PRmoment Podcast (PRmoment)

This week on the PRmoment podcast, in the latest of our life stories series, I'm pleased to welcome executive director of Premier, Lawrence Francis.

Lawrence has an interesting personal career story because he has successfully made the journey from being a business development director at Premier to working client side.

Premier is one of UK PR’s best kept secrets; it's a big firm. It has a turnover of nearly 20 million pounds and employs 170 people. It specialises in entertainment, art and cultural PR. 

Here is the flavour of what Lawrence and I discuss

[00:01:07] How Lawrence made the transition from a business development role to a client-side PR role.

[00:06:09] Why Lawrence was a late starter in PR and how he has managed to catch up.

[00:07:11] How Lawrence changed his job role within the business.

[00:09:08] Why working in businesses that have a certain scale and across multiple markets makes a new business role more sustainable.

[00:11:18] How Premier, originally a film PR firm, has built itself into a £20m PR firm by having multiple, niche specialist teams.

[00:14:53] Why Premier hasn't tried to launch a technology or healthcare division.

[00:17:31] Lawrence discusses the growth of Premier's brand partnerships scheme.

[00:18:10] Lawrence talks about the growth of the personal publicist market in the last few years.

[00:18:58] Lawrence discusses to what extent a job in sales prepares you for job in PR – and to what extent is PR a sales job?

[00:27:06] Why Premier tends to work for smaller organisations, rather than blue-chip firms.

[00:30:22] How his previous career in sales meant Lawrence developed a robustness that has benefited his career in public relations.

[00:31:58] Lawrence talks us through how London and the UK lead the world in the entertainment PR market.

[00:35:53] Why experiential marketing has become more ambitious in recent years.

[00:38:31] Lawrence talks us through an experiential case study of Premier’s work on Friends Fest 

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

This week we’re talking to Jon Rhodes, partner at BOLDT about what the important data points behind an organisation’s reputation are.

BOLDT and Mettle Capital recently released their Trust in 2021 report.

The report analysed more than 40 million conversations and pieces of content across more than 2,500 companies.

Before we start, just to tell you about PRmoment’s new Patron Scheme. If you are a regular consumer of our content, including this podcast, and you’re getting value from it, if you fancy making a contribution to help fund PRmoment - now you can.

We have three different Patron Tiers—The Daney Parker Tier, The Chadlington Tier and Edward Bernays Tier.

Finally, thanks to our PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here’s a summary of what Jon and PRmoment founder Ben Smith discussed:

2 mins Jon explains how, with this research, like many PR people before him, he’s trying to put some science into reputation management and corporate PR.

3.30 mins “I was fed up of having the worst looking slides in the management pack”.

5 mins Why integrating bug data is the best way to understand the success of corporate PR and reputation management.

5.30 mins Jon talks about how this Trust Report uses a big data approach and is then curated against 3 standatised models: An ESG model based on SASB, The World Economic Forum’s Trust Model and a reputation model. 

6.30 mins Jon explains where the source data is taken for this report.

9 mins What, according to this research, are the important numbers behind an organisation's trust?

10 mins This is a 10 year data set so Jon talks about some long term reputational trends.

13 mins Many people believe public relations has a measurement problem, but corporate PR has never really tried to measure its impact, has it?

BS: “I know corporate PR people who have never considered the idea of measuring their impact”.

17 mins Jon talks about the potential of using this data set to model and predict reputation fluctuations, specifically related to ESG data which is currently not sufficiently robust.

18 mins Jon reveals the correlation between reputation and share price: apparently “a good reputation precedes share price by about 3 months.” (Depending on the company and the sector!)

23 mins Jon discusses the 2 most dominant issues impacting trust: problem solving and the CEO.

28 mins The implications of this big data approach to measuring reputation and corporate PR.

If you’d like a copy of the report email jon.rhodes@boldtpartners.com.

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

This week we’re chatting to Marcus Gault, managing director UK and Ireland of Onclusive.

Dare I say many of you may not be aware but Onclusive is the new name for the Reputation Intelligence division of Kantar that was recently acquired by Symphony Technology Group.

Onclusive has over 9,000 clients, across 130 markets and over 1,100 employees. So it’s a big beast in the PR measurement and evaluation game.

Before we start, just to tell you about PRmoment’s new Patron Scheme. If you are a regular consumer of our content, including this podcast, and you’re getting value from it, if you fancy making a contribution to help fund PRmoment, now you can.

We have three different Patron Tiers—The Daney Parker Tier, The Chadlington Tier and Edward Bernays Tier.

Also, thanks to our PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here’s a summary of what Marcus and PRoment founder Ben Smith spoke about:

1.30 mins Is there a difference between the data and insight demands of your agency clients and your in-house/corporate clients?

3.30 mins Most data suppliers use a mix of human and automated (AI) analysis these days. Marcus talks us through the pros and cons of each approach.

“The sweat spot is a hybrid approach: you use AI to do the heavy lifting but then you sample code with people a proportion of the coverage to get the deeper insight.”

7.30 mins Do companies like Onclusive tend to supply the raw data or do you interpret it? How do you see yourselves these days, as data providers or insight consultants?

9.30 mins Is the measurement of PR and comms always likely to be imperfect? Just because PR and comms is nearly always part of an integrated marketing strategy?

13 mins Marcus talks about how he’d advise the measurement of a consumer campaign.

15 mins And he compares that to how he’d suggest measuring a firms reputation, so corporate PR.

18 mins “The key insight is what is hurting and what is helping your reputation.”

19.30 mins Measurement professionals working in the PR and comms sector spend a lot of time talking about outcome measurement. But not many PR campaigns measure their outcomes. Why is that? Is outcome measurement a false hope?

20.30 mins The integrated nature of most marketing campaigns makes outcome measurement difficult.PR and comms is not in isolation much of the time.

21.30 mins “I would advise PR and comms professionals to clearly define what they are trying to achieve in their comms activity, and then identify what sources of data they might have access to that will help them understand the impact of that work.”

23 mins Don’t forget: our colleagues/rivals (?) in marketing may have bigger budgets but they also struggle to measure the impact of their integrated campaigns.

23.30 mins What are the most popular measurement KPIs for Onclusive’s clients?

26.30 mins They’ll be a section of listeners of this podcast who are part of PR’s measurement clan. Marcus gives us an update on why, having left the sector for a few years, he’s been tempted back!

This week, in the latest of our life stories podcast, I’m interviewing Scott Wilson, president Europe and Africa at Burson Cohn & Wolfe (BCW).

Scott started his career in journalism, before becoming head of media at Porter Novelli and then managing director of consumer at Weber Shandwick.

Scott then moved to Cohn & Wolfe to become UK CEO and later MD of EMEA. And when Cohn & Wolfe and Burson Marsteller merged one year ago he got the nod for the president Europe and Africa job at Burson Cohn & Wolfe.

BCW global revenues are estimated at $700m and it has approximately 4,000 employees globally.

Thanks to our PRmoment podcast sponsors PRCA.

Here is a flavour of what Scott and I discussed:

[00:01:15] As an ex-jouno turned PRO – why has public relations worked out for Scot when it hasn't for so many journalists who attempt to make the same move?

[00:02:48] Did Scott move to PR from journalism because it paid more? 

[00:03:29] Why the head of media role is a good bridging job for a journo looking to get into public relations

[00:05:30] Why his time at Weber Shandwick was such an important job in the story of Scott's career.

[00:06:13] How Scott moved from a corporate role at Porter Novelli to a senior consumer role at Weber Shandwick.

[00:07:46] How Scott grew Weber's UK consumer practice from circa £1m to £5m during his time there. 

[00:08:49] Why the pressure of not having to hold on to something, with the emphasis on the forward momentum of a business, can be liberating.

[00:09:25] Scott reveals the state of the UK office of Cohn & Wolfe when he joined as UK CEO in 2010. 

[00:11:05] Why Scott joined Cohn & Wolfe with a combination of excitement and terror – and worried whether he was the person who would be able to turn it around.

[00:11:26] How Scott turned Cohn & Wolfe from a £5m business in the U.K in 2010 to a £20m pre-merger in 2018.

[00:11:38] What are the lessons from that time on how to turn a PR firm around? 

[00:12:35] Why pulling an agency out of a period of ongoing decline it is really the most difficult (agency) job of them all. 

[00:12:46] What the classic death spiral of a failing agency looks like.

[00:13:59] How you can develop a degree of momentum in a turnaround if you haven't been given a cheque book to hire new talent.

[00:14:54] How when Scot joined Cohn & Wolfe in 2010 there were not any practice managing directors left.

[00:15:33] Why it can be dangerous when you join a firm as a leader to bring too many people in quickly from the outside. 

[00:16:05] How Scott takes the risk out of recruitment.

[00:18:13] Why for any global agency London tends to be the second biggest office after New York. 

[00:18:47] Why his professional relationship with Donna Imperato will probably define Scott's career.

[00:20:48] Can BCW still be a challenger brand when it is the third biggest PR firm in the world? 

[00:21:49] How a modern international holding PR company today is different from what it was a decade ago. 

[00:21:57] Hear Scott talk about how, during this incredibly successful professional time in his professional life, he's had to deal with huge personal tragedy. His daughter Edie was diagnosed with cancer in 2011 and after a long and brave battle passed away in May last year. 

[00:22:16] Scott pays a tribute to his daughter Edie and describes the impact her illness and passing has had on his personal and professional life.

[00:26:36] How Scott allowed Edie's illness to become part of his everyday professional life and would talk about it with colleagues. 

[00:28:02] How as a pare

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

This week we’re chatting to Will Sturgeon, head of content and thought leadership at PwC UK about its CEO Report.

PwC’s 25th Annual CEO Report reveals a growing trend towards more purposeful business practices, including a greater focus on trust, transparency and personal accountability from CEOs on issues such as climate change and inequality. 

These are all issues where the contribution of the PR and communications team should be critical, so we invited Will on the show to talk us through the key issues from this report from a PR and comms perspective.

The UK data of PwC’s 25 Annual CEO Report is based on a survey of 177 UK CEOs conducted 6 October - 12 November 2021.

Before we start just a reminder, if you haven’t got your ticket already, do check out PRmoment’s next webinar on PR Analytics. We’ve got the top experts on to talk you through the key issues of the intersection of PR and data. Tickets are only £45 + vat, it’s a great format where you’ll get useful information and insight in a non-patronising tone!

Thanks to a couple of new PRmoment Patrons. First up Nigel Sarbutts from the PR Cavalry who’s joined as a Daney Parker Tier Patron and thanks also to Darryl Sparrey from Hard Numbers who is signed up as an Edward Bernays Tier Patron.

Thanks to our PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here’s a summary of what Will and PRmoment founder Ben Smith discussed on the show:

3 mins What are the top CEO concerns at the moment, according to the report?

4 mins “CEOs are very concerned about any issues that are going to limit their ability to hire. ”

4.30 mins “There’s a greater commitment to purpose and conversations about ESG because they (CEOs) recognise that’s important when they go to the market and compete for talent.”

8 mins CEOs are pretty confident about future economic growth, both in the UK and globally.

11.30 mins What do CEOs want from their PR and comms teams?

12 mins “Comms professionals need to be more demanding of the brands they work for.”

13.30 mins Why talking about something publicly is a key part of accountability for businesses.

15 mins CEOs are very aware of the need for authenticity—there was an anti-greenwashing theme throughout the interviews in the report.

16.30 mins How successful have CEOs been in building trust with their stakeholders in the last few years?

20 mins How has the role of the CEO changed?

24 mins “Purpose used to be an area of differentiation…it’s now moving to an area of expectation.” 

25 mins Are the trends around CEOs prioritising purpose and ESG global? 

26.30 mins Are we likely to see a different type of CEO in the future?

Natalie started her career at Shine in 2003 before launching Aduro in 2012. 

Aduro has a turnover of £1m and employs 10 people. It specialises in consumer focused public relations work.

[00:00:54] Why Natalie describes Aduro as the “Ronseal of PR”.

[00:02:56] Why Natalie believes it is possible to isolate the impact of PR in a consumer market where there are numerous promotional channels. 

[00:03:52] How working with entrepreneurs showed Natalie that if she could demonstrate the impact of PR on the entrepreneurs’ businesses, their businesses would grow and they would spend more on PR. 

[00:05:59] How Aduro has developed a model where it believes it can confidently point to its sales impact.

[00:07:08] Why internally there is a need for PR to be able to define its cost per acquisition.

[00:08:21] Why clients should own their evaluation and measurement insight, rather than farming the whole thing out to agencies.

[00:09:15] How Aduro, as a consumer agency, is asking questions of clients’ evaluation methods that the clients haven't been asked before. 

[00:11:55] Why Natalie never, never set out to establish her own agency.

[00:12:21] Why launching Aduro threw up an opportunity for creating flexible working and a genuine balance for Natalie.

[00:13:04] Why Rachel Bell has a stake in Aduro.

[00:13:41] Why Natalie started Aduro whilst living in Shropshire.

[00:15:15] Why Natalie regards Aduro's growth as the "tortoise to some people's hare" but the slow and steady approach has worked for her. 

[00:15:19] Why setting up Aduro has enabled Natalie to "grow a business around having two children". 

[00:16:07] Why Natalie going on maternity leave early on in Aduro's "life" has meant that not everything in the business needs to flow through her. 

[00:16:34] What was it about having Rachel Bell as a mentor that helped Natalie grow the business?

[00:17:24] How having a mentor has helped Natalie with things like the importance of business planning, networking, structure and having a five-year plan.

[00:17:43] Why Natalie believes having a financial director has been one of the most important things in the progression of Aduro.

[00:19:34] Why Natalie wouldn't have launched Aduro without Rachel Bell. 

[00:21:01] What flexible working means – because it's become quite a broad term. 

[00:23:28] What are the drawbacks of flexible working?

[00:25:25] Can you achieve as good a result for the client if the team is working flexibly? 

[00:27:54] How does an agency begin the process of making flexible working work? 

[00:28:00] Why, for flexible working to work in a firm, you need some of the key senior people in the business to work flexibly. 

[00:28:42] Does Natalie believe PR still has a long working hours problem? 

[00:29:12] Why Natalie believes that it's now unacceptable for PR firms to have a long hours culture. 

[00:29:44] Why, from a timesheet perspective, agencies should be resourced at approximately 60-70% of employees time, anything more than that is not realistic and will result in staff working overtime.

[00:31:41] Why PR firms need to get better at saying no to clients. 

[00:33:03] Why overservicing has decreased as the standard of PR work has increased.

[00:33:59] Whether PR has a mental health issue greater than other elements of society. 

[00:36:21] Why Aduro has resigned from a number of accounts.

[00:36:55] The importance of a genuinely positive client relationship where you can grow together.

[00:40:06] Why does Natalie think there are co

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

This week we’re talking to Louise Turner, managing director at Edelman Data & Intelligence, about the UK results of The Edelman Trust Barometer 2022.

Before we start just to say tickets for the PRmoment Awards have now gone on sale. 

They will be the first PRmoment face-to-face awards since 2019! 

Thanks to our PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here’s a summary of what Louise and I chatted about:

3 min What are the top trends coming out of the UK results of the Edelman Trust Barometer this year?

4 mins Why the UK now has a record trust gap between high and low-income groups.

5 mins The impact of Partygate: Louise talks us through the differences in the trust in the UK Government from Nov 2021 to Jan 2022 results.

6 mins In November 2021, the UK Government had a trust score of 42%. In January this dropped to 29%—the lowest score for the UK Government in a decade.

