Our team is comprised of public affairs specialists who focus on how politics affects particular industry sectors
Defence
Education and skills
Financial services
Food and agriculture
Healthcare
Legal and professional services
Property and planning
Technology, media and telecommunications
Transport and infrastructure
Voluntary sector and charities
Defence
We have 25 years’ experience of advising companies in the defence sector. Our specialist Defence Unit is the market leader in this field. Recent defence sector public affairs clients include AgustaWestland, EADS, Finmeccanica, GKN, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, MBDA Missile Systems and Textron Systems.
We have advised the winners of major recent UK Ministry of Defence procurement competitions including the Lynx Upgrade (Westland), FSTA tanker aircraft (EADS), Meteor BVRAAM missile (MBDA), Bowman communications system (CDC/General Dynamics UK) and ASTOR radar (Raytheon).
Education and skills
Our experience in education and skills ranges from working for government on forging closer links between business, schools and other education bodies, through to advising education bodies and some of our leading higher education institutions.
Other issues we have covered include the skills agenda, education and social exclusion and the globalisation of Higher Education.
We develop stakeholder communications programmes reflecting the public interest role that the education sector fulfills and keep in close contact with political and policy change across this broad waterfront.
Financial services
Our financial services team has experience of advising some of the UK's leading institutions on political and regulatory matters affecting the sector.
It forms part of Weber Shandwick's wider, cross-disciplinary team dealing with financial services communications.
Issues we have covered include treating customers fairly, credit and endebtedness, and wholesale financial markets.
Food and Agriculture
Weber Shandwick’s Food and Agriculture public affairs team work across a policy web that spans health, education, rural affairs and international development, both domestically and in the broader European and global policy frameworks. We have run major public affairs campaigns in issues including school meals, obesity, the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, market access in China, the developing world, and consumer information.
We interpret a mass of information to brief clients on new trends and opportunities, advising major companies, industry leaders, public bodies and those working in the food and agriculture sectors.
Healthcare
Our specialist healthcare public affairs team works on behalf of patient charities, professional bodies and the pharmaceutical industry to promote best practice in the sector and ensure clients stay at the cutting-edge of fast-moving policy developments.
Professional roles and NHS structures are changing, while the voluntary and independent sectors are increasingly involved in service delivery. In this changing environment, we help by developing engaging campaigns that showcase your expertise and are grounded in the public interest.
As opinion leaders in the new politics of healthcare, our team can be relied on to engage ethically with your stakeholders, and to deploy both parliamentary and media insight in delivering creative, outcomes-orientated programmes.
Infrastructure
Our Transport and Infrastructure team advises companies on policy, legislative, regulatory and political developments, which impact on their core business activities. We provide campaign support, select committee training, counsel on regulatory affairs, advice on Competition Commission inquiries, monitoring and research services.
Our team has worked with a wide range of transport and infrastructure clients including motoring organisations, train operating companies, major airlines, utilities and construction companies.
Legal and professional services
Our legal and professional services team provides expert support on the dramatic legislative and policy changes that will transform the regulation of the sector in the years ahead.
With a particular focus on the legal profession, our team also works closely with professional service firms on litigation matters and helping lawyers and legal organisations to communicate [link to legal home page].
We have advised leading law and accountancy firms, legal professional bodies and eminent barristers' chambers on the full range of communications issues.
Property and planning
Professional and effective communications are vital to the success of every company engaged in property, regeneration and development whether the audience is corporate, political or community.
Across the spectrum of both the public and private regeneration and development industry engagement and participation is critical in order to succeed in developments, build and protect corporate reputation, and influence and shape national, regional and local policy.
Weber Shandwick Public Affairs has unrivalled experience and expertise in providing communications services to the property industry across government relations, media relations and strategic issues management.
Technology, Media and Telecommunications
Our team provides a special focus on the public affairs requirements of technology, media and telecoms companies. We draw on 20 years' engagement with the technology sector, from advising the Federation Against Software Theft in 1984 on its lobbying for changes to the Copyright Act 1956, through to advising ntl:Telewest Virgin Mobile on the creation on the UK’s most significant new media company in 2007.
As well as general public affairs support, we also provide counsel on public sector procurement advice for ICT contracts.
We also assist clients in influencing the media’s converged regulatory environment, and in dealing with copyright and intellectual property policy issues for content providers.
Transport and Infrastructure
Our Transport and Infrastructure team advises companies on policy, legislative, regulatory and political developments, which impact on their core business activities. We provide campaign support, select committee training, counsel on regulatory affairs, advice on Competition Commission inquiries, monitoring and research services.
Our team has worked with a wide range of transport and infrastructure clients including motoring organisations, train operating companies, major airlines, utilities and construction companies.
Voluntary sector and charities
Our charity practice brings experience of working in the voluntary sector on behalf of leading UK and international charities. We demonstrate our commitment to the sector by discounting our standard rates.
The campaigns we devise and run win awards for our clients, but more importantly bring enhanced media profile and specific policy and funding gains.
We develop bespoke programmes in partnership with our clients, which make the most of their in-house resources. From focused government relations to campaign strategy and hands-on support, get in touch to find out what we can do for you.