Steve’s breakdown: Online retailer eBay is on the hunt for an agency to engage with its employees across its UK and European businesses.

LONDON, UK: The company is currently holding initial chemistry meetings with agencies, following a shift in roles for Vanessa Canzini who moves from being head of European corporate comms to head up employee comms, Europe.

Canzini said: ‘We are looking for an agency that has worked on integrated comms programmes for global brands like ours.

‘I want the agency to tell us something we don’t know, show us something new and creative, and have great credentials of engaging employees in award winning work.

‘Employee comms can often be seen as the poor relation in the comms setup but great PR begins from the inside and if we don’t have employees that are strong brand advocates then the rest of our comms efforts will be in vain.’

The brief tasks the chosen agency with working across eBay’s biggest markets – the UK, Germany and Switzerland – and aligning the comms of eight different businesses, including the Turkish eBay site Gitti Giddyor and Gumtree in the UK.

The search is a result of a comms overhaul at the brand after the arrival of Paul Newman as eBay’s vice-president of comms in June 2011.

The brand has worked on aligning its three main comms functions, consumer PR, corporate comms and internal comms. Previously, employee comms sat under HR in the business.

eBay UK currently uses Shine Communications for its consumer PR and Blue Rubicon for its corporate comms.

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