7 mins Louise explains how The Trust Barometer has picked up growing consumer cynicism around purpose and greenwashing this year.

10 mins Louise talks us through the 2022 and 2021 year on year trust scores for the Government, employers, the media, business and NGOs.

17 mins Louise talks through the trend of trust increasing the more local, or the more personal the institution. 

18 mins Why is ‘your employer’ by miles the most trusted institution?

19 mins What are the 2021 and the 2022 trust scores for the different media channels?

22 mins Traditional media, including broadcast and online, has had a very good year, trust wise. In that sense, it won the trust league this year?

26 mins What’s a good trust score and what’s a bad trust score? (A score of below 50% is mistrusted and a score of over 50% is trusted.)

This week on the PRmoment podcast, in the latest of our life stories series, I'm pleased to welcome Sarah Scholefield, CEO, UK and Ireland, Grayling.

Sarah has worked at Grayling for five years, having previously held senior roles in Singapore with Fleishman Hillard, Ruder Finn and Edelman

Grayling has nine offices in the UK, 70 globally and 130 employees. Sarah can’t comment on these numbers because of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, but Grayling was reported to have a fee income of circa $55m globally in 2018.

Here’s a flavour of what Sarah and I discussed:

[00:01:22] How Sarah has restructured and changed Grayling UK since she became UK MD in 2015. 

[00:02:29] Why you have to take a long-term view when you're trying to turn a business around.

[00:02:43] How Sarah had to get rid of the parts of the business that weren’t working as they should be. 

[00:02:58] Why when changing a business you've got to be quite brave and you've got to take some risks. 

[00:03:12] How Sarah and Paul Taaffe joining the business at the same time, having not know each other beforehand, created an appetite for change at Grayling.

[00:03:44] Why Sarah believes PR agencies have to evolve constantly. 

[00:04:17] Why, in an agency, if you get the people right everything else falls into place. 

[00:04:50] How a massive talent audit was critical to the turning around of Grayling.

[00:07:24] How Sarah simplified Grayling's structure.

[00:08:06] How Sarah attempted to restructure Grayling while keeping the client offer as good in a competitive market. 

[00:10:11] What does Grayling look like today compared to three years ago? 

[00:10:40] Why Sarah believes work needs to give “people an opportunity to realiz=se their own potential.”

[00:13:44] Why Sarah believes PR is a service industry, so PR firms need to produce a product or service that clients want and we should not try to overcomplicate things by defining the way they are structured.

[00:15:00] Why you need a combination of people who know the business and new talent when you’re trying to turn a firm around.

[00:15:37] How Sarah persuaded some high-profile senior people to leave established firms to join the turnaround at Grayling. 

[00:18:07] How has Sarah attempted to bring more quality and consistency to Grayling’s work? 

[00:21:12] Why Sarah made the move to Singapore for a period of her career. 

[00:22:14] Why the Asia PR market has, in some territories, leapfrogged European and US PR techniques.

[00:24:13] Why there is often a different mindset for PR and marketing professionals working in Asia with much higher GDP and market growth rates. 

[00:27:54] How Sarah made the step from client lead to Grayling UK MD. 

[00:29:08] How Sarah's career story has taken her from a receptionist at a PR firm to the MD of Grayling.

[00:32:19] Why it was her time at Freud's that made Sarah as a PR person. 

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

This week we’re chatting to Anna Geffert, founder of Hera Communications. Anna is the current President of Women in PR and we’re talking to her today about the 60th Anniversary of Women in PR.

The organisation was founded in 1962 and on the show today we’re going to discuss how it started and how it’s changed over the last 60 years.

As you’ve probably seen, the shortlist for The PRmoment Awards is now out, so do get your tickets for the awards nights, all the details are on the homepage of the PRmoment Awards microsite.

Do take a look at PRmoment’s Patron Scheme. We have three different Patron Tiers—The Daney Parker Tier, The Chadlington Tier and Edward Bernays Tier.

Finally, thanks to our PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here’s a flavour of what Anna and PRmoment founder Ben Smith talked about:

1.30 mins Anna talks us through when was WIPR formed, by who and why.

4 mins How have the objectives of Women in PR changed over the last 60 years?

6 mins What progress has been made to increase the number of women in senior positions in public relations?

10 mins We test Anna’s knowledge: with a timeline of the history of Women in PR.

11.30 min Why Sue Hardwick and Angela Oakes had to save the WIPR as an organisation in 2012.

14 mins Anna tells us why she volunteers her time to lead Women in PR

22 mins The trend of women-led PR start-ups during lockdown

24.30 mins When the past presidents get together to compare notes - what are the themes and challenges that have come, gone and remained over the generations?

28 mins Women in PR only has 260 members in the UK, why is that?

29.30 mins What are the challenges for younger women working in PR at the moment?

This week on the PRmoment Podcast, in the latest of our life stories series, I’m pleased to welcome CEO of Golin Jon Hughes.

Global PR firm Golin has a fee income of about $240m. Jon has been at Golin for about 14 years, he spent six years in the UK as co-managing director alongside Matt Neale, before moving to Hong Kong to head up its international business. 

He became CEO alongside Matt Neale and Gary Rudnick in 2017.

Here are some of the highlights of what Jon and I discussed: 

[00:01:15] How Jon went from working in IT sales and ended up as global CEO of a top-ten global PR firm. 

[00:04:28] Whether Jon has Jon got more “PR royalty” mates than anyone else? 

[00:06:04] Why Jon “didn't really know” Matt Neale before they became joint UK MDs of Golin. 

[00:07:59] Why the sector experience of Matt and Jon combined to mean that they together were the right combination to take Golin forward 

[00:08:52] Why Golin in London had lost its identity before Matt and Jon took over in 2005. 

[00:09:50] How Fred Cook's management style gave Matt and Jon "headspace" which allowed them to do things that ordinarily they wouldn't have done. 

[00:11:08] Why London is a hub of innovation not just for Golin, but for PR as an industry. 

[00:12:12] How Golin in London has grown from 25 people in 2005 to 200 today - Jon talks us through how an agency business can go on such a prolonged period of growth.  

[00:12:33] Why all agencies go through cycles of success and then have to reinvent.

[00:12:56] Why one of Al Golin's mantras "fix it before it breaks" is on Jon's office wall.

[00:15:35] Why winning the Orange pitch meant Golin was able to hire some great consumer talent in 2006 - Bibi Hilton! 

[00:17:47] Why agencies need "that freshness and that hunger at scale - that's when you know you're on the money." 

[00:20:58] Why the client "Palm" was a critical part of the story that lead to the renewal of Glolin as a global firm.

[00:22:33] Jon talks us through the G4 model ten years on.

[00:26:44] Why PR firms trying to be all things to all people ends up in a vanilla proposition.

[00:26:53] Why Golin has recently rebranded as a PR agency. 

[00:28:30] Why, when PR people run out of conversation, they either talk about PR trade bodies or the definition of PR. 

[00:28:51] Why some people have seen Golin rebranding itself as a PR firm as a regressive step. 

[00:30:29] Why Jon took the president international job in Hong Kong in 2005 despite him originally thinking that Matt Neale was going to get it.

[00:32:46] Why Jon enjoys building businesses and managing change.

[00:34:35] Jon compares the working styles of India, China, Singapore and Taiwan.

[00:35:22] Jon talks us through Golin’s buying criteria for when it makes an acquisition.

[00:37:17] Why (as the acquirer) you have to expect the unexpected when you do acquisitions.

[00:38:01] Why holding groups don't acquire for revenue, they acquire for the specialism and talent.

[00:38:54] Jon talks us through where Virgo Health is today, following its acquisition of Golin in 2012.

[00:39:45] Following Golin's acquisition of Magic, Jon talks us through what it's like trying to buy a business in China.

[00:41:30] Jon talks about how he sees the PR agency market heading from an acquisition perspective.

[00:43:33] Jon discusses his favourite memories of Al Golin. 

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

This week we’re chatting to Kat McGettigan, founder of Fine Lines.

Kat describes Fine Lines as an “agency-growth agency.” Previously she worked at Grayling, M&C Saatchi and Weber Shandwick.

On the show, we talk about how agencies can improve their pitch techniques but we’re also going to take a step back and look at the broader area of growth strategies for PR firms.

The shortlist for The PRmoment Awards is now out, so do get your tickets for the awards nights, all the details are on the homepage of the PRmoment Awards microsite.

Do take a look at PRmoment’s Patron Scheme. We have three different Patron Tiers—The Daney Parker Tier, The Chadlington Tier and Edward Bernays Tier.

Finally, thanks to our PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here’s a summary of what Kat and PRmoment founder Ben Smith discussed:

2 mins How can a PR agency set itself up to grow? 

5 mins What are the key elements of a successful pitch from an agency's perspective?

7 mins What is a good win rate for agencies when pitching?

7.30 mins When should an agency go for a pitch out of its comfort zone?

“Two or three people should own the pitch…and mustn’t pass the batten.”

9 mins When can a transformational pitch win enable an agency to invest in its team and its skills?

10 mins “Pitching is like dating”

11 mins How to create that winnable chemistry with a potential client

13.30 mins “If you don’t know anyone on the buy-side you are very unlikely to win it.”

16 mins What’s the difference between a tissue and a chemistry session?

17.30 mins “We’ve all become too subservient”

19 mins How to prep for the pitch?

“We’ve all got too beholden to decks!”

20 mins Why you must not create a frankendeck

20.30 mins What is the role of a pitch doctor?

21 mins How many pitch rehearsals should you have?

26 mins Why you should always try and have the pitch at the agency’s office.

29 mins “It blows my mind that so much effort is put into producing all these pitch ideas that are hardly ever used”

34 mins How reliable is a pitch process in finding a client: agency match? Are there better ways?

38 mins Currently, what percentage of pitches are face-to-face compared to virtual?

39 mins Why is a hybrid pitch the hardest of the lot!

40 mins Let’s talk about procurement! Is this where a lot of smaller and medium-sized agencies start to struggle? 

42 mins Kat’s guide to dealing with procurement!

49 mins Will paid-for pitches ever be common in PR?

52 mins Kat’s red flags for agencies of when to walk away from a pitch?

“It does pay to be a nice person to work for!”

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

This week we’re chatting to Lara Gould about whether journalists make good PR people. 

Lara used to work at The Mail On Sunday and the Sunday Mirror. In 2014 she left journalism for PR and set up Goldbug Communications in 2016.

For those of you that don’t know, Goldbug is a brand communication consultancy with revenue of £2.7 million.

The shortlist for The PRmoment Awards is now out, so do get your tickets for the awards nights, all the details are on the homepage of the PRmoment Awards microsite.

Do take a look at PRmoment’s Patron Scheme. We have three different Patron Tiers—The Daney Parker Tier, The Chadlington Tier and Edward Bernays Tier.

Finally, thanks to our PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here’s a summary of what Lara and PRmoment founder Ben Smith talked about:

2 mins Why did Sara leave journalism to work in PR?

4 mins There seems to be quite a bit of resentment in the PR sector when a top journo makes the move and gets a top PR/comms job. Is that resentment is fair?

6 mins Why would a journalist understand how to manage a brand's reputation?

12 mins Should all PR teams have an ex-journalist in them?

13 mins Why Lara believes a journalist's skills for pubic relations need not be focused on the media relations channel, they should be insight related.

14 mins and 18 mins What mistakes do journalists who make the move from journalism to PR make?

15 mins Ex journos often get lots of coverage for their clients when they make the move into PR - but do they get the right sort of coverage?

21 mins Lara talks about the challenges she faced as an ex-journalist launching a PR business

“I had to learn the career at the same time as learning to run a business”

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

This is a quick bonus pod - we’re chatting to Andrew Bloch about PR Pitches and merger & acquisition trends in the UK PR scene.

 Andrew is a co-founder and Non Executive Director at Frank PR and is now Head of PR at the new business consultancy firm AAR. He is also a partner at PCB Partners where he advises on buying and selling marketing services agencies. 

The shortlist for The PRmoment Awards is now out, so do get your tickets for the awards nights, all the details are on the homepage of the PRmoment Awards microsite

Finally, thanks to our PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here’s a summary of what Andrew and PRmoment founder Ben Smith discuss:

1 min What are the biggest and the most significant pitches you've seen over the last few months?

4 mins How many agencies should be involved with a pitch?

5 mins A discussion of Next Fifteen’s acquisition of Engine MHP Mischief

7 mins “The M&A market is as busy as it’s ever been - it’s extremely buoyant”

9 mins Who’s buying and who’s selling?

“Private equity has been prolific in (PR) acquisitions”12 mins”

12 mins “Some of the valuations are eyewatering”

14 mins What ratio of profit are PR firms currently selling for?

“There are buyers for everything”

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

Time flies doesn't it. We’re well over a quarter of the way through 2022 - remember those plans and hopes we all had on Jan 1st? Well, it’s time for a progress report!

PR land seems to continue to be pretty frantic - it’s a hot market both in terms of the amount of work going through in house teams, agencies are as busy as ever and the pressure for talent intensifies.

That all seems kinda crazy bearing in mind the horrific scenes we see on our scenes from Putin’s war in Ukraine and the imminent cost of living crisis we’re about to witness in the UK.

So I thought it was time to catch up with a W’s Warren Johnson for PR’s Q1 Report!

Before that - just to let you know tickets are genuinely flying for the PRmoment Awards in London on April 28th. I've no doubt the London Awards is going to be our biggest ever event and an absolute who’s who of the UK PR scene - so make sure you get your ticket.

Also, thanks to our PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here is a summary of what Warren and I discussed:

2 mins How are you seeing the PR market now that Q1 2022 is done and dusted?

2.30 mins “The resourcing game has got expermentally harder!”

4 mins “In terms of the overall marketing mix, PR still offers phenomenal bang for buck”

4.30 mins Warren updates us on W’s purchase of travel communications specialist Lotus Communications.

5.30 mins The headcount of W in London is over 100, with revenues of over £10m and 20% growth.

6.30 mins The PR industry is yet to understand how to run a business in a high inflationary market.

7 mins Warren talks about the importance of a return to growth of live events and hospitality for PR.

9 mins Warren outlines the implications of Rish Sunak’s change to entrepreneurs' tax law for PR entrepreneurs looking to sell their business.

10 mins How is W defining the metaverse and what is the metaverse opportunity for PR firms?

14 mins Is the metaverse just another channel?

16 mins “Once the new generation of hardware launches, and is adopted, we’ll see scale.”

17 mins What does a PR agency's metaverse strategy need to look like?

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

Here’s the second of a new bonus pod series where I chat to Andrew Bloch about PR Pitches and merger & acquisition trends in the UK PR scene.

Andrew is a co-founder and Non-Executive Director at Frank PR and is now Head of PR at the new business consultancy firm AAR. He is also a partner at PCB Partners where he advises on buying and selling marketing services agencies.

This is a final call for The PRmoment Awards in London on April 28th and the Manchester Awards are also shaping up to be a big night on the 12th of May.

Thanks to our PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here’s a summary of what Andrew and PRmoment founder Ben Smith discuss:

2 mins Andrew gives us an update on recent PR pitch news

3 mins How is the impact of the current high rate of inflation and the uncertainty in the economy impacting client decisions?

7 mins Can agencies be more front footed in their negotiations with clients at the moment?

9 mins Andrew and I discuss Huntsworth's acquisition of Cirkle.

14 mins What private groups are most active in acquiring PR firms at the moment?

This week on the PRmoment podcast, in the latest of our life stories series, I interview Dee Gibbs, founder of Liberty Communications.

