Freud Communications is a

public relations Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organization (such as a business, government agency, or a nonprofit organization) to the public in order to influence their perception. P ...

firm based in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

. It was founded in 1985 by

Matthew Freud Matthew Freud (born 2 November 1963) is head of Freud Communications, an international public relations firm in the United Kingdom. Early life Freud is the son of the actress June Flewett and the writer and German-born British politician Sir Cl ...

. He is the great-grandson of the Austrian

psychoanalyst PsychoanalysisFrom Greek language, Greek: + . is a set of Theory, theories and Therapy, therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a bo ...

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...

, who himself was the uncle of

Edward Bernays Edward Louis Bernays ( , ; November 22, 1891 − March 9, 1995) was an American theorist, considered a pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, and referred to in his obituary as "the father of public relations". His best-known ca ...

, the Austrian-American pioneer of

Overview

Freud Communications was bought in 1994 by another independent UK agency, Abbott Mead Vickers (AMV), for about £10 million only for Matthew Freud, together with other partners, to buy back the company in 2001, for a similar sum, when AMV was itself purchased by the US group

Omnicom Omnicom Group Inc. is an American global media, marketing and corporate communications holding company, headquartered in New York City. Omnicom's branded networks and specialty firms provide services in four disciplines: advertising, customer re ...

.Hopkins, Nic (2005) Matthew Freud, ''The Times'', June 17, Friday p. 55 Freud Communications USA, which closed in February 2009, was based in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. In 1999 Leapman reported in ''The Times'' that Freud Communications had offered an Internet brand management service to its clients. This would "scour the Net for references to its clients" and if they were criticised, "the agency would use rebuttal tactics ''to minimise the potentially negative impact of online inaccuracy''". In 2007 ''PR Week'' ran a story documenting the use of

WikiScanner WikiScanner (also known as Wikipedia Scanner) was a publicly searchable database that linked anonymous edits on Wikipedia to the organizations where those edits apparently originated. It did this by cross-referencing the edits with data on the ow ...

to track anonymous edits and link them to organizations through their

IP address An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.. Updated by . An IP address serves two main functions: network interface ident ...

es and found that "Freud Communications' London office was caught making Wikipedia edits on behalf of clients." In June 2005, the French

Publicis Groupe Publicis Groupe is a French multinational advertising and public relations company. One of the oldest and largest marketing and communications companies in the world by revenue, it is headquartered in Paris. After 1945, the little-known Paris ...

(then the third largest communications firm in the world) acquired a 50.1% stake in Freud Communications. In 2006, Freud purchased advertising agency DFGW. In 2011, Freud Communications had a turnover of around £40 million per year. It has a staff of more than two hundred and was ranked by ''

PR Week ''PRWeek'' is a trade magazine for the public relations industry. The original UK edition was the brainchild of the late Geoffrey Lace who at the time worked for Haymarket. After failing to interest Haymarket in his idea he left to launch it on ...

'' in their ranking system as 6th in the UK.

Clients

Baby Cow Productions Baby Cow Productions Ltd is a British comedy television production company based in London and Manchester, founded by Steve Coogan and Henry Normal. Since its establishment it has diversified into radio, animation and film. According to their w ...

Formula E Formula E, officially the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship, is a single-seater motorsport championship for electric cars. The series was conceived in 2011 in Paris by FIA president Jean Todt and Spanish businessman Alejandro Agag, who is ...

Lewis Hamilton Sir Lewis Carl Davidson Hamilton (born 7 January 1985) is a British racing driver currently competing in Formula One for Mercedes. In Formula One, Hamilton has won a joint-record seven World Drivers' Championship titles (tied with Mich ...

* Mindhorn *

Mo Farah Sir Mohamed Muktar Jama Farah (born Hussein Abdi Kahin; 23 March 1983) is a British long-distance runner. His ten global championship gold medals (four Olympic and six World titles) make him the most successful male track distance runner ever ...

Working Title A working title, which may be abbreviated and styled in trade publications after a putative title as (wt), also called a production title or a tentative title, is the temporary title of a product or project used during its development, usually ...

References

External links

* {{official, http://www.freud.com/ Public relations companies of the United Kingdom Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia 1985 establishments in the United Kingdom