Public relations can help you do a lot of things. Develop a corporate identity and image, create goodwill amongst customers, suppliers or the local community, obtain favourable press coverage and most of all change the way people think about you.

United Partners PR agency was established in the beginning of 1997 and a few months later it became an affiliate and part of the global family of the U.S. giant Manning Selvage & Lee. The agency has high profile clients in Bulgaria including Procter & Gamble, Shell, IBM, Philips, United Distillers and Vintners, and Master Foods.

"Working with so many and so different clients is a major challenge," admitted Gergana Vassileva, account director and managing partner of the agency. "Sometimes it is too hard for us to work simultaneously on an international conference, educational seminar for journalists and on presenting a new product. But our enthusiasm and our perfect team are a guarantee for our excellent results."

United Partners is now the Bulgarian affiliate of Manning Selvage & Lee, part of the newly formed conglomerate Bcom3. MS&L was established back in 1938 and has offices in 89 countries throughout the world.

"What Manning Selvage & Lee gives us are the information and know-how in order to be successful on the market," said Vassileva. And indeed what most foreign companies give to their Bulgarian partners is the experience of doing business - an important element in an emerging economy like Bulgaria's.

Public relations are something new to Bulgaria. This business has been present in the country for only the last five to six years. At the end of June, United Partners organized PR Forum 2001, and 120 specialists took part in it. The forum was attended by the president of the International Public Relations Association (IPRA) Alasdair Sutherland.

Among the many projects that were recently executed by United Partners was the educational "Oral Hygiene" program of Procter & Gamble Bulgaria. The program includes educating 55,000 first grade pupils each year countrywide. Other participants in the project are the ministries of education and health, as well as the dentists union.

The Blend-a-Med School Program aims to educate children in good oral hygiene and covers more than 50,000 first-graders each year. In the beginning of 2001, Procter and Gamble introduced its new Blend-a-Med toothpaste. In addition, Pantene Pro-V Colour was launched in October 1999, with a spectacular press conference and a hairdressers' seminar afterwards.

United Partners also publicized the cleaning of Sofia's central railway station, by P&G, with their new product Mr. Proper.

"Our clients are our image" is the motto of United Partners. And indeed, having such clients is the best way to have the image of one of the leading PR agencies in Bulgaria. The rest is business, and connections with the media. But it's not the only thing a PR agency should do, admitted Vassileva. Organizing events, like presenting new products, or launching a new marketing campaign, is not an easy task. There's a lot more to it than being on TV or in the newspapers, she said.

But the latter is important too. That's why the staff of United Partners put on one of the walls of their office the famous thought of Oscar Wilde: "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that's not being talked about."