Dee founded Liberty Communications 21 years ago. Liberty is an independent PR firm, specialising in Tech PR. It has a turnover of £2.5m, approximately 25 people and offices in London and San Francisco.

Here is a flavour of what Dee and I discussed:

[00:01:20] Why, after working in-house for 15 years, Dee decided to start up her own firm.

[00:04:17] Why, at launch, the agency name Liberty was chosen as a reflection of what she hoped the business would give her. 

[00:04:25] Dee tells us where she thinks PR tend to get things wrong from a client perspective. 

[00:05:47] Dee tells us what it is that she enjoys about owning her own business.

[00:07:24] How Dee now runs Liberty from Portugal alongside her UK based management team. 

[00:09:33] Having run Liberty through multiple recessions Dee tells us how she managed the business  through those tough times.

[00:09:52] Dee talks through the downsides to running your own business. 

[00:10:20] Why running your own business can be a very lonely.

[00:11:39] Why employers should never forget that it's a serious business employing people.

[00:15:21] Dee talks us through the unsuccessful merger of  Liberty into a marketing firm and subsequent reverse merger. 

[00:18:26] Why Dee has not tried to diversify Liberty out of its technology routes.

[00:22:53] Dee discusses whether there a sweet spot of how long an agency and client should work together.

[00:24:56] Why Dee isn't a big fan of PR people!

[00:26:51] Why Dee has never sold Liberty, despite being approached.

This week on the PRmoment Podcast, I’m interviewing Michelle Goodall, chief marketing officer, Guild about the techniques required to build a community, the differences between a network and a community and what are the advantages for organisations in having an engaged community.

Do take a look at the stunning selection of free webinars we’ve got coming up: ranging from PR and TikTok, Changing your measurement mindset: from output to impact and Correlation or causation?: The link between corporate reputation and business performance.

Thanks as ever to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors The PRCA. 

Here’s a summary of what Michelle and I discussed:

1 min When we talk about a community in a business context - how are you defying that?

2 mins Michelle talks us through the 5 P’s of different types of communities

3 mins Are the characteristics of B2B communities and B2C communities different?

4 mins  What’s the difference between a community and a network?

6 mins Is a reader of a website part of a community? Is someone who follows you or your brand on Twitter, or who subscribes to your newsletter part of a community?

9 mins Do organisations have one community or are they in effect a series of different communities around different interests?

11 mins Is building a community always a good idea?

13 mins How do you choose which channel to host your community on?

16 mins What is the role of content in building a community?

18 mins What are the skills required to be a good community manager?

23 mins Why are there not more community specialists working in PR?

25 mins Michelle tells us about Guild and its mobile-first, no ads approach to community building.

This week on the PRmoment Podcast, we’re talking to Nicole Yost, CEO of HAVAS Just:: and Corin Baird, head of digital at HAVAS Just:: about the incredible year that healthcare PR has had.

We’re going to be talking about the top healthcare trends and what excellence in this buoyant sector of the public relations world looks like.

Before we start just to promo our stunning selection of free webinars we’ve got coming up: ranging from PR and TikTok, Changing your measurement mindset: from output to impact and Correlation or causation?: The link between corporate reputation and business performance.

And if you want to come along to The PRmoment Awards in Manchester on May 12th tickets are still available.

Thanks as ever to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors The PRCA. 

Nicole and Corin welcome to the show

1 min Why the last year in healthcare PR has been a year like!

1.30 mins Havas Just:: grew 50% last year without pitching!

3 mins Why did healthcare PR have such a good year in 2021 - and no it’s not all down to COVID!

4 mins How the ecosystem of the client-agency relationship has changed in healthcare PR 

5 mins How COVID proved that pharma can move at speed.

7 mins Nicole gives her observations on the communications of the COVID vaccines.

8 mins To what extent were poor communications from some of the pharmaceutical industry responsible for the anti-vax debate gaining initial momentum?

9.30 mins Is healthcare PR a few years ahead of the rest of the public relations when it comes to communications that drive behaviour change?

12 mins Why has digital become such an important part of healthcare communications?

14 mins The importance of community management in healthcare PR

17 mins What drives the creation of a successful patient community and what is the role of the pharma brand in creating that community?

19 mins Potentially communities last forever, don’t they? How does a pharma brand budget for that?

21 mins A discussion on the limitations of influencer marketing in consumer health campaigns.

23 mins There’s a long term shortage of available talent in healthcare PR and this has resulted in a higher percentage of freelance workers in healthcare, compared to other areas of public relations. Is this trend of going freelance still accelerating or has it plateaued?

And how has IR 35 impacted freelancer: agency relationships?

This week on the PRmoment Podcast we’re talking to crisis PR lawyer Jonathan Coad, about his new book Reputation Matters. 

Jonathan is one of the UK’s top media lawyers, he’s spent 30 years working on both the PR side and the editorial sides of the fence. 

Reputation Matters gives a unique insight into how the media works with practical advice on how to deal with PR crises effectively. 

Jonathan is also the principal at Coad Law.

Before we start just to promo our stunning free webinar we’ve got coming up on The link between corporate reputation and business performance.

Thanks as ever to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors The PRCA.

Here’s a flavour of what Jonathan and PRmoment founder Ben Smith discuss:

1 min Jonathan talks us through what the book is all about and why he wrote it?

3 mins Why PR people need to have a better knowledge of media law and media regulation than most of them currently do

4 mins Why you can’t do crisis PR without an intricate knowledge of both the Independent Press Standards Organisation's Editorial Code and OFCOM’s Broadcasting Code.

4.30 mins Why are these codes so often ignored by the press?

7 mins Is this a legal textbook or a PR textbook?

7.30 mins Jonathan claims that this book tells PR people how the media works

8.30 mins How can a lawyer, or a PR person, undermine the confidence of a journalist's source?

10 mins Is the reason Jonathan wrote the book because of his deep-seated anger with the UK press?

12 mins “When the press tell us something that is untrue, we all suffer.”

13 mins “The best way to deal with a media crisis is to stop it from happening” - how can you use the media’s regulations to do that?

13.30 mins Why writing a statement in response to a story is very often completely the wrong thing to do.

14 mins Why the golden hour of crisis response is actually the hour before publication, not the hour after publication.

15 mins Jonathan gives us his insight into who is likely to win the Rooney Vardy case. The key element is likely to be the cross-examination of Rebecca Vardy and whether she can convince the judge that her personal PR person leaked information to the press about Coleen Rooney without Rebecca Vardy’s knowledge.

17 mins Jonathan reflects on the Johnny Depp Amber Heard case and the differences between UK and US law.

This week on the PRmoment Podcast we’re talking to Alex Warren about his book Spin Machines - which asks the question “Can PR be replaced by AI?”

As well as writing his book Alex is also a senior account director at Wildfire PR.

On the show, Alex talks about whether an algorithm can devise a PR strategy? Can a robot brainstorm a creative campaign? Can artificial intelligence write persuasively, spin stories or even pitch to journalists? 

These are the questions Alex poses in his book Spin Machines which is described as an investigation into the changing nature of PR, the future of agency life and the role that machines will play in an industry built on human relationships.

Before we start just to promo our stunning free webinar we’ve got coming up on The link between corporate reputation and business performance.

Thanks as ever to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors The PRCA.

Here’s a flavour of what Alex and PRmoment founder Ben Smith discuss:

2 mins Alex talk us through what his book Spin Machines is all about?

3.30 mins What are the lessons to be learnt from marketing automation, when it comes to the use of AI in PR?

4.30 mins The book focuses on the extent machine learning and AI can replace the creative PR brain, not merely the automation of repetitive tasks.

6 mins What bits of PR are most likely to be automated first?

8 mins How does an AI tool write creatively? 

12 mins Can an AI tool be creative? Or is that an oxymoron!

13 mins Big C and small c creativity: How much of what PR people do today is truly creative?

14 mins Do you think PR people have underestimated the extent to which they are likely to be replaced by automated AI tools?

18 mins What are the data sets at the foundation of PR that AI tools can use to predict outcomes?

19 mins Alex explains the ketchup effect and why it’s relevant when discussing the use of AI in PR.

21 mins How will AI change the PR agency model?

One year on from the MBO of Frank PR

On the show this week we’re catching up with Frank PR’s Graham Goodkind and Alex Grier, one year on from a particularly eye-catching deal where Alex and Graham bought back the remaining 75% of Frank for approximately £850,000 from Enero. 

14 years earlier, back in 2007, Frank was sold to Photon Group (as Enero was then known) for more than £20m.

If you haven't already, do register for your free ticket for our upcoming webinar on ree webinar on The link between corporate reputation and business performance.

Thanks as ever to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors The PRCA. 

Here’s a summary of what we discussed:

1.30 mins Graham talks us through the history of Frank's original sale, the original earn-out and the subsequent 25% share buyback deal with Enero.

 4 mins Why Graham fell out of love with PR and how he got it back.

 5 mins and 7.30 mins Why did Alex and Graham buy Frank back?

6 mins Graham talks us through the negotiation of the MBO to buy Frank back.

10.30 mins How much did Alex and Graham buy Frank back for?

“The business was treading water…the work wasn’t as exciting”

13 mins What was its fee income of Frank in the year before it was bought and what is the fee income now?

14 mins What changes have Graham and Alex made to the business since the MBO?

“The business was being run way too much by numbers”

“We were financially driven,  now we’re creatively driven”

“Structurally we had a whole creative department, planners, strategists…but we hadn’t really come up with an award-winning campaign in years. We had amazing Powerpoint presentations!”

20 mins Can you track the rebirth or Frank to the Weetabix and Beans campaign?

22.30 mins How many brands rung up Frank wanting their Weetabix and Beans moment?

27 mins What is Frank today? A consumer PR firm or a social media agency?

27.30 mins How big do Alex and Graham want Frank 3.0 to get?

“As an agency, you need to grow - as that’s the way your people can grow.”

30 mins Graham talks us through his exit plan for Frank 3.0 - does he envisage making another call to Enero in a couple of years' time?!

On the show this week we’re talking to Fenella Grey EMEA managing director & chair at Porter Novelli. Porter Novelli has had an interesting few years. Brad MacAfee took over from Karen van Bergen as Porter Novelli’s global CEO in 2016 and he was replaced by ex McKinsey executive David Bentley in early 2020.

But a constant throughout this period was Fenella Grey who headed up the London office and is now leading the agency across EMEA.

Porter Novelli is part of the Omnicom PR group and has 85 people in its London office.

Omnicom PR has global venues of $1.39 billion in 2021. 

Today we’re going to talk to Fenella about the challenges of being a mid-sized firm surrounded by giants and how Porter Novelli in EMEA has reinvigorated itself over the last 12 months 

Just a nudge to remind you all about the early entry deadline for The Creative Moment Awards on Friday 27th May 2022

Thanks as ever to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors The PRCA. 

Here’s a summary of what Fenella and PRmoment founder Ben Smith chatted about:

2 mins What has Porter Novelli got right and what has it got wrong over the few years?

5 mins At one point Porter Novelli very much positioned itself as a Purpose agency - did that not really work out?

6 mins When does an agency specialism become a growth constrictor?

8 mins What kind of agency is Porter Novelli now?

10 mins Fenella gives her perspective on why mid-size firms are thriving at the moment.

“The old fashioned hub and spoke model is no longer fit for purpose”

12 mins Porter Novelli had 22% growth across EMEA last year, so it's outperforming the rest of Omnicom PR which had 6% growth in 2021. What accounts for that difference in growth rates?

13 mins Porter Novelli EMEA had a 96% employee retention rate last year, with a 40% increase in headcount.

16 mins Fenella talks to us about The Omnicom Tech Stack. What exactly is it and why does Fenella describe it as “transformative” to Porter Novelli.

18 mins On the personal side of things Fenella went down to 2 days a week in 2019 and has returned to 4 days a week - what happened to her side hustles?

21 mins Did Fenella’s experiences during the COVID years make her better at her job?

24 mins Did lockdown make PR agencies better employers?

“Taking a talent first approach pays in the long term”

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

Here’s the third of a new bonus pod series where I chat to Andrew Bloch about PR Pitches and merger & acquisition trends in the UK PR scene.

Andrew is a co-founder and Non-Executive Director at Frank PR and is now Head of PR at the new business consultancy firm AAR. He is also a partner at PCB Partners where he advises on buying and selling marketing services agencies.

Don’t forget the entry deadline for The Creative Moment Awards is coming up on Friday 1st July.

Thanks to our PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here’s a summary of what Andrew and PRmoment founder Ben Smith discussed:

1 min Andrew gives us his run of this month's biggest pitching scene - including wins for Hope&Glory, W, The Romans, Cow and Manifest. 

3 mins The Dept for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy announces its roster including Four Communications, M&C Saatchi, Freuds, Havas and Engine. 

5 mins Andrew’s rundown of interesting M & M&A deals in PR, including BGF’s investment in Media Zoo, another private equity firm Northedge invested in life science specialist Ramarketing and Clarity acquired 93xdigital.

8 mins and 13mins A discussion of Next Fifteen's potential acquisition of M&C Saatchi for £310 million.

“We’re seeing the future of marketing where data and tech meets creativity and that blend is driving the market”

10 mins Andrew on why the PR M&A market is so hot at the moment.

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast with me Ben Smith.

Today we’re talking to Daisy Hawker Wallace about what clients want from their PR agency?

Daisy is currently deputy director & head of PR at Avanti West Coast. Previously she’s worked in-house at Virgin Trains and Virgin. She’s had agency roles at Ketchum and TVC. So she’s sat on both sides of the fence and today she’s going to give her perspective on the agency: in-house relationship and how you can make it work most effectively.

Before we start don’t forget the final entry deadline for The Creative Moment Awards is coming up on Friday 1st July.

Thanks to our PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

 Here’s a summary of what Daisy and I discussed:

1 min As a client, has Daisy had a positive experience with PR agencies over the years?

9 mins Daisy has had experience both agency side and in-house, does that help when it comes to the management of a PR agency?

11 mins As a client - what do you want from your PR agency?

19 mins Have many in-house teams become basically an internal agency for their organisation?

21 mins What are the biggest agency turn-offs for a client?

24 mins Has the agency: client relationship changed over the last few years?

If you enjoyed this podcast and work in-house? Then please take part in this groundbreaking research: Why do clients hire PR agencies? 

This week on the PRmoment Podcast, in the latest of our life stories series, I interviewed James Hickman, director, Hatch Communications.

Hatch is a Leeds based consultancy founded in 2008 and they now have billings of £2m per annum and 25 staff. Hatch had 80% growth last year, all of which was organic growth.

Clients include Diageo globally and the Rugby League World Cup

Here is a summary of what James and I discussed:

[00:00:56] Whether it is tougher to build a PR agency business outside of London than it is within it. 

[00:03:22] How face-to-face client contact is so important in building longer client relationships. 

[00:04:46] How small agencies like Hatch can win big clients like Diageo. 

[00:08:41] Why some agencies in Manchester and Leeds have been "digital native" for longer than many London firms. 

[00:10:31] How the co-founders of Hatch Jason Madeley, Matt Peden and James launched Hatch from the ashes of Ptarmigan PR.

[00:13:35] A lesson for PR agencies everywhere: Why Manchester's biggest agency Ptarmigan went from 50 people to 5 in two years. 

[00:15:56] Why James finds PR graduates a really good source of talent with a broader skill set than in the past.

[00:16:21] Why the current decreasing number of PR degree places is a problem for the sector.

[00:18:05] Why Channel 4 coming to Leeds is a big shot in the arm for Leeds creative sector.

