Member Article

Tangerine PR climbs 42 places in world’s top 250 agencies

Manchester-based Tangerine PR has soared up the Top 250 rankings in the World PR Report, jumping from 241st to 199th in just one year, making it England’s highest ranking agency outside London.

The report was compiled by global public relations researchers, The Holmes Report and the International Communications Consultancy Organisation.

Tangerine’s rapid rise has been credited to its impressive rate of growth at 46.1 per cent, which saw the agency ranked in the top 10 of the world’s fastest-growing PR agencies.

Tangerine was the only English PR consultancy from outside of London to feature in the global top 10 and was ranked fifth fastest-growing in the UK list.

“What these numbers show is that well-managed public relations firms can grow in almost any environment or market condition,” says Paul Holmes, editor-in-chief of The Holmes Report.

“Even in difficult market conditions, there are many firms reporting 20 per cent growth or better. Firms in mature markets are still capable of robust double-digit growth, as are mature firms with tens of millions of dollars in fee income.”

Sandy Lindsay, Tangerine’s founder and Group MD, said: “We were overwhelmed to read the report and see our name jump so far up the Top 250 list. It has been a phenomenal 12 months for us at Tangerine and it’s unbelievable to think we started out as an agency with the ambition to have no more than 15 staff!

“We never imagined that our company would develop at such a fast pace when we founded Tangerine in 2002. More than 10 years and nearly 60 people later, I’m so proud to see the agency growing and being recognised on a global scale.”

The World PR Report also outlined further global trends and attitudes, which included the amount of opportunities to use social media community management in the industry rising dramatically to 66.7 per cent in the UK.

This figure shows no signs of slowing down as public relations companies use digital more and more and in fact, the growth of technology usage in the UK industry increased by 12.4 per cent last year, as public relations professionals embrace new ways of doing their jobs.

Despite a 0.5 per cent rise in the amount of intelligent, well-educated talent judged to be working in UK public relations, 48.9 per cent of those surveyed saw staff recruitment as a challenge in today’s marketplace.

In response to its own changing attitudes towards recruitment, Tangerine launched The Juice Academy – the UK’s first employer-led social media apprenticeship – in July this year. The programme was created to increase youth employment and fill an industry-wide skills gap by training young professionals in the practical application of social media.

Sandy concluded: “The report has shown us a lot of interesting figures when it comes to attitudes and challenges in the industry, none more so than the recruitment element of our business.

“We launched The Juice Academy to create and nurture a pool of strong young talent, who use social media as part of their everyday lives and have done for a long time already. The face of public relations is ever evolving and as it leans more and more towards digital, it made perfect sense to create a way to get these social media-savvy teens onto their career path.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Simon Malia .