Do Chinese PR Firms Need a World Ranking?

The global PR industry grew by 5% in 2018. According to estimates from CIPRA (China International Public Relations Association), the annual operating scale of China's public relations market reached 56 billion RMB in 2017, with an annual growth rate of approximately 12.3%. The top 250 PR agencies reported total revenue of $12.3 billion in 2018.

BlueFocus grew by 10.8%.

Blue Focus is described as a "disruptive Chinese company Blue Focus," where "disruptive" can be translated as "revolutionary" or "chaos-causing/destructive"; another adjective is "by strong performances," meaning "strong performance." The article states that per capita revenue last year was $159,000, slightly rising to $162,000 this year. Based on the exchange rate on May 4, 2019, $162,000 is approximately 1,091,005.85 RMB, meaning per capita revenue exceeds 1 million RMB. Compared to the actual income levels in the domestic industry, the per capita revenue of over 1 million RMB indicates that most employees of BlueFocus and CYTS-LINKAGE, which participated in the report, are underpaid.

Among the top 250 PR agencies, there are three Chinese companies: BlueFocus (ranked 9th), CYTS-LINKAGE (ranked 63rd), and GoodIdea Media (ranked 161st).

BlueFocus: 2018 revenue $336,372,995; 2017 revenue $321,849,607.

CYTS-LINKAGE: 2018 revenue $35,580,815; 2017 revenue $26,356,159.

GoodIdea Media: 2018 revenue $10,000,000; 2017 revenue $10,000,000.

CYTS-LINKAGE's 2018 revenue was less than 240 million RMB. What level is that? It is higher than BlueFocus Strategy's 2018 revenue (over 208 million), but lower than DMG's 2018 revenue (over 360 million) and also lower than HighTeam's 2018 revenue (over 470 million).

We do not compare BlueFocus because its strong performance stems from global acquisitions; we do not compare GoodIdea Media because there are no fewer than 200 digital PR companies in mainland China with revenue below 80 million. So this report is just for reference.