October 20, 2011

New Global PR Agency Coalition, Citizen Relations, Launches

Leading PR agencies from four continents have joined forces to create a new global PR agency brand: Citizen Relations (www.citizenrelations.com). This new agency has a full-service offering and an existing international client base, being served both regionally and globally.

Citizen Relations formally bonds PainePR from the U.S., Optimum from Canada and Band & Brown and Brando from the U.K. and is further supported by strategic alliances in Asia Pacific, Latin America and India. After more than five years of collaboration, today's launch is a significant milestone, unifying more than 200 practitioners and hundreds of affiliated experts around the world under the power of one new global agency brand.

"Citizen Relations reflects the democratization of communication and the changing landscape of how people receive and share information. Our efforts are fueled by deep insight-led understanding of people, their cares and influences, and we're specially engineered for the new networked world," said Daryl McCullough, chairman of Citizen Relations.

The four founding agencies are all members of the EDC Communications group of companies that also includes Dare and Elvis Communications. Regionally, the Citizen Relations agencies will be known as Citizen Paine in the U.S., Citizen Brando in the U.K. and Citizen Optimum in Canada; they will be grouped under the Citizen Relations brand globally. Jeffrey Group, SPRG and Creative Crest are strategic partners of Citizen Relations in Latin America, Asia and India, respectively.

"Citizen Relations is engineered to bring our award-winning regional brands, talent and service model to a global scale," said McCullough. " We leverage the full suite of assets available to modern communications professionals, from traditional media and influencers to social media and digital offerings, along with the always-on reputation and brand management that companies are seeking."

"Citizen Relations is not another loosely-formed agency network," said McCullough. "Our lead partners share common ownership, and together we've created an innovative global collaboration model that provides focused resources, an innovative organizational model, and fresh insight-based thinking that PR clients, regionally and globally, need to meet complex communications challenges today and tomorrow."

The Citizen Relations international PR credentials are not new, as the teams are already providing a variety of global and regional strategy, creative and program execution services to international blue-chip clients and brands.