Methodology

How did we arrive at these top public affairs consultancies you may ask?

According to the Transparency Register there are over 200 EU public affairs consultancies and around 50 law firms with Brussels offices who interact with EU institutions. There are also around 160 self-employed public affairs consultants. Although there are many good individual consultants, our mission is to examine the best firms.

A closer inspection of the 200 agencies showed that there are less than 100 consultancies of sufficient size and experience to offer a broad public affairs service offering with offices in Brussels.

Since 2018 we have studied the principal 100 public affairs consultancies and each year reached out to the top firms measured by staff numbers, declared revenue and other metrics. At BestinBrussels we believe that EU public affairs firms need to be truly present in Brussels to be the best guides for their clients, and cannot just have a postal address and fly in for meetings. For instance, we discovered some London and Paris based firms claim a Brussels office without any permanent staff here. Although many great EU public affairs advisers are based outside Brussels, all of the top practitioners have spent significant time in the capital of Europe.  Moreover, covid showed the importance of real relationships with EU policy-makers which just cannot be formed online.  Also in the darkest days of covid lockdowns, meetings were still going on in parks and on walks between lobbyists and decision-makers, while borders into Belgium were shut. So just like real estate, lobbying showed the importance of location, location, location.

We also excluded a number of firms due to feedback from clients, former clients and staff from more than one credible source. Some firms did not respond to repeated communication via email, their website, LinkedIn messages to their principals and other means which does not bode well for client contact. In determining our Top EU Public Affairs Consultancies we looked at six key indicators which are important for clients:

Client retention

The global financial crisis and the pandemic tested client loyalty, as corporates sought out better value. Budgets and retainers were trimmed and projects became more commonplace. Despite these challenges, BestinBrussels Top Consultancies pulled out the stops to retain the clients and provide extra value-added service. Some consultancies are really stand out in this regard – for instance, Scania has been a client of Kreab’s Brussels office for more than 25 years! Client retention requires a serious commitment to long-term relationship building not just with the organisation but the people involved. This should be an area of focus for every consultancy as retaining existing clients is more cost-effective and more profitable than acquiring new customers.

Staff retention

Happier staff tend to do better work for their clients and stay with their employers for the longer term. One of the greatest frustrations for clients is an ever changing consultant team. Staff retention creates a unique problem for public affairs firms, which have to worry about employees taking clients with them if they leave. Retaining staff, especially at the junior to mid-level is a serious challenge for consultancies where opportunities to meet millennials expectations for rapid career progression may be difficult to meet. How consultancies treat their staff is key to keeping them. Interestingly, when the author asked the secret to FleishmanHillard’s success over many years, a former staffer said it was down to the fact that the former MD cared so deeply even about the happiness of the interns. So how consultancies treat their interns is a key metric. In days gone by the relationship was almost abusive where smart people with postgraduate degrees worked for clients without any salary. Nowadays every serious agency pays their interns.

Robust leadership

You know good leaders when you see them, and successful leadership teams tend to create profitable businesses built around happy staff and happy clients. They are often defined by positive traits around enthusiasm, communication skills, loyalty, decisiveness, managerial competence, integrity, empowerment and charisma. Leadership stability at successful consultancies also says something about their culture – for instance, Laura Batchelor, Managing Director at Fipra International has worked there for more than 20 years since its inception, while many examples of founder-owners exist in top consultancies such as Paolo Nicoletti at Nove and Gerard McNamara, CEO at Schuman Associates who are deeply invested in their firms.

Industry recognition

Public affairs consultancy is a very competitive business so when firms and individuals are recognized by their peers it says a great deal about them. For instance, Isabelle de Vinck of Political Intelligence being chosen by her peers to Chair the European Public Affairs Consultancies’ Association (EPACA) says something about her leadership abilities. Similarly, few would dispute industry heavyweights like FTI Consulting and Brunswick a seat at the top table on C-suite issues like M&A. Although not all are equal, awards can also say something about how agencies are regarded by their clients and peers.

Best-in-class practices

Some firms have decided to focus on one or more industry sectors, and really specialize in the policy issues affecting them. For instance, Afore is dedicated to financial services, EU strategy has focused on the digital sector while Incisive Health is deep into healthcare. Some agencies are strongly rooted in their nationalities, for instance EU Opportunity is the principal Portuguese lobbying agency and Pantarhei is the number 1 Austrian firm. EUTOP and Bernstein Group are leading German public affairs agencies in Brussels. Other larger firms have developed best-in-class practices such as Kreab, FTI, FleishmanHillard and Brunswick in financial services, or Landmark Public Policy Advisers in the food and drink sector.

‘Buzz’ backed up by substance

At any one moment there can be buzz around agencies – who is hot and who is not. Buzz can be generated by smart marketing, positive media or most importantly in Brussels something substantive like senior hires and client wins. For example, there is quite some buzz around relative newcomers, Rud Pedersen and #SustainablePublicAffairs, who have made some very high profile hires, and implemented some smart marketing to promote their brand.

We asked those agencies that scored well against our selection criteria to participate in the BestinBrussels.eu project.  In the pages hereafter are the submissions by the various participating public affairs consultancies and law firms, describing themselves in their own words according to our template.  For further information please visit their websites and entries on the EU Transparency Register at: http://ec.europa.eu/transparencyregister

Our conclusion from this research, and from our own years of experience as leadership and organisational advisors, was that the best leaders with the most outsize impact almost always deploy these six classic, fundamental practices:

1. uniting people around an exciting, aspirational vision;

2. building a strategy for achieving the vision by making choices about what to do and what not to do;
3. attracting and developing the best possible talent to implement the strategy;
4. relentlessly focusing on results in the context of the strategy;
5. creating ongoing innovation that will help reinvent the vision and strategy; and
6. “leading yourself”: knowing and growing yourself so that you can most effectively lead others and carry out these practices.”

Harvard Business Review Leader’s Handbook 2018.