[00:19:58] How the creative agencies of Leeds wooed Channel 4 to move to the city.

[00:22:51] Which other agencies in Leeds and Manchester does James admire?

[00:24:49] How Hatch has grown at 80% in the last 12 months and what the future holds for the business.

[00:28:52] How working with partner agencies in a collaborative way has helped Hatch grow.

[00:29:33] Why geographical based PR firms are a concept from the past - geography is now not a relevant factor - it's about vertical expertise and specialist knowledge.

[00:30:54] James talks us through Hatch's role as a sponsor activation agency.

On the PRmoment Podcast this week with me Ben Smith we’re talking to Nick Braund, founder of Words and Pixels about the PR for start-ups market.

Nick founded Words and Pixels in 2020, it has a fee income of just over £1 million, grew by 300% in 2021 and specialises in the PR for start-up scene.

Just a nudge to remind you all about the final deadline for The Creative Moment Awards on Friday 1st July 2022.

And don’t forget you can become a PRmoment Podcast Patreon - just follow the link on the page where you listen to this podcast. From just £5 a month we have three different Patron Tiers - The Daney Parker Tier, The Chadlington Tier and Edward Bernays Tier.

Thanks as ever to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors The PRCA.

Here’s a summary of what Nick and PRmoment founder Ben Smith discussed:

2 mins Nick reflects on the start-up PR market at the moment?

3 mins A discussion of London’s role in the tech start-up ecosystem

“The investment community is now looking for bottom-line, rather than top-line growth”

9 mins What does good start-up PR look like?

“Half of our clients come to us because they have funding, half of our clients want us to help them get funding”

12 mins A discussion of the tech start-up media

15 mins When is the right time for a start-up to use PR?

19 mins Does start-up PR often result in funding success?

21 min Nick takes our start-up terminology test!

On the PRmoment Podcast this week with me Ben Smith we’re talking to PR academic Tom Watson about the History of PR - when, where and how did the business of public relations begin.

Tom is a professor emeritus at Bournemouth University, he taught on Bournemouth’s PR degree for a number of years. Previously he spent much of his career running his own PR firm and he was the founder of the annual History of PR Conference - the 2022 version of which takes place in Bournemouth on July 6th and 7th.

Before we start just a nudge to remind you all about the final deadline for The Creative Moment Awards on Friday 1st July 2022.

And don’t forget you can become a PRmoment Podcast Patreon - just follow the link on the page where you listen to this podcast. From just £5 a month we have three different Patron Tiers - The Daney Parker Tier, The Chadlington Tier and Edward Bernays Tier.

Here’s a summary of what Tom and I discussed:

1.30 mins How PR goes as far back as Julius Caeser and The Babylons! From the beginning of time Kings and Queens have tried to promote themselves!

3.30 mins Historically is the rise of public relations linked to the rise of journalism?

6 mins When did professional PR as we recognise it today start to appear?

8 mins How there were 3 different, separate beginnings to professional public relations - in the US, in Germany and in the UK in the 19th Century.

“Evangelical Churches, railways and circuses all played an important part in the development of publicity methods in North America.”

11 mins How public relations has tended to start with government promotion, then move onto corporate PR and then consumer brand PR would follow.

12 mins Tom talks about earlier corporate PR - “the journalist in residence model”

12.30 mins Why agencies have tended to be the final stage of PR’s evolution. The first PR agency in the UK was called “Editorial Services” which was set up by Sir Basil Clarke in 1924. The Guardian refers to Clarke as “the man who invented PR” in this archived article.

“The first public relations officer was appointed by Southern Railways in 1925”

15 mins When did public relations become a broader discipline beyond just publicity?

“It was (Arthur) Page who was the first to look at public relations in a far bigger context, affecting the whole organisation and not just a communication/publicity activity.”

17 minsTom talks us through his most important personalities in the evolution of PR

“Bernays is massively overrated in importance”

“Ivy Lee made some mistakes but he was important as he was seen as the epitomisation of this new promotional profession.”

20 mins Why does Germany remain the centre of PR research excellence?

22 mins Tom summarises the timeline of PR academia

24 mins Tom talks about the internationalisation of PR and the rise and dominance of the large US PR firms - as American companies went around the world, US PR firms followed them

25.30 mins The rise of women in PR: how we’re barely starting to research why the gender change in public relations took place from the 1980s

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

Here’s the latest of our bonus pod series where I chat to Andrew Bloch about PR Pitches and merger & acquisition trends in the UK PR scene.

Andrew is a co-founder and Non-Executive Director at Frank PR and is now Head of PR at the new business consultancy firm AAR. He is also a partner at PCB Partners where he advises on buying and selling marketing services agencies.

Don’t forget the entry deadline for The Creative Moment Awards is coming up on Friday 1st July.

Thanks to our PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here’s a summary of what we talked about:

1 min Andrew gives us his run of this month's biggest pitch news with wins for Kindred, Finn, Luchford, Stir, Alfred, Mischief, John Doe and Rise at Seven.

4 mins How likely is the PR market likely to slow down because of the cost of living crisis?

7 mins The continued trend towards project work away from retainer relationships.

8 mins The continued buoyancy of the corporate PR market - retaining the growth of the COVID years in crisis and issues work.

9 mins This month’s M&A activity round-up - including news of another funding round for Selby Anderson and a potential hiccup in Next Fifteen’s acquisition of M&C Saatchi.

On the PRmoment Podcast this week with me Ben Smith we’re talking to Chris Curtis, head of political polling at Opinium in the first of a regular slot where we discuss the latest polling trends in UK politics.

Before we start, PRmoment’s webinar caravan is off again. We’ve got a programme of 8 webinars coming up in September and November which we’ll be launching over the next 6 weeks. Already up on the site are PR Analytics, LinkedIn as a B2B Marketing Channel and The intersection of Data, Insight and PR Planning so do have a look at the home page of PRmoment where you can see the full programmes. Tickets, as ever, are at the cheap end of affordable - from only £40 plus vat.

And don’t forget if you enjoy the show you can become a PRmoment Podcast Patreon - just follow the link on the page where you listen to this podcast. From just £5 a month we have three different Patron Tiers - The Daney Parker Tier, The Chadlington Tier and Edward Bernays Tier.

Below is a summary of what we talk about, please note this podcast was recorded before Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid quit Boris Johnson's government.

1.30 mins Will Boris will go this year?

3 mins “The Prime Minister has fallen to the level of approval rating that prime ministers don’t usually come back from and things are going to get a lot worse”

4 mins Chris on why The Tories are only 3 points behind in Opinium’s latest poll from 22nd June

5 mins Chris identifies the WAND (working age, no degree) voters who “will decide the next election.”

6.30 mins 58% of WAND’s voted to leave the EU.

8 mins Why the high rate of inflation and cost of living crisis has changed the communications response required from the government to the strikes. 

On the PRmoment Podcast this week with me Ben Smith we’re talking to Darryl Sparey, co-founder of Hard Numbers about how to measure the impact of your PR

Darryl believes the opportunity is ripe for communicators everywhere to accurately measure their results through sales software like Hubspot and the like.

And today Darryl is going to give his insight into the techniques and tools that he’s found most useful in taking that approach.

Hard Numbers is a B2B tech PR firm with a fee income of £1.4 m in the last financial year and 18 employees. Darryl co-founded the business in 2020 with Paul Stollery.

Don’t forget you can become a PRmoment Podcast Patreon - just follow the link on the page where you listen to this podcast. From just £5 a month we have three different Patron Tiers - The Daney Parker Tier, The Chadlington Tier and Edward Bernays Tier.

Here’s a summary of what Darryl and I discussed:

3 mins Are most B2B PR campaigns still not properly integrated with the sales process? Aren’t we a bit beyond that now? 

4.30 mins Why PR people need to spend more time with chief revenue officers

6 mins “PR measurement is (mainly based on) content analysis, not what impacts the business.”

8.30 mins Darryl talks about the wonder of the B2B space: you can target content specifically to your buyer.

10 mins Why B2B PR firms must have read-only access to their client’s CRM and Google Analytics - otherwise they can’t do their job.

12 mins Darryl's advice for PR people: “Ask the CRO/Head of Sales: What are the most commonly held reasons why you don’t win business?”

14.30 mins A discussion of the best CRM, data and business intelligence tools

13 mins How to cost-effectively bring your data together from multiple sources

15 mins The customer’s data journey will enable you to see the content ecosystem that they operate in and the cost per acquisition of the content.

18 mins “Did that activity lead to an opportunity in the CRM and did it close?”

19 mins Darryl’s PR: sales impact tools of choice: Google Analytics, paid media channels, the clients CRM, the agency CRM (Darryl uses Hubspot), Google Data Studio, Databox, Microsoft’s Power BI.

23 mins Everyone has access to the tools: the secret source is how you bring them together in an accessible dashboard.

25 mins Darryl’s most popular impact KPIs: Leads, leads and leads

27 mins How to link content to results: links, links links

28 mins “50% of our coverage for a client, as a minimum, must have a link - if it does we can do all the clever measurement stuff. If you don’t have a link the measurement is a lot harder.”

30 mins “If you don’t get a link (in coverage) to demonstrate a referral traffic, you can use branded search stats to help show the impact of a campaign”

31 mins Why Darryl is trying to move PR down the funnel!

This week on the PRmoment podcast, in anticipation of our Influence of Influence conference on 15 May, I interviewed Rax Lakhani, freelance PR and social media consultant, about the current state of influencer marketing.

Here’s a summary of what Rax and I discussed:

[00:01:30] Why Rax turned his back on full-time PR agency employment and became a freelancer.

[00:04:56 ] Why Rax believes PR agencies have become incredibly good at commoditising what they do.

[00:06:22] Why Rax worries that PR sector is not embracing influencer marketing enough and how he thinks PR firms are getting influencer marketing wrong.

[00:07:55] Why ad agencies have forced the term influencer marketing onto PR – and we've just accepted it.

[00:10:22] Why the word influencer has become such a broad term – it's become meaningless.

[00:13:37] Why the multiple points of influence that most of us have, means that paid influencer marketing has a limited impact.

[00:14:13] Why Rax finds it offensive when influencers self define themselves as influencers.

[00:16:37] Why there is now no such thing as a YouTuber – all the channels are interrelated.

[00:18:51] Why PROs should have a different kind of relationship with influencers who are celebrities and those who are influencers because of their expertise.

[00:19:14] Why Rax believes PR should "overwhelmingly" never pay influencers.

[00:20:31] Why Rax believes PR should backtrack out of paid influencer campaigns.

[00:21:47] Why, bit by bit, Rax believes PR people are eroding and diluting the importance of what they do.

[00:22:16] Why margins are rubbish in paid media.

[00:23:38] Why, by entering the earned media space in influencer marketing, PR firms are devaluing their role.

[00:25:40] Why the increasing amount of regulation in the influencer marketing space should help earned posts.

[00:28:10] How to be good at influence relations, PR people have to be active to build relationships with influencers in that sector – there are no homogenous sector influencer lists; it depends on your brand, the age demographic, the target demographic, etc.  

[00:29:24 ] How PR people have become too fixated on where and who influencers are –  rather than how can we work with them.

[00:29:53] Why Rax uses none of the influencer mapping tools that are available.

[00:35:56] What are the influencer marketing KPIs that Rax recommends?

[00:39:09] Why the word ‘content’ annoys Rax.

[00:39:32] Why content is not king, it is merely a vehicle to help you reach your communications objectives.

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

This week we’re chatting to Alex Aiken, long-time executive director, of the UK Government’s Communication Service.

We’re going to talk to Alex about his career in government communications, the personalities of the Prime Ministers he’s worked with and the changes he made during his time heading up the Government Communications Service.

Before we start, just to tell you about PRmoment’s new Patron Scheme. If you are a regular consumer of our content, including this podcast, and you’re getting value from it, if you fancy making a contribution to help fund PRmoment - now you can.

We have three different Patron Tiers—The Daney Parker Tier, The Chadlington Tier and Edward Bernays Tier.

And do check out the home page of PRmoment for our latest webinars, including PR Analytics, LinkedIn as a B2B Marketing Channel and The intersection of Data, Insight and PR Planning.

Finally, thanks to our PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

This interview was recorded before the resignation of Boris Johnson as the UK’s Prime Minister.

Alex welcome to the show: 

2 mins Alex talks us through his new job!

3 mins Alex reflects on his 9 years heading up the UK’s Government Communications Service, a period which covered The Referendum, Brexit, COVID and Putin’s war in Ukraine

“What I wanted to do is create an exceptional standard of government communication”

5 mins Alex compares the 3 Prime Ministers he’s worked with  - David Cameron, Theresa May and then Boris Johnson. How would you compare their leadership styles?

6 mins Alex discusses the leadership styles of Cameron, May and Johnson.

“The demands on PMs is so much greater in 2022 than when I started”

7 mins How Prime Ministers have had to adapt their leadership styles over the last 10 years.

“The UK Government is a £700 bn beast that operates 24/7”

8 mins Does the work of GCS’s change depending on who is the leader of the government? Or is the approach fairly standard?

9 mins Due to the volume of communications channels - has the complexity of government communications become too complex?

11 mins As a government communicator does Alex worry about the impact of the current “party” scandals on the public’s trust in government?

13 mins Alex about his passion for effective government communications and how “effective public service communications can change, improve, enhance and save lives”

14 mins“The issue, whether your private sector or public sector, is evaluation”

16 mins How can governments fight disinformation? Alex recommends the RESIST toolkit for further reading. 

20 mins Alex talks about the risk of the UK coming under a cyber security attack from a foreign government.

20.30 mins Alex discusses the behavioural science strategy behind the UK’s COVID communications.

22.30 mins Will Alex’s work on the UK government's evaluation framework be his legacy from his 

Welcome to this week's The PRmoment Podcast.

On the show, this week is James Beveridge, founder of Made by Giants. James is one of PR's most experienced creative directors. He moved from the creative agency Further into PR in 2014 to work for Fishburn. 

He started Made by Giants back in 2020 and it's now a £700K B2B tech PR firm.

On the show today we're going to talk about some research that James has been doing on creative directors in PR, the skill sets of good creative directors in PR and also the theme of James' 30-year PR career - the intersection between design and communication.

Do take a look at the homepage of PRmoment for details on all our latest webinars and thanks so much to our PRmoment Podcast sponsors The PRCA.

James welcome to the show.

2 mins James talks us through his research into how many creative directors there are in PR.

6 mins James' hypothesis is that most Creative Directors in PR come from a PR background - this means that they are likely to be more tuned into the news agenda and good with words but they may miss the visual dimension of creativity.

“They lack the qualifications, skills and experience in conceptual visual and design skills that make creativity”

6.30 mins How often do PR creative directors miss out because they didn’t go to art school?

8.30 mins According to James’ research 38% of creative directors in PR have no creative qualifications and 21% of PR agencies have creative directors with a design background.

9 mins Is James saying PR has got the creative director role wrong? Or does a creative director in PR just have a different skill set than that in advertising?

12.30 mins James talks about why he places such an emphasis on the craft between creativity and design.

14 mins James talks about how different types of businesses need creativity in different ways - from a category creator, to a disruptor, an evolutionary or a refresher business strategy.

15.30 mins Why does B2B creative still lack the aura of consumer creativity?

18 mins James talks us through what his experience of starting a business previously taught him when it came to starting Made By Giants. 

19 mins What was the catalyst that led to James and Made By Giants co-founder Grace Keeling to set up a business together?

20 mins Made By Giants doesn't have an office but hires out a hotel lobby once a week where they all spend a day together!

