*Article originally appeared in PRWeek on July 6, 2020
Porter Novelli has expanded its collaboration with public affairs firm Global Situation Room to launch additional offerings for clients.
Global Situation Room president Brett Bruen has been consulting with Porter Novelli for a couple of years, predominantly on crisis simulation, but this is the first time they have co-developed service offerings.
The new joint offer, which operates across different countries, includes PN 2020Foresight, a framework and model that allows companies and brands to follow critical developments in geopolitics and provides an analysis of how they can use the information.
Other offers include SituationRoomX (crisis simulation) and Countermeasures and Crisis Communications Infrastructure (emergency crisis tools). COVID-19 offerings and crisis audits have also been developed.
Bruen, a former White House director of global engagement, previously worked with Porter Novelli’s Global Reputation Practice leader Sean Smith during the Obama Administration. Smith was assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security before joining the Omnicom agency in 2011.
Smith said: “Crisis management is no longer an episodic need for organisations. It is an always-on critical business function that is inexorably linked to reputation and financial performance. The enhanced partnership with Global Situation Room, coupled with our unparalleled tools, allows us to more fully leverage our two teams and bring additional offerings to market.”
Bruen said: “We are proud to take our collaboration with Porter Novelli to the next level. They are a global leader in driving reputation that is authentically built on purpose. In an age when reputational risks have gone regular, we will be able to offer an unrivalled capacity for confronting companies’ most complex communications challenges.”