largest independently owned PR company with 46 offices and 50 affiliates around the world.
According to its entry in Who’s Who in Public Affairs 2006, Edelman ‘provides clients with the insights they need to shape policy at the national and global level… We help them to form relationships with legislators, officials, special interest groups and sovereign governments to achieve their economic and political objectives…’.
Indeed, in September 2007, The Sunday Times reported that Edelman Public Affairs lobbied the Department for Work and Pensions in July 2006 on behalf of a client, Pelcombe.
At the time, Heather Rogers, wife of John Hutton, then secretary of state for DWP, was a director at Edelman. Pelcombe subsequently secured contracts with the DWP.
Edelman’s failure to register Pelcombe as a client is in breach of the Association of Professional Political Consultants’ code of conduct.
The then chairman of the APPC, Gill Morris, accepted Edelman’s apology for the ‘oversight’ and the remedial action the company agreed to take – which is lucky considering Michael Burrell, Edelman’s Europe vice-president, is a member of the APPC’s management committee.
(FYI: Burrell is described as one of the industry’s ‘big hitters’ and is opposed to the current efforts to introduce lobbying transparency in the EU, stating that the EU Commission’s plans to include financial disclosure in its register of lobbyists “would not be acceptable”.)
So, what else? Well, former employee, Heather Rogers was previously an aide to former Health Secretary, Alan Milburn, Labour MP for Darlington – so close in fact, that Milburn was even best man at Rogers’ wedding in 2004.
Where’s Milburn now? Why, he’s a paid advisor of one of Edelman’s clients Pepsico – as part of its new nutritional advisory board – for £25,000 a year.
Other Edelman UK lobbying clients in 2008 included Airtricity, BDO International, BDO Stoy Hayward, Bechtel, British Brands Group, British Virgin Islands Government, Carbon Capture and Storage Association, Consol Suncentres, Deutsche Post, World Net, E.ON Climate & Renewables, E.ON UK, Falkland Islands Government, Microsoft, Mitsubishi Corporation, Shell, South West Water, Starbucks UK & Ireland, T-Systems, Thomas Cook, and Visa Europe.
International clients have included Abbott Laboratories, Adidas, American Health Care Association, American Petroleum Institute, Apple Computer, AT&T Wireless, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Dairy Management Inc., European Society of Intensive Care Medicine, Expedia, First Pacific Co. Ltd., Fuji Photo Film, Gap Inc., General Motors, Gilead Sciences, GlaxoSmithKline, Illinois Deptartment of Commerce & Community Affairs, Johnson & Johnson, Kimberly Clark, MasterCard International, Michelin, Microsoft, Motion Picture Association of America, National Association of Broadcasters, Nissan, Orange, Philip Morris, PhRMA, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, Solvay Pharmaceuticals, Starbucks Coffee Co., and Wal-Mart Stores.
That last client is pertinent when you read about how Edelman campaigned against Robert Greenwald’s 2005 documentary Wal-Mart: The High Cost of a Low Price.
Apparently, Edelman’s representatives emailed reporters press kits containing a point-by-point rebuttal of the film’s trailer, and snippets from negative reviews of Greenwald’s earlier works – one dating as far back as 1980.
This train of thought was echoed in a media release issued by Edelman which described their advocacy of ‘partnerships’ between business and environmental groups.
It said: ‘You’ve got an environmental disaster on your hands. Have you consulted with Greenpeace in developing your crisis response plan?
‘Co-opting your would-be attackers may seem counter-intuitive, but it makes sense when you consider that NGOs (non-governmental organizations) are trusted by the public nearly two-to-one to ‘do what’s right’ compared with government bodies, media organizations and corporations.’
Of course, we’re sure this isn’t the whole picture – perhaps we’ve ignored all the good stuff Edelman gets up to.
• Join the PRSD in digging through the information or post a comment below to have your say. Are there any client names you recognise? Do you have any Edelman stories? We started with Spin Profiles let us know of any other useful sites you come across.
(image from SourceWatch, which has a run down of the reasons for the climate protests)
Come and enjoy Devon – book a hotel and get away!
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