 
Cisco, the worldwide leader in networking, has hired Harvard PR as its agency of record for Europe. Harvard’s brief is to support the central European PR team at Cisco with the coordination of all PR activities across Europe; it also encompasses thought leadership, content creation, event coordination, pan-European media relations and in country agency and PR manager liaison for: UK, Ireland, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, Israel, Greece, Cyprus, Malta.
David Cook, Cisco’s Head of PR for Europe, commented: “Top priorities for us are doing less, but doing it better, simplifying our story and whilst realizing that technology is important, focusing our efforts around 'what it can do' rather than 'how it does it'. As well as the usual pan-European coordinating role, we'll work closely with Harvard to ensure we expand people's perceptions of Cisco. We will be focusing on bringing our technology to life through story telling and gaining thought leadership in several key areas, such as Cisco enabling the second phase of the Internet (or Web 2.0) and redefining how people and companies communicate and collaborate.
“Another huge priority area for us is to exploit new communications channels such as blogging and social networking more effectively. The media environment is continuing to change and we want to create a world-class integrated corporate communications function that both understands this and communicates appropriately to the different audiences.”
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Adobe Systems has hired Harvard PR as its corporate, consumer, and trade UK PR agency after a competitive tender. Harvard’s brief is to help in shaping and defining a new PR strategy for Adobe and look at different ways of engaging with the company’s target audiences. The six figure PR brief was hotly contested – with seven agencies being whittled down to three for the final presentation.
Adobe's senior PR manager Nick Peart said: '”Adobe has changed substantially as an organisation in the past four years and we now we have a different brief, a different internal team and a different approach.
“We have chosen this juncture - which falls at our standard review point - to move agencies. Harvard had pitched well, and they provided a strong senior team and outlined a sensible approach for the next phase of Adobe's communications.”
Harvard’s work will include a continued focus on Adobe’s heartland – the creative services sector. The company recently unveiled its biggest software package ever, Creative Suite 3, software that ties together its hugely popular graphic-design titles like Photoshop and Illustrator with the animation and Web design products like Flash and Dreamweaver that it acquired as part of its $3.4 billion deal for Macromedia in 2005.
Harvard will also be focusing on communicating Adobe’s enterprise messages to key vertical sectors such as government and financial services - where its applications help companies better engage with their customers. Harvard’s senior consultants will also focus on executive communications for Adobe’s senior management – getting Adobe’s enterprise messages through to C-level audiences via a variety of channels, from influencer relations, to industry networking, business press relations and speaker opportunities.
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Harvard has been appointed by Webcredible, one of the fastest growing usability and accessibility consultancies, to raise awareness of the benefits and legal obligations associated with good website design.
“It’s an area of growing importance”, says Harvard senior consultant, Charlotte Hanson, “not least with the advent of Web 2.0 which is seeing a rapid rise in new companies and communities which aren’t investing sufficient time and money in good web design.”
One particular aspect which is often overlooked is the Disability Discrimination Act which makes it illegal to exclude people from websites – this includes people with visual impairments through to basic learning difficulties such as dyslexia and physical difficulties etc.
“So far there have been no prosecutions in the UK”, says Hanson, “but there have in America and Australia. It’s surely only a matter of time before it happens over here if people don’t pay due attention to the accessibility of their websites.”
On this subject, Harvard will be championing the issue of “online social responsibility”, and taking this message out to companies at board level as well as marketing and e-commerce directors; web designers and developers will also be targeted.
Aside from accessibility, Harvard will raise awareness of the psychology of how people use websites, highlighting the areas of good navigation as well as problems associated with bad design which can hinder a websites performance. Quite simply, by making a website more usable, companies can increase traffic, sales and search engine rankings.
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Harvard PR has been handed a major thought leadership brief by security company, Websense. The agency is tasked to mount an aggressive educational PR campaign to raise awareness of the growing security threats posed to businesses by new technologies, including web 2.0 technologies and by ‘information leakage’.
“Security threats continue to be one of the top IT fears - and the rise of internet shopping and banking, instant messaging, social networking and peer-to-peer networks has made IT security even more vital to UK plc,” explains Harvard Managing Director, Chris Cartwright.
Recent research commissioned by Websense revealed that businesses throughout Europe are failing to protect themselves against today’s emerging security threats. The firm’s State of Security (SOS) survey highlighted the increasing use of potentially unsafe Web sites and applications by employees, coupled with a dangerous lack of understanding regarding the security threats these sites pose.
The study of 750 IT managers and general employees in companies in five European countries, found that most were not fully protected from the latest security threats. For instance, only 6% blocked dangerous content from USB devices and iPods; only 22% block peer-to-peer applications; only 30% block instant message attachments and only 31% block ‘phishing’ sites.
“With the Generation Y workforce increasing, there is a growing acceptance that businesses cannot prevent employees from engaging in ‘Web 2.0 activities’ at work, but they can be dangerous activities, even something as seemingly innocuous as instant messaging,” continues Cartwright, “so organisations need to adopt new measures to combat these new security threats.”
In addition to the widely-publicised threats of phishing and identity theft posed by increasing Internet usage, another major Achilles heel in a company’s security is rogue data entering a computer network or sensitive information leaking out. Consequently, information leak prevention is a growing issue in corporate governance. With the potential risk to customer data, it could become a major legal issue as well.
Harvard was awarded the brief following a competitive pitch against two other companies – and the pitch process was a move away from the traditional presentation followed by questions. “We wanted to assess agencies’ on-the-spot creativity and consulting skills so we set them a real-life PR challenge that Websense faces – and gave them 30 minutes to craft a response,” says Websense Senior PR manager, EMEA & APAC, Rebecca Zarkos. “Harvard’s grasp of our business and the strength and relevance of their ideas met our brief exactly, so we bought into them immediately.”
Harvard’s campaigns for Websense will centre on the IT trade press as the primary targets, while it will also seek to raise major issues within national and business media.
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Harvard PR has boosted its portfolio of internet security campaigns with a brief from Arbor Networks to carry out a global PR programme. Initial activity will take place in Japan, China, India and Australia.
The brief includes responsibility for the global coordination of local press tours in the new regions. Harvard will deliver the campaign by working with Arbor’s local country managers and its established network of international partner agencies. The press tours, which kick off in October, will see the launch of Arbor’s Global Infrastructure Survey, an insight into the last year’s most prevalent internet based security breaches. The international agencies have also been briefed by Harvard to develop channel partner PR programmes in conjunction with the local country managers. Current agency partners include Techworks Asia (China), Kyodo PR (Japan), Hanmer PR (India) and Sphere PR (Australia)
Harvard has been working with Arbor since 2004 and is already responsible for its European PR campaign, focussing specifically on programmes in the UK, France, Germany and Italy. Louis Paul and Partners has retained the North American brief.
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