eBay holds consumer pitch after UK PR hire

by Richard Cann, PR Week UK 30-Apr-04

Internet auction giant eBay has put its consumer PR account up for grabs, threatening Joe Public Relations’s four-year hold on the business, after the appointment of Victoria Sayers as eBay’s first UK head of PR.

Sayers, who spent more than six years at Freud Communications, most recently as associate board director, said: ‘eBay has a policy that we don’t comment on internal processes’.

Sally Hetherington, consumer director at Joe Public, which has lost clients Casio and mobile phone operator 3 since its merger with August.One Communications in June 2003, refused to comment.

eBay reported that global net revenues increased by 59 per cent year-on-year to £424.2m in the quarter to 31 March.

However, one of its most pressing issues will be to stem the tide of recent media reports of fraudulent deals, including false bids by sellers hoping to push up prices, cancellation of deals by purchasers after dispatch, and fraudsters posing as reputable traders.

The review is the latest in a series of shake-ups to eBay’s communications strategy in the UK. It recently hired Delaney Lund Knox Warren as its first above-the-line advertising agency, to create a campaign set to launch later in the year.

Waterson Communications was appointed last October to promote eBay’s motoring section through trade and consumer media relations.

Sayers’s arrival comes hot on the heels of the appointment of Direct Line’s former PA chief Alison Scowen as its first UK PA manager (PRWeek, 26 March).