BondPR

• Key People

The story so far
Bond was formed in 2004 by Tom Burgess founder and former CEO of Eurocom Worldwide, one of the largest networks of independent tech specialist agencies. Tom founded three marketing/PR firms, one which grew to be the fifth largest tech specialist UK PR firm. In 2002 he was Highly Commended Entrepreneurial Director of the year. He has been managing director of TV Marketing, an independent business and marketing consultant, founder and editor of a political newspaper, radio presenter, journalist on Computing, the UK’s leading technology weekly newspaper, he started his career in an advertising agency.

Paul Shlackman joined in 2005 to head up the PR campaigns in the UK.

In 2006 BondPR started to provide international PR support to other PR firms who want to enhance their client service.

In 2007 Helen Bannigan joined full time as COO, having been involved part time from the start, she had also worked with Tom on the development of Eurocom. Helen has 15 years experience in International PR and Telecommunications having managed and coordinated numerous pan-European PR campaigns. She worked for the Commercial Services section of the US Embassy assisting American firms break into the European markets before setting up her own telecommunications company in Portugal. Helen also speaks French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and some German.

In June 2007 BondPR started work with Autodesk across five countries in Central and Eastern Europe under direction of Miroslav Fribert at BondPR Prague.

BondPR was shortlisted for Newcomer of the Year at the 2007 European Excellence Awards hosted in Berlin by Brussels based Communications Director magazine. OK, we did not win but close! We took a team of 10 from eight countries to sample the atmosphere at the event.

In December 2007 BondPR strengthened its operations in France when it acquired Whiteoaks France, now rebranded as BondPRParis. Sophie Decaudin was appointed VP France in June 2008 and the firm has doubled in size in one year.

In July 2008 Bond+ was introduced to offer a range support services producing sales, collateral such as slides, white papers, product leaflets, handouts, websites as well as emailers, newsletters and more to follow.

In August 2008 Bond PR set up its blog www.bondbuzz.eu to discuss media and marketing issues from an international perspective

In September 2008, a range of online and social media tools will be launched under the Bond-i brand to ensure BondPR clients benefit from the rapidly changing nature of media communications internationally.

In April 2009, Helen Bannigan took on the role of CEO BondPR International and Tom Burgess moved up to a group role responsible for business development and operations. At the same time BondPR acquired the remaining 34% shareholding from the original owners of the Paris office and Sophie Decaudin, VP France became a shareholder.

BondPR now has a team of over 80 people working on campaigns worldwide, a BondPR office is always open and ready to work with clients to build business.