Cicero & Bernay to take Knowledge City, in Al Madinah, to the world

The company has teamed with KSA-based Afkar International to win the global public relations account for Knowledge Economic City, a 25 billion Riyal high tech project to be built in the holy city of Al Madinah Al Munawwarah.
The Knowledge Economic City project is being established by the King Abdullah Foundation as a world leader in knowledge based industries and its location at Al Madinah makes it one of the most significant and important education and ICT projects in the Muslim world.

Together, Cicero & Bernay and Afkar International will take the project to the world, promoting its importance as a cultural landmark and as a centre for Islamic knowledge based industries.

The account is one of several major contracts Cicero & Bernay has landed in the lead up to its official launch. Others include the regional public relations for The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company L.L.C; Sudan's major dairy company, Blue Nile Dairy Company (CAPO); EMS (Emitac Mobile Solutions) strategic channel partner for BlackBerry and Injaz Mena Investment Bank.

At a launch function in the Sultan Business Centre the company unveiled a star studded list of clients from UAE, Saudi Arabia and Sudan that also included:
• Ali and Sons Motors division
• Al Manal Developments
• Arabian Construction Company
• Baskin Robbins
• Cayan Development and Investments
• Foodco Holding
• Interactive Saudi Arabia Ltd
• Juma Al Majid Est - Hyundai
• Kia
• Notions Catering
• Sahara Centre; and
• United Restaurant Company's Seattle's Best, Cinnabon and Zaatar W Zeit brands.

Executive Director Leonie Trubshoe said she was proud of the Cicero & Bernay team and said they had already proven their talent by the line up of clients the firm had won in the lead up to its official launch.

She said that while C&B might be a relatively new company it had been working hard behind the scenes for several months and had established international affiliations in Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, Russia, India, Australia and New Zealand.

Afkar International would provide mirror services in KSA, Lebanon and Kuwait, while C&B services the UAE, other GCC countries and the Levant from Dubai.

While Cicero & Bernay is a new company it has a solid heritage being one of three companies in the Publinet Group, which includes award winning Publinet Advertising and leading events management company, HQ.

Introducing the Cicero & Bernay team to clients, potential clients and the media, CEO of Publinet Assem Itani said the new consultancy offered real experience with more than 60 years of collective knowledge gained internationally.

"We have built a powerful team with specialists in almost every facet of public relations. I don't believe there is another consultancy in the UAE that has the depth of knowledge and real hands-on experience that the Cicero & Bernay team has," he said. "Most of the senior team have journalism backgrounds and three of the senior consultants are Arabic media relations experts."

While much of the focus of public relations in the region had been on media relations and issuing press releases, Cicero & Bernay's clients were being introduced to a wide range of services from database and website management to communication audits and crisis management.
"Public relations has changed a lot since Publinet started using PR services five years ago," Assem Itani said.

"There's a lot more to effective public relations than press releases and media clippings," Leonie Trubshoe told the gathering.

"Many of our clients have already recognised the benefits of having good internal communications programmes, for example."

"We have built up a talented team who have a great breadth of talent and expertise.

"Between them they speak 11 languages and we are about to bring in three new staff who will increase our strength in Arabic and add Swedish and Russian to the languages we can converse in."

"Our name is derived from Cicero, the ancient Roman philosopher who is considered the inventor of public relations; and Edward Bernays, the father of modern public relations. It is from these two great men that we have developed five tenets of C&B - Creativity, Credibility, Accuracy, Authenticity and Truth.

"C&B may be young but it is growing and its future is looking bright," she said.