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Security proves to be a major draw – Infosec Europe

By Natalie Shamshoum

People could be forgiven for thinking they were in Vegas this week when they walked through the doors of Grand Hall Olympia to see show girls dressed up to the nines and others climbing up ribbons to perform acrobatics on a certain yellow stand. Yes, this year's Infosecurity Europe pulled out all the stops, and one stand even pulled out the giant jenga blocks in a bid to lure visitors to its stand.  Not that it was hard - by 9am on the first day, there were hundreds of visitors scrambling to get in to Europe's largest security exhibition, which was expecting to draw over 11,000 visitors including nearly 300 press in total over the three day event.

With six clients at the event - Crossbeam, dns, PGP, Mirapoint, Aruba and Sophos - addressing a broad range of security issues, Johnson King certainly felt the vibe.  Journalists attending the show were seen to be embracing new methods of news delivery, with one videoing his morning interviews and couriering them to his publishers so that they could be streamed online the same day, and several journalists planning to podcast their interviews.  A broad range of reporting methods promises to arise from this year’s show.  A major highlight for Johnson King will be the BBC filming at the Sophos stand tomorrow, so be sure to check out BBC News 24 on Sunday.

The main question being asked throughout the show was "What's going to happen when Microsoft launches its own security offering?"  And of course there were hundreds of different answers and opinions on this being bandied around the event.  The DTI research also generated a great deal of interest.  Highlights from the report included the conclusion that businesses are paying more attention to security risks, spending on security and writing and enforcing policies.  So it seems that the combined efforts of the security community are starting to pay off, and at the very least this year's Infosec is showing us all just how high on the agenda IT security is.

PR Week Top 150

PR Week published its annual Top 150 PR Consultancies report this week.  It’s good news for the industry over all, with the majority of PR agencies reporting growth including Johnson King. 

For the first time since the downturn, 23 agencies previously omitted from the rankings, due to Sarbanes-Oxley, are back.  A complete listing of the UK agencies certainly produces more meaningful tables - however, the methodology used to estimate fee income does seem rather generous.

For seven of the agencies in question, PR Week has used a calculation based on average sector annual income per capita multiplied by the number of people employed at these firms.  Whilst no estimation is ever going to be perfect, the figures of £105,000 for generalist practitioners and £195,000 for financial practitioners seem high when compared with the employee numbers and fee income of many of the agencies that actually submitted audited reports, and even some of those who’s fee income was estimated from figures taken from Companies House. 

Take Bell Pottinger Group, the UK’s largest PR consultancy - if the annual fee income for this firm had been calculated based entirely on the generalist practitioner figure, its earnings would have been reported as £2 million higher. This does not take into account the company’s financial division.  Similarly, Edelman’s fee income would be at least £3 million higher, The Red Consultancy’s over £2 million higher, and Consolidated Communications’ over £3.5 million higher.  Perhaps SOX companies are run far more efficiently than their competitors, but I doubt it.

Of course, the figures that PR Week use are inevitably open to criticism, but this approach certainly appears to have benefited the agencies which have not submitted audited figures at the expense of those that have.

Also interesting to note that, according to the table, less than half of the top 150 agencies (64 out of 150) are members of the PRCA, with only 5 of the top 10 listed as members. While this is an increase on last year, it makes it difficult for the PRCA to credibly claim to be the voice of public relations consultancies in the UK.

Finally, why is the UK’s largest tech PR firm, Lewis, absent from the rankings this year?