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

This week we’re chatting to Alex Myers, founder and global CEO of Manifest. Manifest employees circa 70 people globally, has a fee income of over £5m globally, with about $2m of that coming from its fast-growing New York Office. London remains its largest hub. 

It also has offices in Stockholm and Melbourne.

Do check out the home page of PRmoment for our latest webinars, including PR Analytics, LinkedIn as B2B Marketing Channel and The intersection of Data, Insight and PR Planning.

Finally, thanks to our PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here’s a flavour of what Alex and PRmoment founder Ben Smith discussed:

2 mins We last had Alex on the show in 2018. How have the last 4 years been for Manifest?

4 mins Alex discusses the challenges of trying to take a British consumer PR firm global.

7 mins Alex talks about the UK PR market - from regulation, culture and media differences. 

10 mins Digital media is very fragmented in the US, so you can’t start with the media - you have to start with the brand strategy.

13 mins “Sustainability is a four-letter word in Sweden, it’s beige level.”

15 mins What was the decision-making behind where Mianfest launched its international offices?

20 mins Why Manifest have just changed its creative team’s structure - making it a centralised resource.

23 mins “I don’t care what room the money is in as long as it’s in the house.”

24 mins “I didn’t set up the business to be a boss, I set up the business to not have a boss.”

24 mins Alex talks us through Manifest’s central strategy of trying to move its work “upstream.”

26 mins “The best articulation of your brand is your product”

31 mins “The challenge with the words “public relations” is that they don’t tell you what it (PR) does”

34 mins Alex argues that PR agencies that are part of networks are in danger of being merged into the holding company's “endorsement brand.”

37 mins “It’s not about efficiency it’s about efficacy - there are too many channels to have a budget for each of them…you need a customer-based strategy, not a channel strategy”

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

This week we’re chatting to Rebecca Grant, UK CEO,  BCW Global. 

Rebecca has one of the biggest jobs in UK PR. She heads up a team of over 200 people at BCW’s London office and she led the Cohn & Wolfe London operation through the merger with Burson Masteller to a period of significant growth for what was already a big PR and comms operation.

Rebecca joined BCW in 2011, previously she worked for Weber Shandwick and The Red Consultancy. She was appointed UK CEO on 2016.

And do check out the home page of PRmoment for our latest webinars, including PR Analytics, LinkedIn as a B2B Marketing Channel and The intersection of Data, Insight and PR Planning.

Finally, thanks to our PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here is a summary of what Rebecca and PRmoment founder Ben Smith discussed:

3 mins Rebecca on what it's like running a PR team of over 200 people.

5 mins Rebecca reflects on how PR has changed so much in a relatively short period of time

6 mins Rebecca’s personal story is an interesting one. Her grandmother moved to the UK as a refugee from Zanzibar - so she is living proof of the moral and economic benefits of welcoming refugees into the UK.

10 mins I put it to Rebecca that she’s got the second biggest PR agency job in the UK!

11 mins What is Rebecca most proud of during her time as UK CEO of BCW?

14 mins How has the type of work that BCW has changed in the last couple of years?

“When I started this job (in 2018) the briefs and client problems were contained at a practice level, so you’d have a  consumer brief and a corporate brief or a healthcare brief, the client work we’re doing now isn’t confined by those silos, it’s about a business challenge.”

“As a PR agency, you have a very different perspective on your client’s business than many of your competitors within the marketing (consultancy) world.”

16 mins WPP’s PR Division grew by 27.4% in Q1 2022 - how did the UK bit of BCW fair?

18 mins Has the cost of living crisis impacted the PR agency market yet?

19.30 mins It's been a full-on couple of years at BCW - they had the merger of Burson Marsteller and Cohn & Wolfe and then Covid. What's the shape of the business at the moment? Is the bulk of the revenue still in corporate and healthcare?

22 mins What type of consumer work is coming out of BCW London?

24 mins BCW has just moved into WPP's office in Bankside - does Rebecca worry that it will be an increasing challenge to retain the BCW brands and culture in a multi-firm office?

25 mins A discussion of how multi-disciplinary, multi-agency teams within a holding group can work together.

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

Here’s the latest of our bonus pod series where I chat to Andrew Bloch about PR Pitches and merger & acquisition trends in the UK PR scene.

Andrew is a co-founder and Non-Executive Director at Frank PR and is now Head of PR at the new business consultancy firm AAR. He is also a partner at PCB Partners where he advises on buying and selling marketing services agencies.

Don’t forget the early entry deadline for The ESG Awards is coming up on Friday 16th September.

Thanks to our PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here’s a summary of what Andrew and I discussed:

3 mins It’s been a bumper month on the PR agency new business front and Andrew talks us through some of the most recent PR account wins including wins for Adhuro, Ketchum, Edelman, The Academy, Boldspace, news of a shake-up of Direct Line’s agency roster, Kindred, Splendid, Tin Man, Wildcard and Spider.

9 mins Andrew updates us on the PR M&A market: we’ve seen the larger enterprise values (over $50/100m) deals suffer from uncertainty in the market.

11 mins The number of micro deals involving independent PR firms continues to increase with organisations continuing to want to broaden their offer.

12 mins Andrew M&A acquisition update: including Splendid’s acquisition of Riot, Enero and Hotwire’s continued buying spree, Square in the Air and CTP launch of a JV called Chalk+Dog, another Selby Anderson acquisition and PMLR’s acquisition of Health Comms Consultants.

20 mins “You need scale to succeed…to generate organic growth but also as a protectionist measure.”

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

This week we’re chatting to Ruth Allchurch, UK MD WE. We’re going to talk about Ruth’s career to date including her time at Diageo, her experience at Cirkle and most recently at WE where she has took the UK income of the firm to close to £7m, from about £3m when she joined as the UK MD 4 years ago.

Currently, 60 people work in London for WE and current clients include Capgemini, Intel, Abbott, Johnson & Johnson, Boehringer Ingelheim and Google Waves.

Before we start - if you haven’t seen them already - take a look at the categories for The ESG Awards - the early entry deadline is 16th September.

And do check out the home page of PRmoment for our latest webinars, including PR Analytics, LinkedIn as a B2B Marketing Channel, The Most Popular KPIs in PR and The intersection of Data, Insight and PR Planning.

Finally, thanks to our PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here's a summary of what Ruth and PRmoment founder Ben Smith discussed:

2 mins Ruth talks us through how a PR firm with a fee income of £3m turned itself into a PR firm with a fee income of over £6.5m inside 4 years. 

“There is no scope for ambiguity when you're looking to grow a business”

“We were overservicing on low fee accounts…it's not about more clients its about having healthier partnerships with the ones we choose wot work with”

9 mins Ruth was on Weber Shandwick’s first-ever graduate training programme. In PR it seems unfashionable to be a graduate at the moment - would Ruth go to Uni again?

11 mins Are graduate PR schemes still a good idea?

13  mins Ruth started her career agency side at Weber Shandwick and then went to Cohn & Wolfe before she went in-house at Diageo. How important was that period in-house in the story of her career?

15 mins Why did Ruth leave a nice in-house role to go back agency side when she joined Cirkle?

17 mins Ruth talks us through her time at Cirkle.

 “It was probably the steepest learning curve I’ve ever had in my career”

19 mins Why did Ruth leave BCW to move to WE?

22 mins How has the type of work changed that WE UK does in the last 4 years?

“We do much more employee engagement work than we’ve ever done before”

24 mins Has the culture of WE changed in the last 4 years?

26 mins What do you need to do to change the culture of a PR firm?

28 mins Ruth talks us through why she’s not a great fan of the pitching process, and how she’d change it.

31 mins Why Ruth doesn’t believe PR prices itself correctly.

32 mins As a female leader of perhaps the only female-founded international PR network - what mark out of 10 does  Ruth give PR on its gender equality progress?

33.30 mins Ruth talks us through her experience of having a Ukrainian family stay for 4 months.

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

This week we’re chatting to Bradley Tooth, head of social media at Democracy PR about how brands can move from broadcasting content on social media to engaging with their customers and potential customers through social media.

For those vintage social media users amongst our listeners - Brad was one of the guys who got blisters on his hands when 02 attempted to reply to every customer's Tweet during the early days of its Surprise and Delight strategy.

Since then Brad has done some super interesting work for Sage - which we’ll talk about later and now he works for Democracy PR

Thanks to our PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here are a few of the highlights that Brad and PRmoment founder Ben Smtih discussed:

2 mins How Brad believes so many brands are getting their social media strategy wrong by broadcasting too much content and not engaging with their audiences.

“Of all The Premier League football club's Facebook posts last year, not one of them replied to a customer comment”

3 mins Understanding on-feed and off-feed content on the social platforms

4 mins What sort of content gets engagement?

“Look at Manchester United on TikTok, they wax lyrical about the number of views their content has generated - views are great but TikTok’s basis and antithesis is that it is an engagement problem and they (Manchester United) don’t respond!... It’s madness - the way the platforms work is that when you respond to your customers and you’re a verified account, you get more views”

6 mins How the social media channel algorithms reward engagement

7 mins Can social media engagement be automated?

“AI’s great for lots of stuff, but social networks are for people”

9  mins How brands can manage and respond in an engaging way on social - by scaling up and scaling down.

10 mins Where does a social media engagement strategy meet the customer services team?

“Don’t try and close off conversations on social…Why would you want to stop your customers from communicating with you!?”

14 mins Is the trick to get lots of engagement as a brand - to be funny? And lots of brands don’t want to be funny?

“Engagement doesn’t have to be funny, it has to be authentic…tailor yourself to the room”

16 mins How are brands scaling up and down their social media teams?

“Comms people are best placed to deliver interactions (on social)”
“Social never sleeps and it never stops - sign up to the platform notification updates to see how quickly things change”

18 mins What is the skill set of a good social media community manager?

20 min Good engagement requires specific content across different channels, Brad talks us through what that looks like across the channels.

22 mins What are the best tools to help brands manage their communities across the different social media channels?

“The platforms want you to interact on their platforms”

26 mins Brad discusses the need for brands to adapt their social media strategies according to the platform’s algorithm.

28 mins Brad talks us through “The Sage Boss it 2021” campaign, 

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

This week we’re chatting to Emily Morgan, managing director, operations and innovation at The Red Consultancy.

Emily has worked at Red for over 22 years and she’s recently evolved her role too, as the job title suggests, prioritise innovation within the firm.

The Red Consultancy has a fee income of about £13m and is part of the Accordience, which was previously known as the Huntsworth Group. Red has a fee income of circa £14 m.

The nature of a consultancy business is that to continue to add value to clients, you must innovate and as has been widely discussed the last 5 years have seen huge changes to the PR business and therefore the PR consultancy business - so I thought it would be interesting to get Emily on the show to talk about the innovation predictions and priorities in 2022 and beyond.

Before we start - if you haven’t seen them already - take a look at the categories for The ESG Awards - the early entry deadline is 16th September.

And do check out the home page of PRmoment for our latest webinars, including PR Analytics, The Most Popular KPIs in PR and The intersection of Data, Insight and PR Planning.

Indeed Emily is a speaker at our free-to-attend Most Popular KPIs in PR webinar - so if you like the sound of what she talks about today - do register for that one.

Finally, thanks to our PRmoment Podcast sponsor, The PRCA.

Here’s a summary of what Emily and PRmoment founder Ben Smith discussed: 

2.30 mins Why does Emily believe the pace of innovation in PR firms has increased?

3 mins Emily talks us through the different types of innovation within a PR firm - from client innovation, to service innovation, to employee-related innovations and innovation of the PR tech stack.

6.30 mins The raison d'etre of an agency is pretty much about being able to innovate - isn't that why clients have always hired agencies?

8 mins Emily talks us through the intersection of innovation and operations within a PR firm.

10 mins Innovation is such a broad word - it can encapsulate tiny process changes through to business-critical changes - how does Emily search for innovation within Red?

14 mins How does a modern PR firm's offer need to adapt to updated client needs? Beyond ideas and activation - what else do clients want?

17 mins Culture and sharing knowledge are pretty key to innovation, Emily explains how Red has balanced the desire for employees not to want to be in the office 5 days a week with the need to retain collegiate working practices.

25.30 mins Emily talks us through what the intersection of people and technology looks like at Red.

28 mins What innovations in the PR agency market over the last few years have stood out for Emily?

This week on the PRmoment Podcast, in the latest of our life stories series, I’m interviewing Sharon Bange, managing partner at Kindred.

Kindred has a fee income of circa £5m, a turnover of approx £9m and employs circa 50 people.

It is an interesting story because the business almost went bust in 2010 (for reasons discussed in the podcast) but it has since recovered.

Sharon has been with the business since 2003 and is now a managing partner.

[00:00:48] How Sharon ended up in PR although her first choice of career was to become a social worker.

[00:02:53] How Kindred has come back from the brink of administration.   

[00:03:21 ] Why, when David Cameron's Conservative Government came to power in 2010, it had immediate negative implications for Kindred because 90% of its client base was public sector government work.

[00:03:41] Hear how the morning after the 2010 election, the phones at Kindred kept ringing –  and it was government departments ending their contracts.

[00:04:43] How by the summer of 2010 (the election was in May) Kindred as a business was "completely decimated" and "all of the clients that the business was built around couldn't spend with us anymore."

[00:05:57] How Nick Mustoe and the Kindred management team took over the business in what was, in effect, a management buyout.

[00:07:35] Why associate directors and above got equity in the new Kindred.

[00:07:51] Why having a shared-ownership structure played an important part in rebuilding the business

[00:08:54] Where do you start – when 90% of a businesses work disappears overnight?

[00:10:23] How did the team at Kindred manage to win enough work quickly enough to keep the business going?

[00:11:57] Ten years ago, Kindred bolted its public relations business together with an advertising and creative agency – Sharon looks back at the lessons learnt in hindsight.

[00:13:23] How people at Kindred often work across disciplines, functions and sectors.

[00:15:18] Why Sharon has spent her whole 15-year career at Kindred.

[00:15:45] Why, for Sharon, the culture at Kindred means it is a special place for her.

[00:16:42] How Sharon regards herself as risk averse but likes a challenge!

[00:17:29] Sharon talks us through her personal values and why they are important to her. Hint: she doesn't like bullshitters!

[00:20:15] How it has worked for the business having two managing partners – Sinead Gray and Sharon.

[00:20:48] Why lots of people at Kindred do not work full time

[00:24:25] Why earned media and paid media do different things in influencer marketing.

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

This week we’re chatting to Emma Kane, Chief Executive of SEC Newgate UK and Deputy Group CEO Deputy SEC Newgate S.p.A about her career story in public relations.

Previously Emma founded Redleaf Communications before selling the business to Porta in 2014. Porta combined with SEC Newgate in June 2019 in a reverse merger to form SEC Newgate.

This integrated a number of businesses that had been acquired over the years including Redleaf, Publicasity, Newgate, SEC and Newington.  

SEC Newgate has 43 offices globally, has revenues of about $150m and employs 900 people globally.

Before we start - if you haven’t seen them already - take a look at the categories for The ESG Awards - the final entry deadline is 7th October.

And do check out the home page of PRmoment for our latest webinars, including PR Analytics, LinkedIn as a B2B Marketing Channel, The Most Popular KPIs in PR and The intersection of Data, Insight and PR Planning.

Finally, thanks to our PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here’s a summary of what Emma and PRmoment founder Ben Smith discussed: 

2 mins Emma’s career is a wonderful story of PR agency secretary to PR agency CEO. Here she talks us through how that happened.

“One day my saxophone got exchanged for a briefcase!”

