Tony Meehan Associates
Tony Meehan Associates was a Glasgow based PR firm which later changed its name to TMA Communications.
Recruiting from down south
According to PR Week, Burson-Marsteller Financial director Charles Laidlaw returned to Scotland when appointed at Tony Meehan Associates (TMA) in April 1990.
- One of his first duties will be to start a Scottish investor relations agency with TMA chief Tony Meehan, an old friend. Laidlaw left B-M after 18 months to take up a board position at Edinburgh and Glasgow-based TMA. The corporate and financial expert will be 'an important shareholder' and oversee the firm's Glasgow office. Chairman Meehan and Laidlaw have known each other 'more years than they care to remember' and a job was always in the offing if Laidlaw decided to move back north. 'He is a wonderful coup,' says Meehan. 'It's good to have someone with major UK and overseas agency experience.' That experience will be useful for the investor relations agency. 'There is definitely a market for it in Scotland,' says Meehan. 'And there is much talented staff Charles could train.'[1]
Emerging Scottish PR market
In 1993 PR week reported:
- But There are good reasons for believing the Scotttish market is growing more than others. 'The Scottish market is very buoyant and has been for 15 months,' says Tony Meehan, managing direc-tor of the eponymously named Tony Meehan Associates. We are getting new business from two main areas - London firms which need Scottish representation and firms already in Scotland expanding their PR. The main players recognise that when dealing with national issues there is a Scottish dimension and they need help when dealing with it,' he says. Business is also coming in from clients which had put their marketing budgets on hold while waiting for the economic upturn, and now realise they cannot wait that long. The development of informal or even formal relationships between Scottish and London agencies is growing. Scottish and Westminster Communications, the Scottish lobbying arm of Citigate and Westminster Communications, is one example. But other agencies like TMA, which is currently working on three accounts with Brunswick and has worked with Square Mile and Buchanan, are exploiting the opportunities.[2]
Clients
- Eurocopy Square Mile 'drafted in' Scottish subsidiary TMA 'to assist it in its press programme for Scotland'[3]
