International PR Campaigns
Chelgate has unique experience in managing international PR campaigns and assignments. With a headquarters in London, offices in Bucharest and Brussels, and a carefully-selected network of global associates, we are able to operate in almost every major market in the world.
EU PR
Working with these contacts, we offer our clients all the benefits of a co-ordinated international PR programme, with central billing and quality control, managed by people who truly understand the special requirements of international public relations.
Our experience in international campaigns
Chelgate has delivered major, tailored campaigns to multi-national corporations, individuals and governments across the world. All of Chelgate’s global programmes are overseen by Terence Fane-Saunders, Chairman and Chief Executive of Chelgate, who has a wealth of global experience spanning East Asia, West Africa, the United States, and Eastern Europe.
We have particular experience in the field of crisis and acute issue management (CAIM) on the global stage. As experts in relationship management, we help our clients to protect their businesses from attacks against their reputations, their vital relationships, and against threats to their relationships with their own, internal staff.
For most of our clients, we operate discretely: the client, not the PR firm, should be at the centre of every story that concerns them. Yet, in some instances, we do operate openly on behalf of our clients. Our expert knowledge of East Asian PR and journalistic practices qualified us for this assignment, and our ability to deploy rapidly meant that we were able to take the assignment on at less than one week’s notice.
How we deliver
We never “shoe horn” a client into a tied affiliate or subsidiary. In each market, we select and work with the professionals best suited to a client’s particular needs. In some markets this means working with a variety of specialist associates, reflecting the different needs of our clients.
Unlike tied or wholly-owned networks, we don’t have to recommend a particular office regardless of skill or specialisation. We recognise that a client needing government relations services may not be best served by a consumer PR specialist, while a financial relations programme may require a different firm again.
Our experience of international markets means that we have a good understanding of the special needs of overseas firms wishing to do business in the UK and Europe, and today we are managing multinational communications programmes in Europe for both American and Asian companies.
Cultural differences
When protecting reputations across the globe, we use a global strategy to ensure consistency and high quality service across our international operations. But we also recognise that each market is different, and that some require a unique approach.
Cultural practices differ from country to country, region to region. Appreciating these is vital. It affects the messages we deploy, the ways in which we release those messages, and more. Key cultural differences can be predictable – a message’s meaning might be lost in translation, for instance. Or they can be impossible to predict to an outsider: take the attention given to numerology in some Indian film titles, or the sensitivity of some in China to the giving of clocks as gifts.
These differences might affect the entire approach we take to breaking a story in the global press. The changing role of Japan’s press clubs, or the editorial policies of many African news outlets, for example, are often only partly-understood by PR firms with a global profile, but only limited local knowledge.
Because of our experience in operating across Europe, we are also well-placed to assist non-European firms taking their first steps in Europe. We have a deep understanding of the complex political and economic structures in Europe, as well as of the complex social differences between major European markets.
Brussels and Bucharest
For more information about our office in Bucharest, Romania, please click here. For more information about our office and work in Brussels, please click here.
