We have been voted into the biggest partnership of independent PR agencies in the world. Here is what it actually means for the people we work with.
After a long tendering and vetting process, I am pleased to say that Prohibition has been voted into the Worldcom Public Relations Group.
If you have not come across Worldcom before, it is the leading global partnership of independently owned public relations firms. There are 110 offices and around 2,000 people across 45 countries and six continents. Between them, partner agencies reported combined revenue of $350 million last year from roughly 4,500 clients. The group was set up in 1988 so that the strongest independent firms could deliver real impact for clients wherever in the world they happened to need support.
That last part is the bit that mattered to me.
Why an independent agency joins a network
I have been doing this a long time now, and I have watched a lot of very good independent agencies get bought by the big holding companies. Sometimes it works out well. Often, if we are honest, the client ends up paying network rates for a team that has been quietly reshuffled twice since the pitch.
I started Prohibition in 2012 because I wanted to stay independent, and I still do. But independence has one obvious limitation. When a client says “we are expanding into Germany next year, can you help”, you either fudge it or you go and find someone genuinely good. For years we did the latter through personal contacts, which works right up until the moment it does not.
Worldcom sorts that out without any of us selling a share of anything. Every member firm is independently owned. We keep our own team, our own way of working and our own numbers. What we gain is a tried and tested global referral network of agencies that have been through the same vetting we have.
The vetting was not a formality
I should say the process was properly rigorous, and it took months rather than weeks. I am not going to pretend that was fun. I do understand why they do it though, because a referral network is only worth something if every agency in it is any good. Having been through it, I am a lot more comfortable recommending a Worldcom partner to a client than I would be recommending an agency I found on a Google search.
What it changes for our clients
Practically speaking, not very much day to day, which I think is a good thing. Nobody’s account team changes. Nobody’s rate card changes.
What does change is what we can do when a brief outgrows the UK. If you need support in a market we do not cover, we can now introduce you to a partner agency that has been vetted to the same standard we were, rather than sending you off to take your chances. We also get access to the group’s shared best practice and innovation work, which for a thirty-person agency in Leeds is a fairly useful thing to have. It is the sort of benchmarking that usually only sits inside the big networks.
It is particularly relevant for our B2B and corporate clients, who are the ones most likely to be expanding across EMEA, and for the corporate communications work we do where a story needs to land in more than one country at once.
What Will and Worldcom had to say
My business partner Will Ockenden led the application, and he summed it up better than I would have:
“We are constantly looking to grow and evolve as an agency, and Worldcom presented an exciting opportunity to connect with some of the best independent agencies in the world, and in doing so, share innovation and learn best practices outside of our immediate market.
“The partnership also gives us the opportunity to better service our existing client base by having a tried and tested global referral network to support their expansion ambitions. We are delighted Worldcom recognised our excellence as an agency and are very much looking forward to becoming a member and driving the next phase of our growth.”
Worldcom’s recruitment chair, Bjorn Mogensen, said this about us, which I will admit I enjoyed reading:
“We are excited to add Prohibition to the Worldcom Partnership, expanding our reach and capabilities across the UK while deepening our experience in EMEA and globally. Prohibition brings a progressive mindset to its craft and our partnership, ensuring they not only deliver best in class public relations solutions to their clients, but maintain a forward looking mindset and adoption of technologies that are further deepening impact on client successes.”
Where this sits in the bigger plan
We are a Leeds agency of about thirty people, working across food and drink, higher education, property, lifestyle and B2B. Joining Worldcom does not make us a global agency and I would not claim otherwise. What it does is give us somewhere credible to point clients when their ambitions get bigger than our postcode, and it gives our team a set of peers outside the UK to steal ideas from. Both of those are worth having.
If you are weighing up whether your comms can keep pace with where the business is going next, that is exactly the sort of conversation we enjoy. Do get in touch.
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