Bell Pottinger loses eBay to Blue Rubicon

Clare O'Connor 29-May-08

eBay has dropped Bell Pottinger as its retained UK corporate agency after three years, replacing it with rival firm Blue Rubicon.

The market leading auction site has brought in Blue Rubicon for a brief combining PR and public affairs work with corporate reputation management.

'The traditional model of having a separate PR and PA agency, is for us, no longer a sensible one,' said Alasdair McGowan, head of public affairs of eBay UK.

The auction site's in-house comms team has been cem­enting its brand reputation strategy for about a year, choosing Blue Rubicon to continue this work after a competitive pitch process.

Blue Rubicon, led by MD Gordon Tempest-Hay, will work alongside eBay's McGowan and Vanessa Canzini, corporate PR and reputation manager in the UK.

Tempest-Hay called eBay 'a long-coveted account' for Blue Rubicon.

'As the flagship brand for its sector, eBay has, inevitably, faced increasing threats to its reputation,' he added.

Bell Pottinger Public Aff­airs chairman Peter Bingle said that eBay's dwindling budget meant his team was not doing proactive PR work for the website, simply monitoring the media.

'Over the past few years eBay had bec­ome one of our smallest clients due to internal budgetary constraints,' he said. 'It was the last of our monitoring-only clients. We wish eBay well.'

 

Only registered users may comment. Please login to comment.

Subscriptions

Not a subscriber? View PR Week subscription options here.

Already a paid subscriber?

If you have a paid subscription to PRWeek magazine but have not used PRWeek.com before, please click here to activate your subscription.