Lord of the lies; how Hill and Knowlton's Robert Gray pulls Washington's strings - Washington, D.C. public relations consultant

Not all of Gray's efforts went so smoothly. One especially embarrassing incident involved the government of Morocco. Gray had pioneered a number of innovative PR techniques, such as "video news releases.'' The idea was to get television networks and local radio and television stations to air these advertisements as their own news stories. Gray and Company had started with a radio show called "Washington Spotlight." During these programs, the radio stations did not disclose that they were produced by Gray and Company or that Gray had been paid by clients to do them. But by 1984, "Washington Spotlight" was a big success: There were 656 subscribers to the "Gray and Company Network," and another 1,476 stations in the Mutual Broadcasting System and National Public Radio Network that received the program by satellite each month. Soon the program was being broadcast bi-weekly.

Riding this success, Gray decided to try the same idea on television. The company's PR packages began appearing on CNN as news stories: In March 1985, it sent by satellite "an exclusive interview" with King Hassan Il, the autocratic ruler of Morocco. At the time, the king was being criticized for signing a treaty with Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi. In a standup outside the palace, a Gray correspondent warned viewers that the West should not react harshly to the treaty and that any criticism of Morocco should be "tempered with the acknowledgement" of the country's strategic importance to the United States.

CNN and Channel 5 in Washington ran the story as if it were their their own. At no time did either the network or the station disclose that Morocco was a Gray client that was paying the firm a minimum of $360,000 to improve its image

in the United States, or that Morocco had paid Gray and Company to produce the piece. Eventually, it ended in embarrassment after The Washington Post revealed that CNN was running videos made for clients of Gray and Company as news stories.

Clientitis

The obvious impetus to take on clients like Hassan was the huge fees Gray could collect. And the more money a client had, the more pressure there was internally to gouge him. "You'd see hours pop up any time a client had money," Carter Clews, a Gray and Company senior vice president explained. "I remember [one executive] pointed out that no phone call takes less than an hour. 'Always keep that in mind,' he said, 'once you pick up that phone, that's an hour. It doesn't matter how long you talk.'"

Another Gray and Company vice president remembered a client who was billed for expenses associated with a party to which he was not even invited. She said wine bought as Christmas gifts for clients was secretly included in their bills the following month. She maintained that even Gray's practice of taking clients' children to the circus each year, for which the company got credit in the press, was eventually charged back to the clients.

The urge to make the big bucks, combined with fiascos like Morocco's, impelled Gray to sell his firm in 1986. In true Gray fashion, he cut a sweetheart deal: In June 1986, JWT Group, Inc. agreed to buy Gray and Company and make it a part of its subsidiary, Hill and Knowlton. The merger agreement created an entirely new division of Hill and Knowlton called Hill and Knowlton Public Affairs Worldwide and put Gray in charge as its chairman. Hill and Knowlton returned Gray to its board of directors and made him chairman of its policy committee.