By Kevin McCauley
The advertising-oriented Cannes Lions Festival, which added PR to its awards category in 2009, has selected Hill & Knowlton as its first-ever PR firm.
Tony Burgess-Webb, chief marketing officer at H&K, calls the Cannes Lions the "epi-center for creativity in communications."
Paul Taaffe, CEO of Hill & Knowlton, this year served as chairman of the Cannes Lions jury for its PR awards. The WPP unit hosted PR seminars at the last two Festivals, plus a "tweet-up" with Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter. It also created the Cannes Eye videoblog and webcasted daily interviews with executives from Johnson & Johnson, Kraft and Procter & Gamble.
Festival CEO Phil Thomas praised H&K's past involvement with the show and is "pleased to recognize this by making them our first-ever official PR partner," he said in a statement.
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