Two of the country’s top PR firms, Pembroke Communications and Slattery Communications, are merging to create a new communications group called PSG.
The enlarged group will have a turnover in excess of €5m and a staff of 40. Mick O’Keefe, the current MD of Pembroke Communications, will become the new CEO, while Padraig Slattery, the founder of Slattery PR will become executive chairman. Graeme Slattery, meanwhile, will become deputy CEO. The other directors of the company include Alan Tyrrell, Angie Grant, Lisa McDonald and Marian Ryan.
O’Keeffe recently led a buyout of Pembroke Communications which was ultimately owned by Publicis Dublin. For its part, Slattery PR has been in business since the early 1980s.
The merger will be completed in October and in the interim, both companies will continue to operate independently.
According to O’Keeffe, the new group will revolve around four autonomous agencies covering corporate communications, consumer and lifestyle PR, digital, and sports and sponsorship services.
“After months of planning, I am delighted we are this far down the road and exciting times lie ahead. I am 100% convinced that the communications group model we are putting in place is going to be the model of the future for PR agencies in Ireland. The group structure is widely used in media buying and advertising and we envisage a number of niche specialist agencies within a group structure,” he says.
“The group structure gives us the ability to share resources and services while providing clients with more specialist offerings and added value. With greater scale, we can continue to hire the best people and provide more services and look to innovate and invest. I would be confident we will be launching more specialist services in 2015. The media landscape has been transformed hugely over the last decade and clients requirements are changing too. Agencies that do not face these challenges and put appropriate structures in place will be left behind. Agencies need to constantly innovate and evolve. However, it is still all about the people and a hard-working and results driven culture that must be at the core of what we do.”
