Freud is not the sort to just give up

Matthew Freud is probably Britain’s most famous and arguably most notorious PR, but across the Atlantic he is a relatively minor player. Freud – who is known to some only for his failed marriage to Elisabeth Murdoch, yet is also credited with creating Freuds, one of Britain’s biggest PR consultancies – tried unsuccessfully to emulate his London success in New York a decade ago. He closed Freuds US in 2009.

Last week, however, it emerged that he is trying afresh, buying Brew Media Relations, a US consultancy with offices in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. But why Brew, and why now?

For all his success he still harbours ambition for global expansion. Since he hired the very able Andrew McGuinness, former senior ad man at TBWA/London and BMB, the duo have looked at different ways to crack this tricky nut.

Brew, founded by the charismatic Brooke Hammerling, gives Freud a ready-made infrastructure in the US, into which Freuds can cautiously introduce its own brand, clients and staff. Brew has built its name serving fast-growth tech brands, some of which would very much fancy a consultancy in London such as Freuds. The timing is probably driven by the fact that PR is, once again, a serious growth industry and Freuds UK increased its profits to more than £11m last year.

Freud will be chairman of both Brew and Freuds, and McGuinness the global CEO. The official line is that Brew’s management will continue to run the US business, but one can see Matthew becoming more involved for big transatlantic clients. He is not the sort of character to give up expanding his influence into the Big Apple and beyond. He certainly doesn’t want to go down as yet another big shot in UK marketing “who failed to crack America”.