Weber Shandwick disappoints
The DfES’s annual report must have made Weber Shandwick (WS) squirm. Since taking over the functions of the DfES’s Business Development Unit from EdComs in March 2005, their success in raising sponsorship can best be described as modest. The DfES’s report made things look better because it included £12.4m donated by Philip Green, GUS and Marks & Spencer for the Fashion Retail Academy. However, when we reported this in June last year the deal had already been under negotiation for several months and so it’s unlikely this can be attributable to WS.
If this is the case, then it looks as if WS has raised a grand total of just £586,200 for the DfES, somewhat less than the £2.5m it is reported they are being paid over two years. In response to criticism about WS’s involvement in sponsorship and their spruiking for the Academy Schools programme, Colin Byrne, WS’s Chief Executive has said his firm’s contract, ‘covers a wide range of education matters related to encouraging business participation with schools’.
If this is the case, it does raise the question of how the DfES evaluates the value of their contract with WS? Previously the amount of sponsorship raised was the only criteria, and so it’s unsurprising that both WS and the DfES seem somewhat reticent to discuss this topic.