Hill & Knowlton

Hill & Knowlton, founded in 1927 in the United States, was one of the firms that effectively invented modern public relations as a corporate discipline. It built a Gulf presence over decades — public affairs work, sovereign mandates, crisis briefs — and was for a long stretch the natural counterpart to BCW inside the WPP roster.

A small but meaningful detail: in 2023 WPP restructured the brand's geographies so that Continental Europe and the Nordics reported up into Dubai-based Bashar AlKadhi, who had been running METIA (Middle East, Turkey, India, Africa). It was a rare moment of European reporting lines flowing through the Gulf, and it positioned AlKadhi for the wider EMEAx remit he carries into the post-merger Burson.

Since the July 2024 merger that created Burson, H&K no longer operates as a standalone network. The brand continues inside Burson for a narrower purpose: a separately-walled team that can serve clients that conflict with Burson's main client base, plus a small group of advisory accounts where the H&K name still carries weight.

For the working PR professional, the practical implication is that "going to H&K" in 2025 means engaging Burson's conflict-shop. The team and the systems are Burson's; the wall and the brand are H&K's. The strategic and reputational dimensions of that distinction matter when the conflict pair is sitting across the same regional table.