4.30 mins Emma gives us a potted history of her career in PR

5 mins Emma explains how a psychometric test she needed to take for a new job lead to her having a crisis of confidence!

8 mins Emma talks us through when she had an awful experience in one job, “the leadership was feral and the culture was toxic…The catalyst for setting up my own agency was a day when a book that was left on my desk entitled ‘How to dine out and look weight’’

12 mins Emma describes the decision in 2000 to found Redleaf Communications - as the most important decision of her career.

15 mins How significant was Redleaf’s acquisition of Polhill in the company’s growth story?

20 mins How and why did Emma decide to sell Redleaf to Porta in 2019 and how did the original deal with Porta work?

24 mins Emma talks us through how Porta became SEC Newgate.

25 mins Emma became Chief Executive of SEC Newgate UK and Joint Group CEO in April 2018 - here she explains why it was a turnaround job for the UK business at that point in time.

28.30 mins SEC Newgate acquired US firm Global Strategy Group in 2022 - which prior to being acquired had a turnover of $54 million in 2021 - so in PR land that’s a big deal size!

31 mins It seems to me, quite quietly SEC Newgate has had a pretty formidable couple of years. What sort of shape is the business in now? And what type of work does SEC Newgate want to be known for?

33 mins Emma talks us through how in her spare time she is Vice Chair & Chair Global Development Board for the Elton John AIDS Foundation and chair of Target Ovarian Cancer. 

This week we’re chatting to Chris Owen, UK Director at The Hoffman Agency about his experience being an alcoholic working in public relations.

Chris has written a number of articles about the period of his life when he drank too much, including Things I don’t miss about alcohol addiction and How the NHS saved my life. 

On the show today we talk about Chris’s problems with alcohol in the context of his career as a PR professional. We ask whether working in public relations made him more likely to become an alcoholic.

Don't forget that this Friday, October 7th is the final entry deadline for The ESG Awards.

Thanks to our PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here’s a summary of what Chris and PRmoment founder discussed:

2 mins Chris talks us through when he started drinking too much, the impact it had on his life and when he realised it was a problem.

3 mins When did Chris start his recovery?

6 mins “I was on the phone with my dad one day and he said, we think you should go to The Priory…I was so tired, so exhausted.”

8 mins Chris talks about his recovery journey: ”I just wanted it (my alcoholism) to finish.”

10 mins ”A lot of addiction is based around shame.”

“You’re not a bad person trying to be good, you're an unwell person trying to get well.”

11 mins “In the same way as a person with a peanut allergy can’t have a little bit of a Snickers, I just know I can’t have a drop of alcohol.”

14 mins Chris was an alcoholic before he started his career in PR but did the type of work and the work routine of a public relations job make his alcoholism worse?

15.30 mins Why PR creates opportunities to drink for those who cannot drink safely.

17.30 mins What can PR employers do to either help employees who are alcoholics or reduce the drinking culture within their firms?

22.30 mins “You can foster a great culture without alcohol but alcohol plays a role within our society…there’s a gradient between alcohol being part of the culture that helps people unwind and it becoming part of the fabric of an agency. That’s when it gets a little bit toxic.”

23 mins If you’ve got a drinking problem, or you’re concerned about someone you know, what should you do? Chris signposts us to some helpful resources:

• Alcoholics Anonymous
• We Are With You (formally Addaction.)
• The NHS has some good information on how to get help and also some advice on how to approach your GP.
• Mind has a useful list of resources and advice on how to help someone with an alcoholic problem.
• Turning Point including its rehabilitation services.
• Drinkaware

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

Here’s the latest of our bonus pod series where I chat to Andrew Bloch about PR Pitches and merger & acquisition trends in the UK PR scene.

Andrew is a co-founder and non-executive director at Frank PR and is now Head of PR at the new business consultancy firm AAR. He is also a partner at PCB Partners where he advises on buying and selling marketing services agencies.

Do take a look at the PRmoment home page for details on our latest webinars, including The intersection of Data, Insight and PR Planning.

Finally thanks to our PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here’s a summary of what Andrew and I discussed:

1 min Andrew gives his rundown of new business wins, including wins for Havas, Golin, Ready 10, Frank, Stir, Finn Partners, Tin Man and Simon and Simon.

5 mins “Pitch wise it feels busier than ever… but definitely more project work (than retainers) and a slowing in terms of the decision making.”

8 mins Andrew gives us his thoughts on a year-on-year comparison of the number of PR new business briefs.

9 mins“What you tend to see is that for a lot of the big advertising briefs and big media briefs - the PR briefs follow on. I’ve got visibility on the ad world and media world and it’s crazy busy at the moment.” So maybe there are lots of PR briefs coming in the near future?

11 mins Andrew gives his M&A update with some big trade side acquisitions from Finn Partners, kyu’s acquisition of Lexington, Hill+Knowlton Strategies' acquisition of the Jeffrey Group in Latin America and WE’s acquisition of Hopscotch.

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

On the show today we're talking to Madan Bahal, co-founder of India's largest PR firm. Madan and I are going to talk about how, as an independent firm, Adfactors has grown from being one of a pack of highly regarded PR agencies in India - to becoming the biggest PR firm in India, frankly by a long, long way.

It's a story that any independent PR firm founder or CEO should hear because while it's become an inspirational story, it's also a story of hard work and risk but ultimately reward.

Many of our listeners of this podcast are from the UK and the US and may be less familiar with the story of Adfactors. For context, it is, by miles, India's biggest PR firm. Adfactors has a fee income of about $50 million. Their nearest rival is less than half of that size and all the big US firms have a presence in India, including Edelman, BCW and Weber.

So, to give it a UK equivalent, the largest independent British-owned firm in the UK is Freuds. It would be like Freud's being more than twice the size of Edelman in London.

So Adfactors is a quite remarkable story and today its co-founder Madan Bahal is on the show to give his insight to independent PR firm owners everywhere on how to scale their business and take on and win against the group-owned firms.

2022 marks 25 years since Adfactors PR was founded.

Here is a summary of what Madan and PRmoment founder Ben Smith discussed:

3 mins Madan, with 25 years of hindsight, reflects on how Adfactors has progressed and his recent induction into the Page Hall of Fame

“History only has so much relevance… I always drive with my eyes on the road ahead.”

“The scale of complexity we are seeing makes me feel worried… the scale of disruption and the scale of complexity we are seeing (means) that the world will expect public (deeper) relations counsel… I don’t think public relations firms by and large are evolving quickly enough to be able to deal with the same level of complexity in terms of its counsel” 

5.30 mins Madan talks us through how Adfactors went from an $18m firm in 2015 to a $50m+ firm in 2022.

“How do you keep investing in remaining relevant over time? How do you invest in your leadership? Adfactors has remained true to the craft and value proposition of public relations … our value proposition is earned influence.”

9 mins As the owner of arguable the world's most successful independent PR firm - what is Madan’s advice for his independent agency peers?

“Today independence is a strategic advantage - the network firms have lost their flexibility and adaptability. If someone buys a laptop in India the CFO has to do the clearance!”

“The important thing is to run your business as if you are never going to sell it!”

“Democratise power, responsibility and problem solving to the smallest possible level - so you are eliminated from the burden of carrying it all on your shoulders”

12 mins Madan reveals when he was close to selling Adfactors.

17.30 mins Madan talks us through his training priorities currently and what is Adfactor’s training budget per head.

“The paradigm of influence has changed”

21 mins Madan talks about his partnership with his co-founder Rajesh Chaturvedi. They have worked together for 25 years. What makes a successful business partnership?

“Professional services sectors tend to grow at twice the rate of GDP”

29 mins Madan talks about PR’s overservicing problem and his approach to solving this challenge.

31 mins 

“Underspending is the best way of overspending…the market is the best teacher - when they (clients) realise the value of reputation.”

This week we’re chatting to Sheeraz Gulsher, EMEA communications, Snap and co-founder of People Like Us, about whether PR is making any progress in its quest to be more diverse and represent the audience that it aspires to communicate with.

Before we start, do check out the home page of PRmoment for our latest webinars, including The intersection of Data, Insight and PR Planning and The State of Social Media Marketing Report.

1 min Sheeraz tells us about People Like Us and its next event.

4 mins Sheeraz talks us through other communities and programmes for minority groups in PR, namely: BMEPR Pros, The Blueprint, The Taylor Bennett Foundation and The Black Comms Network.

5 mins Sheeraz talks us through how it feels to be part of a minority group and work in public relations.

“There were points when I felt so alone and inadequate.”

8 mins Sheeraz gives us an insight into what the barriers are for people working in PR from Black, Asian, mixed race and minority ethnic people working in comms.

9 mins “We want to show people how brilliant we are”

10 mins How can PR employers become better at employing people from Black, Asian, mixed race and minoritised ethnic backgrounds.

“The Taylor Bennett Foundation is a hugely important organisation… that supports young ethnic minority people getting into comms”

“Having that feeling that you’re part of something - that means the world”

12 mins Sheeraz talks about the work of the Brixton Finishing School as an organisation promoting young diverse talent.

13 mins What are the common themes for PR employers who are not attracting enough people from minority groups?

“No one cares about duvet days or Friday bar anymore - you need to keep it real and show your commitment. What is your representation at the leadership or board level, and what are your commitments to making a more inclusive working environment? … Also, people talk.”

15 mins A lot of PR employers say the reason they don't have more employees from Black, Asian, mixed race and minoritised ethnic backgrounds is they can't find the applicants working in PR. Does Sheezaz agree with that?

“The talent is 100% out there”

18 mins Does PR have a bigger diversity problem than law, design or marketing, for example?

22 mins How does Sheeraz see PR’s diversity problem?

24 mins Sheeraz talks us through the stats behind PR’s ethnicity pay gap.

28 mins Is 25% a sensible diversity target for PR employers?

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

This week we’re chatting to Charles Tattersall, chief executive of Citypress about why he decided to sell his business to his employees through an employee-owned trust, rather than via an acquisition.

In the show today we’re going to tell you agency owners out there what you need to know about taking your agency business into employee ownership. Charles will talk us through why he thinks agency owners should sell their business to their employees and how you can do it.

For background, Citypress is an £11m fee income PR firm which was independently owned and became an employee-owned trust in 2021.

Before we start do check out the home page of PRmoment for our latest webinars, including The intersection of Data, Insight and PR Planning and The State of Social Media 2022.

And thanks to our PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here’s a summary of what  and PRmoment founder discussed:

2 mins Charles talks us through what is an employee-owned trust and how they work.

3.30 mins Who controls an employee-owned trust and how much do the original owners of the business have to pass on to the trust?

“The previous shareholders cannot form the majority of the board on the trust”

5 mins “A trust is the steward of ownership, there are no direct shareholders…it’s a limited company that has directors but its article of association means it’s not owned by anyone, it exists for the employees of the business.”

8 mins A discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of the owner selling your business to an employee-owned trust compared to an exit via acquisition (both a trade sale and a private equity sale).

“The challenge with an MBO is ultimately finance…that a big barrier for a lot of organisations”

With an EOT “effectively the funding for the sale comes from future profits”

11 mins Why Charles is amazed that more PR agency owners haven’t gone the employee-owned trust route.

“One of the incentives is capital gains tax relieve on the sale.”

11.30 mins If you want more information about EOTs, The Employee Ownership Organisation is a good place to start. 

12 mins  While the advantages of an EOT exit are that it takes the risk and the uncertainty of the sale out of the for the owners of a business, are business owners going to get the same amount of money from an EOT exit compared to an exit via acquisition?

“It depends Ben…it comes down to supply and demand”

“If you run a business you always face a dilemma of what your potential exit is”

“There are a small minority of businesses that are attractive to an outside acquirer”

18 minsWhere does the money come from to form an employee-owned trust?

“There are 3 types of payment our people get - their salary, their performance bonus based on how the business performs each year and when it comes to the profitability of the company, a certain proportion of the profits go to the trust and that is distributed to the people who are working for the business in that given year…so there’s a huge incentive for employees.”

21 mins What is the tax incentive from the UK government or business owners to give their businesses to their employees paid from future profits?

“It’s actually quite liberating (for me) not to be a majority shareholder of the company”

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

This week we’ve put in a bonus podcast where we chat about Rajar’s latest results. For those of you that aren’t aware of Rajar - it was established in 1992 and operates the single audience measurement system for the radio industry in the United Kingdom

Each quarter they publish the listenership figures for UK radio and this offers a really interesting insight for PR people on how the UK public is engaging with this important channel. 

On the show today we have Howard Kosky, CEO of markettiers to talk us through the latest Rajar results.

Before we start the PRmoment Awards 2023 are now open for entries - do check out the awards site PRmomentAwards.com

Thanks to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here’s a summary of what Howard and PRmoment founder Ben Smith discussed:

1.30 mins A record 49.7 million adults listen to the radio every week, 89% of the UK adult population, over 1 billion radio hours consumed each week and the average listener listens to 20.6 hours of live radio each week.

3 mins 63% of people are listening to the radio at home, 23% of people are listening in the car and 14% at work or in places like the gym.

4 mins How technology and changes in consumers working practices post-COVID have evolved people’s radio listening habits.

4.30 min 13% of people listen to the radio through a smart speaker and 23% listen to the radio via online listening (streaming), DAB has dropped to 39%, Apps 10.2%

“The technology is driving the trend”

7.30 mins What is the opportunity for PR people in the modern radio market?

“There are more choices a listener, which means the opportunity to reach a more indexed audience is greater from a PR and communications perspective but it means more effort.”

“If you’re trying to mobilise a behaviour at a local level or at an age demographic or a profile demographic then the ability to reach tight audience group is absolutely there.”

 9.30 mins What are the main content opportunities for PR people within radio?

“They are radio stations first but increasingly multimedia platforms”

13 mins Commercial radio has had a phenomenal year - “all commercial” radio is up from 36.8 million to 38.2 million, and local commercial radio is up from 24.4 million to 25.8 million.

“I take my hat off to how the likes of Global and Bauer have implemented a strategy…to give listeners choice…They have recognised there is an opportunity to provide targeted programming output to reach a particular audience group”

19 mins Why the BBC is trying to drop the age bracket of Radio 2 by not renewing the contracts of the likes of Steve Wright.

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

This week we’re chatting about the role of modern corporate affairs with Sian O'Keefe, vice president of corporate affairs, Mars Wrigley Europe, Central Eurasia, Belarus & Turkey.

It’s a corporate affairs special this week and Sian and I talked about the increased breadth and importance of the corporate affairs role within large businesses.

We’ll discuss the reasons behind this change, where the most important intersections are within a business for a corporate affairs leader and how ESG and a rapidly changing stakeholder environment have increased the demands on most corporate affairs teams.

Before we start the PRmoment Awards 2023 are now open for entries - do check out the awards site PRmomentAwards.com

Thanks to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here’s a summary of what Sian and PRmoment founder Ben Smith discussed:

1.30 mins Sian talks us through what she sees as the role of modern corporate affairs.

“The role of corporate affairs has changed…our stakeholders expect us to communicate regularly and they want to engage with us regularly…through a variety of different channels and media.”

“Our job is about accessing the external landscape”

4.30 mins What are the key responsibilities of a corporate affairs leader?

2 mins How much has corporate affairs changed in the last few years?

6.30mins How often does the corporate affairs team need to interact with the CEO and on what type of issues?

7 mins What are the other key connections within a business for the corporate affairs director?

“Spot the opportunities to tell our stories”

“People come up with a lot of great ideas but time and resources are not infinite”

10 mins How has the increased importance of ESG changed the priorities of the corporate affairs role?

