National Public Relations has acquired PR firm Shift Communications in a move that greatly expands its U.S. presence.
The acquisition of the 150-employee firm, along with another U.S. acquisition last year, means 170 of National’s 550 employees are stateside.
Established in 2003, Shift has offices in Boston, San Francisco, New York and Austin, Texas and clients that include the owner-operator group of McDonald’s in New England, Citrix, Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau, and Whole Foods Market.
“As we look to grow the overall business, we’re looking more and more outside of Canada,” says Rick Murray, managing partner and chief digital strategist at National Toronto. “This is a stepping stone to what we see as continued growth and expansion to the U.S.”
National has “very strong businesses” in all Canadian markets and is continuing to grow in Toronto, “but if you look at the kind of growth we’re hoping to achieve as a business, that’s not likely to happen in Canada.”
Last July, National bought TMX Equicom. About 25% of National’s combined revenues of about $100 million now come from south of the border. As a result of the U.S. acquisitions, 25% of National’s combined revenues of about $100 million now come from south of the border.
Murray says National considers itself an independent and the acquisition of Shine makes National a top five player among independents in North America.
“We see Shift as a very powerful brand and it will be our anchor brand in the U.S.”
Shift will retain its name and leadership team and there will be no layoffs. “Shift has a great team, a great culture and a great business,” says Murray.
Negotiations took about a year and became serious after Christmas, Murray says. “We just happened to click for a number of reasons, not the least of which is we wanted them to keep their brand (and) we wanted the brand to be central to our growth proposition in the U.S. It was incredibly complementary from a skill set and expertise perspective and our cultures mesh beautifully.”
Murray says Shift excels in consumer marketing, technology and data-driven PR and National aims to import those capabilities across its network. Last year, Shift became a Google Analytics Certified Partner.
“All firms in the industry have aspired to strengthen their overall analytics capability,” Murray says. “There is no question that Shift is at the very forefront of this edge. The analytics offering was an incredibly attractive component to us and will be a huge piece of our business going forward.”
National will continue to expand in the U.S. if it can find the right matches, Murray says. But, while independents in the U.S. are attractive candidates for acquisition, the number of independents is shrinking with only about 10 to 15 firms available that are of Shift’s size or larger, he says.
National, which is now the 24th largest PR firm in the world, is part of the Res Publica Consulting Group, and is affiliated internationally with PR firm Burson Marsteller, a WPP company.
