Who we are
A brief Chelgate profile
Chelgate is an independent, UK PR consultancy, with its headquarters in London, offices in Bucharest and Brussels
The firm combines great strength in traditional public relations and media relations with an exceptional understanding of new media and digital services, internet PR, online marketing and e-commerce.
Other specialist services include product PR and business-to-business promotion, issues and crisis management, public affairs, government relations and financial communications.
The firm was founded in 1988 by Terence Fane-Saunders. Chelgate's own style is unusually discreet and low-profile, but its clients include some of the UK's best-known businesses and a broad spread of major multinationals. At the same time, the firm is equally at home working with small and medium size companies, professional bodies and associations, as well as distinguished individuals.
International PR is one of the firm's strengths. In addition to its headquarters in London, Chelgate has branch offices in Bucharest, Romania, and in Brussels, Belgium, as well as a network of carefully selected associates throughout the rest of the world, ensuring the effectiveness of its multinational programmes.
Chelgate's management team offers a wealth of professional expertise. Every Chelgate executive has a track record of proven, relevant experience and this ensures that client business is never delegated to inexperienced or unqualified personnel. Programme management and account handling structures are very flat: the approach is closer to a law partnership than a typical PR firm.
Lean overheads and tight financial management are also reflected in realistic fees to clients. While Chelgate pays well for the best executive talent, and invests readily in the resources needed to service our clients, flamboyant expenditure and runaway expense budgets are no part of the Chelgate style.
So what kind of clients does Chelgate represent?
You may notice that there's no client list on this site. There's a reason for that. There's a reason, too, why we say very little about specific activities on behalf of individual clients.
We think that when clients appoint Chelgate, they have the right to expect professional discretion. Many of our assignments involve acute issues and crises, and very often the last thing needed in a delicate situation is the high profile announcement of the appointment of public relations advisors. In fact, more than half our client relationships are subject to formal confidentiality agreements. But even when that's not the case, we think our clients should always have the right to expect professional confidentiality.
Also, when a crisis is past, and the dust settled, you won't find Chelgate claiming credit for its brilliant crisis management. If there is credit to be claimed, we think that credit must go to the client. We may have advised, and we may have implemented, but the client directs, carries the risks, makes the tough decisions. That's truly where the credit lies.
Often, too, when a crisis is past, it's in the client's interest for the event to fade from the public mind. A PR firm that keeps the memory of the disaster alive through articles, case studies, conferences, seminars and events celebrating its own crisis management skills can only be doing its client a damaging disservice.
From time to time, the news that a client has appointed Chelgate can be used to the client's benefit. Where this is the case, we make no bones about wringing the maximum publicity benefit from the announcement. For example, one small community campaign group in North Yorkshire won national media coverage from the announcement, while on another occasion the appointment of Chelgate was turned into a news story around the world for a Zimbabwean opposition group.
Many of our clients, and plenty of our assignments have no great sensitivity or confidentiality. Even here though, we tend to be low-profile. We don't believe in standing between the client and the spotlight. Time and again, Chelgate has demonstrated an ability to deliver publicity in bucket-loads! But if there's publicity to be won, we want that publicity for our clients, not for ourselves. We don't make a particular secret of these clients, and these assignments. In fact, a casual browse through this site will turn up plenty of clues. But nor do we provide a formal list, because, by its nature, in excluding many of the most difficult and challenging assignments we work on, the list would be unrepresentative and misleading.
Potential clients have the right to ask about our relevant experience, and in the confidential environment of new business discussions, we are able to talk in a little more detail.
Even so, prior sector experience is not always the best guide to the best PR firm for the job. Some of our most successful campaigns and rewarding client relationships have been with clients where we have had no previous experience of the sector. PR expertise, rather than sector experience, is what made the difference.
That said, the Chelgate team do bring to bear a rich and varied fund of expertise across a very broad range of sectors.