“Mars’ corporate purpose: The world we want tomorrow starts with how we do business today”

12 mins Sian gives us an insight into how Mars has tried to bring a purpose to chewing gum because it's not the most obvious purpose-lead product.

“The public look to organisations to have a purpose and play a positive role…it can get quite complicated if every brand has a purpose”

15.30 mins What range of skills do you need in a modern corporate affairs department?

“The critical skills in being successful in corporate affairs are adaptability, resilience, innate curiosity…and business acumen.”

16 mins What does the average day in corporate affairs look like, how do you bring a process to the role?

17.30 mins What does a corporate affairs leader want from their agency?

19 mins A discussion about whether the central reason public relations has grown so much over the past 10 years is that stakeholder engagement has become more important.

20.30 mins Do organisations have a choice about whether they will engage with stakeholders, or has it become a cost of doing business?

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

Today we’re talking about PR degrees - or rather the lack of them! To confirm there are still a number of excellent PR degree courses available but there are far fewer PR undergraduate places in the UK than there were 10 years ago.

On the show this week we look into the reasons behind this, asking whether it is a UK-centric trend and whether it’s a decline that can be reversed.

Over the past 5-10 years we’ve seen a massive reduction in the number of undergraduate PR degree places available and as a result, this has seen a big reduction in the number of PR degree graduates coming into PR.

Before we start - just to flag, no one is suggesting that PR degrees should be the only way into PR - that would be ridiculous - but today we’re going to look into the reasons why PR degrees in the UK are less popular than they were and whether this is a trend that can be turned around.

Without pointing out the obvious, while PR degrees have become less popular, PR has grown significantly in the last 5-10 years and this has led to a significant increase in demand in the PR labour market.

This increased demand for PR talent has outstripped supply, leading to a shortage of talent being the number one growth limiting factor for most PR firms and in-house teams.

On the show to discuss this are Tasos Theofilou, principal academic in Public Relations at Bournemouth University, Dr Martina Topic, course leader, Public Relations with Journalism at Leeds Beckett University and Dr Sarah Bowman, senior lecturer, Organisational Communications at Northumbria University

Before we start the PRmoment Awards 2023 are now open for entries - do check out the awards site PRmomentAwards.com for all the info you need.

Thanks to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.
Here’s a summary of what Tasos, Sarah, Martina and PRmoment founder Ben Smith discussed.

3 mins Is it right to say that there are fewer PR degrees in the UK now than at any point in the last 15 years?

“There are not many pure PR degrees around anymore but there are 232 courses from 59 Universities which have “PR” in the title.”

4 mins What are the reasons behind the decreasing number of pure PR undergraduate courses?

“I blame the increasing fees for the decrease in PR degrees”

5 mins Many PR students didn’t really know what PR was… that lack of awareness has become more of a problem now students have to pay for their course.

6 mins “Schools are the ones that don’t recognise PR…our employment rates are nearly 100% but you can’t study (a subject) that you don’t know is there.”

10 mins For the merged degrees - what is the ratio between PR and the other elements of the course?

12 mins Did UK PR try and kill the PR degree?

“We experience a love and hate relationship with the (PR) industry sometimes”

“In every field, you have people who have very strong opinions and they shout the loudest! But I wouldn't say the majority of the industry is against (PR) education, I don't think that’s true ”

“One thing that is missing from the industry is engagement with events for young people to come and learn - that is what PRSA in America is doing well.”

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

This week we’re chatting to Rick Guttridge, founder of Smoking Gun about his career story in public relations and how he went from a procurement officer for the Royal Mail to PR agency CEO.

Smoking Gun is a £1.5 m PR firm based in Manchester, clients include Interflora, the NHS and Alton Towers. It has 15 employees.

Previously Rick worked for Brazen and Connectpoint PR. He and his wife Vanessa founded Smoking Gun in 2010.

Smoking Gun has had an interesting few years, it was impacted by both Brexit and Covid and Ricks going to talk us through that agency journey on the show today.

And do check out the home page of PRmoment for our latest webinars, including The State of Social Media Report.

Finally, thanks to our PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Rick, welcome to the show:

1 min Rick talks us through what has been an up-and-down-and-up couple of years for Smoking Gun through Brexit and the Covid period was for an independent.

“We’re living in a world of constant turmoil…you need medication after watching the nightly news”

“Having to let good people go is the hardest part of the job”

“Feb 2020 was our biggest ever month…and then Covid came along”

“How long will the cash last - there’s a horizon here for when the business will fold”

12 mins Did the PR business come back slower in Manchester than in London? 

13 mins What’ shape of the business now?

“Sometimes everything goes against you, sometimes everything goes for you”

14 mins Rick updates us on the runners and riders in the Manchester PR scene

17 mins How the last 10 years has seen a changing of the guard of the biggest PR agencies in Manchester.

“I reckon there’s about a third of the number of staff journalists around that there were when I started 20 years ago”

21 mins Rick talks us through how he made the jump from procurement to PR!

28 mins A discussion of whether too many in-house PRs still see PR as a media relations-only discipline.

“The bigger the organisation the more segregation there is. We really need to break down those internal silos”

30 mins Rick talks about an increasing trend of big pitches wanting to include a number of non-London-based agencies.

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

Here’s the latest of our bonus pod series where I chat to Andrew Bloch about PR Pitches and merger & acquisition trends in the UK PR scene.

Andrew is a co-founder and non-executive director at Frank PR and is now Head of PR at the new business consultancy firm AAR. He is also a partner at PCB Partners where he advises on buying and selling marketing services agencies.

Before we start the PRmoment Awards 2023 are now open for entries - do check out the awards site PRmomentAwards.com for all the info you need.

Finally thanks to our PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here’s a summary of what Andrew and I discussed:

2 mins Andrew gives us his PR pitch wins update with wins for Ketchum, Tin Man, Splendid, Ready 10, Coolr, Four, Talker Taylor, Good Relations, PHA, and Tigerbond.

5 mins Andrew gives his suggestions on how many agencies in-house teams should include in a pitch.

11 mins “The M&A market is volatile at the moment but there are still deals being done”

“Debt is difficult to raise (in the private equity market) due to interest rate rises and this means people are being cautious and that is scuppering some deals and some are taking longer”

“On the trade side (of M&A activity) the trend of building deep specialisms is continuing”

12 mins M&A updates include news from Prime Global’s acquisition of Earthwear and RSK’s acquisition of Copper

13 mins Andrew updates us on a couple of PR MBOs at Rise at Seven and BECG

14 mins A discussion of Carrie Rose and Stephen Kenwright’s story of growth at Rise at Seven and how it’s come to an end.

16 mins Andrew talks about Lord Suger and Mark Wright’s sale of Clime Online for an amount reputed to be around £10 m

17 mins News of Clarity’s acquisition of Political Intelligence

18 mins A wrap-up of why Next Fifteen’s acquisition of M&C Saatchi failed

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

This week we’re chatting to Victoria Dean, chief executive officer of Portland about her career story. Portland has 350 employees globally and 270 in London.

It has offices in Brussels, Paris, Berlin, Washington, Nairobi, Singapore, Doha and London.

Victoria’s career has been a fascinating journey - she has spent the majority of her career working for The British and Commonwealth Foreign Office, in various non-communications roles including head of the political team at the British Embassy, Washington, the British High Commissioner of Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean and the head of strategic finance.

She was also the global head of public policy at Google before taking up the global CEO role at Portland earlier this year.

On the show today we’re going to talk to Victoria about her time at The British and Commonwealth Foreign Office and Google, she’ll be talking to us about what a modern public policy role looks like and how it overlaps with the world of public relations and communications.

Victoria will also no doubt tell us why she left what I would say is one of the top 5 public policy roles globally to return to Portland earlier this year.

Before we start the PRmoment Awards 2023 are now open for entries - do check out the awards site PRmomentAwards.com

Thanks to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here’s a summary of what Victoria and PRmoment founder Ben Smith discussed:

2.30 mins Victoria worked in The Foreign and Commonwealth Office for the British Government for 16 years - what are the good and bad things about working for the government?

“When there’s less money about you have to be more thoughtful about recognition”
“The other big thing about working for the government is - Politics… You have to be aware of that and be apolitical”

“The very best secretary of state I worked for was William Hague”

7 mins Is there a sweet spot about how long a secretary of state should serve?

8.30 mins Victoria has had multiple roles in The Foreign and Commonwealth Office - what were her favourites and how did these prepare her for a second career in communications and public relations?

“Diplomacy is PR”

9.30 mins Victoria’s first comms role was as the UK Government’s spokesperson for Europe in Brussels for the Blair government.

13 mins Victoria talks about her time as the High Commissioner of Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean.

15 mins Victoria left her role as the  High Commissioner of Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean because she had lots of experience in Brussels and the UK government was in a panic as a result of the Brexit referendum - she was the 3rd employee of the Department for Exiting the European Union

“For the first time in my career, the advise I was giving was unwanted and not really listened to”

“In papers, I wrote in those early days ‘the situation with Northern Island will be very difficult and here we are 7 years later”

19 mins Victoria reveals the reason she left the Foreign Office was that she feared the UK would make a mess of Brexit.

19.30 mins Victoria talks about her first stint at Portland - learning the ropes of agency life.

20 mins Victoria talks about her time as global head of public policy at Google.
“The reality is there is no business operating anywhere in the world that isn’t increasingly affected impacted by government, politics, regulation (or) legislation.”

“How we, collectively, regulate the internet is one of the biggest questions of our time"

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

This week we’re chatting to Heather Kernahan, global chief executive officer of, Hotwire about her career story. Hotwire has 500 employees globally and about 90 in London.  It has offices in 11 countries.

Heather joined Hotwire when it acquired Eastwick in 2016. She became CEO in 2021 following Barbara Bates’ move to the holding company Enero. Before joining Eastwick Heather had a senior comms role at Autodesk in the US.

Hotwire was founded in 2000 and was acquired by Enero in 2007. It has recently been on something of an acquisition trail: purchasing 3 B2B sales and marketing firms in the last 18 months or so: McDonald Butler Associates in the UK, BGetIT in Asia and San Francisco-based ROI DNA.

Before we start the PRmoment Awards 2023 are now open for entries - do check out the awards site PRmomentAwards.com, including a bunch of new categories and make sure you download the new entry form because there are a number of changes to that for 2023.

Thanks to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Heather welcome to the show

2 mins As the CEO of arguably the world’s largest Tech PR firm - Heather talks us through the state of the technology PR economy currently

“We see the pipeline is still strong…but people are looking cautiously at the investments for next year (2023)”

“There are different segments of tech, there are resilient segments of tech.”

6 mins Heather talks us through the state of the US PR market at the moment. Is the upward trend of communications the same in the US as it is in the UK?

“We’re not going to see PR and comms backtrack out of the board room…executives need us”

8 mins Are Hotwire making more acquisitions than other PR and communications firms of its size?

8.30 mins Why has Hotwire bought 3 B2B marketing firms in the last 18 months?

9.30 mins Does Hotwire still see itself as a PR and communications firm?

10 mins Will Hotwire will be the last UK-founded PR firm to have a global presence?

12 mins Why did Heather study for an MBA and how has her career benefitted from it? What did studying for an MBA involve and how long did it take?

16 mins Why Heather decided to study Sustainable Enterprise for her MBA

“I use my MBA every single day for my job.”

“You're being trained to be a chief executive, so you better think at that level”

20 mins How much does it cost to do an MBA?

21 mins PR is a lot more business orientated than it was 20 years ago but we’ve got a long way to go, we must keep pushing.

“Agency versus In-house is breadth versus depth”

22 mins Heather talks us through how she went from an employee of the acquired business (Eastwick) to becoming CEO of the acquiring business Hotwire.

26 mins What are a tech PR firm's biggest challenges at the moment?

28 mins How big does Hotwire want to get? Does the business look at Edelman and say that’s where we want to get to?

30 mins Heather credits Canadian paternity leave laws for enabling her family the flexibility which resulted in her husband staying at home to look after the children while Heather concentrated on her career.

“He’s raised the kids…It’s really important to have an open conversation with your partner as your thinking about your careers - what’s this going to look like for us over time as we both add more responsibilities at home but also have aspirations at work.”

“Canada is progressive in their parental policies, so that gave us options”

31 mins Heather talks us through her 3 months in London - giving her perspectives as an outsider on the political changes over the past few months and the London PR scene!

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

Today we’re chatting to Mark Borkowski about some of the biggest stories in the media recently.

For those who don’t know, Mark’s had a stellar PR career, starting as a publicist in the theatre and running Borkowski PR for something like 32 years.

Before we start the PRmoment Awards 2023 early entry deadline is on 16th December, check out the awards site PRmomentAwards.com for all the details.

Thanks to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here’s a summary of what Mark and PRmoment founder Ben Smith discussed:

1.30 mins Mark laments the lack of curiosity in the news cycle currently.

2.30 mins Mark discusses what will happen to PR and to journalism if Twitter fails.

“We are getting a sense of just how important Twitter is to PR and the media”

7 mins  Does Mark look at the Elon Musk publicity machine in awe?

“Every generation throws up one enormous personality who is bigger than the media that wants to bring him down!”

“Certain people have that ‘stuff’ - the power to understand who his key audience is…and understand how to make money”

9.30 mins What has Mark made of Matt Hancock’s latest reinvention attempt on I’m A Celebrity? 

“The winners out of this are ITV…this is a man in search of a career…he knows his political career is over”

“The power of these programmes is in the (social media) edit”

“The people who come out of I’m a Celeb well are usually comedians or much younger people, more telegenic individuals, who have line and length”

“The audience hasn’t changed their minds about him…he’ll be a low-rate Micheal Portillo. There’s always Panto!”

13 mins Mark gives his perspective about David Beckham and Qatar - has the shine come off Golden Balls?

17 mins Is Joe Lycett better at PR than he is at comedy?

“It was so authentic, it was so well thought through…it captured the media for a good 10-day period”

19 mins Does Mark think that every creative media stunt idea has now been done to death?

“The news agenda and societal and cultural changes refresh the ideas of what a stunt might look like in a specific age. The motivations never change…but it’s the cultural context and where society is both politically and socially that can drive the success of a stunt.”

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

Today we’re talking about career learning and professional development in PR. We’re going to chat about the differences between career education and career training. We’ll discuss why PR (in the UK at least) seems to value PR experience over education  - and ask whether this is a problem.

We’ll also talk about the available courses for PR and comms professionals that do want to do more to educate themselves about communications theory and practice.

A theme of this podcast is that if you work in PR and communications - an understanding of the different communications theories is probably only going to make you better at your job, so it’s surprising that more people don’t take part in these courses.

To be clear, this is not going to be a podcast suggesting that PR is/isn’t a profession and we won’t try and suggest that to work in PR you must be professionally qualified - frankly, that’s a debate here at PRmoment towers we are less sympathetic with but it’s definitely one for another day! 

This podcast is about why more PR people don’t want to educate themselves about the wide body of public relations, communications and marketing academic theory and best practice.

On the show to discuss this are Tasos Theofilou, principal academic in Public Relations at Bournemouth University and Dr Heather Yaxley, Qualified educator/examiner CIPR PR Dip, Public Affairs & Digital Comms Specialist Diplomas.

The topic for this podcast is a bit of a follow-up from a previous podcast we did on “What happened to PR degrees?”

Before we start the PRmoment Awards 2023 are now open for entries - do check out the awards site PRmomentAwards.com for all the info you need.

Thanks to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here is a summary of what Heather, Tasos and the PRmoment founder Ben Smith spoke about on the show.

