Golin history

His first efforts included purchasing 31/2 minutes of ads on the television broadcast of the 1965 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, which featured a McDonald’s-logo marching band and the debut of company mascot Ronald McDonald.

In 1967 Cooper & Golin opened an office in San Francisco, and two years later the firm added another in London.

In 1981 the agency’s name was changed to Golin/Harris Communications in recognition of partner Tom Harris, who had been hired as its president three years earlier from the PR division of advertising giant Foote, Cone & Belding (FCB), which he had founded and run.

As part of FCB, Golin/Harris soon began to expand, in 1986 opening an office in New York and taking over smaller FCB-owned firms in Philadelphia and London.

Dark, Stephen, “McDonald’s Aims to Be a Corporate McCitizen,” PR Week, August 26, 1993.

A year later Rich Jernstedt was named CEO, and in 1995 Shandwick merged PR firms it owned in Atlanta and San Francisco into Golin/Harris.

In the fall of 1998 Shandwick was purchased by the Interpublic Group of Companies (IPG) for $170 million.

In 2001 the company appointed former BBC public service marketing head Sue Farr to expand its European operations, and soon afterward it purchased London-based brand consultant Springpoint, with estimated revenues of $5.3 million and clients like Vodafone and Campbell’s Soup.

In 2003 Golin/Harris closed its offices in Hamburg and Dusseldorf, Germany, consolidating that country’s operations in Frankfurt.

Van der Pool, Lisa, “Golin/Harris Wins State Farm PR Project,” Adweek.com, February 5, 2004.