3 mins A discussion about what is the best way to be an outstanding PR and communications professional - through experience or through education?

“Education is like rocket fuel (for your career) it can enhance and accelerate your abilities but it also adds a level - the ability to answer the question why not just what you to.”

“Education gives you a different mindset”

4.30 What is the difference between in-career PR training and in-career PR education? 

5.30 mins Why don’t more people take the time in their careers to study PR and comms theory as part of their professional development?

9 mins What types of courses are available for in-career education? A summary of the PRCA, CIPR and other in-career PR education courses that are available.

11 mins An explanation of

• What is a post-graduate qualification
• The CIPR/PRCA foundation course
• The CIPR/PRCA advanced certificate
• The CIPR/PRCA diplomas
• The CIPR Chartered qualification

16 mins A discussion of the low numbers of people currently taking a PR in career qualification: 

About 350 people took part in the PR advanced certificates and PR diplomas compared to 12,500 people who are “currently studying” CIM qualifications.

“It’s become expected that if you work in marketing you study the CIM qualifications.”

20.30 mins Are the in-career PR education courses currently available any good?

21 mins A discussion about why there are so few people taking in-career education courses in PR. Do people not know about them? Do they not have time to study? Are they too expensive? Do they not believe that PR academic

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

Today we’re reviewing 2022: The Year in Communications with Charlotte West, executive director of global corporate communications at Lenovo.

Charlotte and PRmoment founder Ben Smith talk through the biggest events in PR and communications through 2022.

Before we start the PRmoment Awards 2023 early entry deadline is on 16th December, check out the awards site PRmomentAwards.com for all the details. The final entry deadline is 27th January.

Thanks to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here’s a summary of what Charlotte and PRmoment founder Ben Smith discussed:

1.30 mins January started with us all looking forward to 10 good years of economic growth as the economy roared out of the Covid lockdowns…

3 mins Did the tech sector, and Meta’s stock value loss of 26% in one day, give us a clue, even before the war started, that all was not looking quite as rosy as many of us had hoped?

6 mins Then February bought the war in Ukraine with Putin’s unprovoked, brutal attack on the people of Ukraine. The war has been a travesty for the innocent men, women and children of Ukraine.

The actions of Putin’s murderous regime have been well covered in the media and Charlotte give’s us a corporate communications perspective. What steps did communication directors of big global organisations need to take as a result of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine?

10 mins How the war in Ukraine changed the lens of all 2022 communication plans

12 mins Quite rightly the war in Ukraine dominated much of the new agenda for the rest of the year but thinking back to April and May - what else was on the agenda for in-house communicators?

13 mins The role of internal communications in developing post COVID working patterns

“Employees just wanted clarity”

14 mins And then in the summer, The UK’s politics got even more bonkers! Charlotte talks about the implications of this for in-house communicators at the time.

“It was like a soap opera playing out in real life…as comms leaders that becomes a huge distraction.”

“People became fed up with the news”

18 mins How did the chaos in UK politics change the decision making criteria for communication directors during that period?

19 mins September saw the death of her Majesty The Queen - which was a difficult balance for lots of brands in how to communicate during the period of mourning.

22.30 October brought talk of the coming recession - and again comms leaders had to adapt their communications.

24 mins Charlotte talks us through the Just Stop Oil climate change protests and their implications for communicators.

“Who’s next after the fossil fuel companies?”

27 mins Was November was the month of the celebrity CEO or the psychopath CEO?

“About 18 months ago a celebrity CEO was a good thing, it isn’t anymore!” Ben Smith

In the tech sector, some companies have become their leader, and that’s dangerous for many reasons…it’s an issue of good governance for a company.”

“The tech sector has been able to get away with a lot because it's interesting and exciting but regulation is coming….the organisations have to show good governance.”

30 mins Charlotte and Ben discuss the Elizabeth Holmes Theranos scandal - including whether she was treated differently because she was a woman - there are a lot of rogue male CEOs who did not end up in jail.

32.30 mins Was Cop 27 a bit of a damp squib?

“Every opportunity is not a PR moment - a better approach is to do it for wider good”

34 mins The comms issues of The World Cup: a global event with differing perspectives 

36 mins Charlotte’s end-of-year reflecti

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

Today we’re reviewing 2022 from the perspective of a PR agency with Warren Johnson, founder of W Communications. 

W has a fee income of £13m, offices in London New York and Singapore, Edinburgh, Kuala Lumpa, Los Angeles. It employs approximately 160 people globally and 126 in London. 

If Year in Review Podcasts are your type of thing then do have a listen to our Year in Communications show with Charlotte West, executive director of global corporate communications at Lenovo.

Before we start the PRmoment Awards 2023 early entry deadline is on 16th December, check out the awards site PRmomentAwards.com for all the details. If you miss the early deadline the final deadline for The PRmoment Awards is January 27th. 

Thanks to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here’s a summary of what Warren and I discussed:

2 mins Despite what’s been a pretty tough year for most - PR firms had a pretty decent 2022 didn’t they?

3 mins Have there 

“H1 and H2 felt quite different!”

“(In H1) there were quite a few spurious pitches, second half we’ve opted not to pitch”

“I’m a cheerleader for the industry. There are some really smart people who work really hard (in PR)...and I don’t think you can say that about some of the adjacent marketing services industries.”

5 mins Has PR's moment arrived?

“Advertising is pretty shit now”

“Best idea wins. That suits everyone, including most importantly the client.”

“Taylor Herring’s Peter Crouch campaign was a content piece that just got bigger and bigger”

8 mins Has the dial moved in PR’s market share of the CMO's budget?

9 mins Warren talks us through the different phases of 2022 for PR agencies

“At the beginning of the year there were lots of pitches and not many of them went anywhere.”

“Q1 next year could be quite challenging…but hopefully a rosy summer!”

“It looks like the government’s done a half-decent job in terms of controlling inflation”

11 mins When will the agency financial map of 2023 start to unfold - when do you know when it’s going to be a good one or a bad one?

12.30 mins Are PR firms increasingly starting to compete against in-house teams?

13.30 mins How hot is the PR labour market at the moment?

“There was clearly a moment of madness where we had some average people being hocked around the industry by recruiters…I’m sure we all made some bad hires at that point out of desperation. I think now things have settled down. It feels like there is equilibrium.”

“There has been some mega wage inflation…we’ve now had time to calibrate that.”

“Our wage bill is £500-600K a month, if that jumps 20% - no more Christmas party!”

“We’ve had to have some difficult conversations with clients”

21 mins How is the cost of living crisis impacting PR employees?

22 mins Warren on Frankie Cory: “We’ve admired each other from afar.”

“I saw her as a kindred spirit…who will hustle as hard as I will”

Ben Smith: “So it’s tag team to grow W?”
Warren Johnson: “Yes” 

26 mins Are the independents still having a good time or are the holding groups biting back?

“We are taking money off the holding group but not often the PR division”

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

This week we’re chatting with Zoe Ward Waring from Sunny Side Up and John Higginson from Higginson Strategy about how and why their respective organisations have become a BCorp.

On the show, we talk about what being a BCorp is all about and what the process to becoming BCorp looks like.

To put the discussion into some context in the UK there are 1375 BCorp organisations, in the US there are 2226 and globally there are 5711. So it’s predominantly a UK and US scheme.

21 UK PR agencies are a BCorp including Freud's, Third City, Don't Cry Wolf, Sunny Side Up, Higginson Strategy, Milk & Honey and Kindred.

Being a BCorp is about transparency and if you are interested you can view any organisation’s BCorp results on the BCorp website.

There is also a useful How to become a BCorp handbook that you can buy. 

The PRmoment Awards 2023 are now open for entries - do check out the awards site PRmomentAwards.com - there are lots of new categories this year and an updated entry form with added criteria. 

Thanks to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here’s a summary of what Zoe, John and PRmoment founder Ben Smith discuss:

2 mins For anyone out there who is not aware of the BCorp scheme - Zoe and John explain what it is all about.

4 mins Why are organisations becoming BCorps?

7 mins How difficult is it to become a BCorp?

“Anyone can go on (the BCorp website) and begin to self-assess”

“Once you go through the process you get an assessment report”

“There are 5 sections: Governance, workers, community, environment and customers”

“It’s really important to get the whole business behind it.

16 mins John talks to us about the process to become a BCorp. 

18 mins How long does it take?

“I’d say (the application process) took about 100 hours”

20 mins Is the PRCA’s Consultancy Management Standard a useful starting point for a BCorp application?

20.30 mins How much does it cost to become a BCorp?

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

Today we’re chatting with Shayoni Lynn, chief executive officer at Lynn Group about behavioural science theory and the implications of the application of behavioural in PR and communications.

Shayoni previously worked as a journalist and then in the in-house team of Cardiff University before launching Lynn Group in 2019.

Lynn has a turnover of £2.6m and 30 employees.

Before we start the PRmoment Awards 2023 are now open for entries - do check out the awards site PRmomentAwards.com. We’ve amassed a stellar line-up of judges this year - including 75 senior in-house communicators, who are amongst the most important buyers of public relations services in the UK.

Also, thanks to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here is a summary of what Shayoni and Ben Smith founder discussed:

2 mins Shayoni gives us an intro to the basics of behavioural science theory.

“Behavior is an outcome, science is a process”

“Behavioral science helps unlock why people do what they do”

“There are lots of drivers for behaviour - psychological drivers, sociological environmental drivers…”

4.30 mins Is there an accepted theory of behavioural science?

6 mins Do different people react to behavioural science-based messages in a uniform way?

8 mins What are the implications of behavioural science theory on PR and communications?

9.30 mins Hasn’t PR always been about behaviour change?

“We have introduced a scientific approach to communications”

12 mins Would a better understanding of behavioural science change most PR and marketing campaigns?

14 mins Which area of marketing is the use of behavioural most widely applied?

16.30 mins How did Shayoni learn about behavioural science theory?

22.30 mins Is the tragic reality that the misinformation campaigns that we’ve seen over the last few years - such as Brexit, Trumpism, and Putin’s various attempts at propaganda, particularly inside Russia  - are using advanced behavioural science techniques more effectively than anyone else?

“Disinformation actors are very organised and sophisticated in their understanding of human behaviour and they are using behavioural science and psychological tactics really effectively and they are weaponising it to radicalise communities.”

25.30 mins Are social media algorithms in essence a misinformation campaign?

“The question is how do we get to the disinformation before the misinformation journey starts”

30 mins What behavioural science resources are out there for communications people listeners to read/watch/listen to?

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

Today we’re reviewing the biggest PR disasters of 2022 with crisis communication consultant Amanda Coleman. 

Just to confirm we’re talking today about events and disasters where communications played a key role, we’re not suggesting all of these examples are crises driven by poor PR - although in a number of the cases we talk about on this show a poor communications strategy made a bad situation worse!

Amanda is the author of the excellent book Crisis Communication Strategies which looks at how brands can prepare, control and recover from any kind of crisis.

Before we start the PRmoment Awards 2023 final entry deadline is on 27th January, check out the awards site PRmomentAwards.com for all the details.

Thanks to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.
Here’s a summary of what Amanda and PRmoment Ben Smith founder spoke about:

2.30 mins January: Bad weather got the UK off to a bad start!

4 mins February saw the start of the war in Ukraine - Putin’s murderous slaughter of the Ukrainian people has been well documented but as ever, sadly, communications have played an important part in the war - both for government communicators and brand communicators.

5.30 mins A discussion of the multiple stakeholders President Zelensky has needed to communicate with during the war in Ukraine.

9 mins March saw the beginning of the Johnny Depp: Amber Heard legal case.

10 mins A chat about the infamous Will Smith Slap of Chris Rock.

11 mins April: A Kinder Egg product recall because of a salmonella outbreak, just a couple of weeks before Easter!

13 mins May: The Uvalde Texas shooting: an unimaginable act of evil and Amanda talks us through some of the communication responses of the police that could have been improved.

15 mins The Wagatha Christie trial began. The result came in October but while “there were no winners but there was definitely a loser.”

18 mins June: The Afghanistan earthquake with a 5.9 magnitude caused terrible destruction. Amanda talks about the “almost paralysed response of the West to a humanitarian disaster.”

20 mins The UK Summer and some extreme heat.

22 mins Boris finally went - the culmination of many months of one of the worst reputational scandals the UK has ever seen.

23 mins Sept: Did Liz Truss’s incompetence unwittingly rescue Boris’s reputation?

26 mins The Mini Budget: Is Kwasi Kwarteng that dangerous mix of being both arrogant and wrong?

27 mins How the Monkeypox outbreak benefitted from the communications lessons learnt during Covid.

28 mins The death of Her Majesty The Queen: An event long prepared for but that still took many people by surprise.

29.30 mins October Sunak takes over and he’s brought stability - “which was about all he was going to be able to do given the difficulty of the brief.”

31 mins November The cost of living crisis had been building since the summer but in November it came home.

32 mins How the increase in costs has shocked society.

33 mins The challenge of the energy providers: Will they lose consumer confidence when their financial results report huge profits?

“It feels like it’s building to something”

35 mins China Covid Protests: In unexpected news President Xi bows to public opinion!

36 mins December: A month like no other when it comes to Industrial action in the UK

This week on the PRmoment Podcast, in the latest of our life stories series, I interviewed chairman of The PR Office Shimon Cohen.

The PR Office was founded in 2004, has a fee income of about £2.5m and about 15 employees.

The business has clients across a broad range of sectors and Shimon has some interesting views on how he sees the scope of public relations.

Here is a summary of what Shimon and I discussed:

[00:01:05] How Shimon used to be executive director to the Chief Rabbi but ended up in PR.

[00:04:32] Shimon talks us through his “job interview” with Sir Tim Bell. 

[00:06:49] Shimon describes what it was like working at Bell Pottinger in its heyday (Shimon left 14 years before the scandal that bought it down.) 

[00:07:16] Why good public relations essentially comes down to three things: Where are you now, where do you want to be and how do you get there. 

[00:09:46] How, Bell Pott Gate aside, Shimon believes that Sir Tim Bell's clarity of thought and wisdom was the most important factor in the development of public relations as a serious boardroom discipline. 

[00:12:14] Why Shimon believes that in many large companies you get really really good at doing something and you get promoted into a job that you don't know anything about! 

[00:12:45] Why Shimon didn't like being CEO of Bell Pottinger and resigned. 

[00:14:23] Why Shimon "adores" PR. 

[00:15:06] Why Shimon believes the PR sector hasn't really changed at all in the last 10 years. 

[00:17:34] Why PR people need to sell something that somebody wants to buy!

[00:18:23] How the communications triangle between government and organisations and the public has been inverted.

[00:21:14] Why at The PR Office Shimon "outsources as much as possible". 

[00:23:19] Why everyone who works for The PR Office is a fee earner.

[00:25:16] Why all of the PR Office's employees work from home on Fridays.

[00:27:06] Why Shimon believes we may see professional managers with no PR experience being appointed as the CEOs of PR firms - just like what happens in law firms. 

[00:31:05] How the PR Office have maintained credentials across a broad range of work and not specialised in specific sectors. 

[00:31:025] Why Shimon believes PR people should not specialise in a specific vertical sector but retain a broader knowledge of business.

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

Welcome to our final PR Pitches and merger & acquisition trends in the UK PR scene with Andrew Bloch.

Andrew is a co-founder and non-executive director at Frank PR and is now head of PR at the new business consultancy firm AAR. He is also a partner at PCB Partners where he advises on buying and selling marketing services agencies.

Before we start the final entry deadline for the PRmoment Awards is on 27th January - check out PRmomentAwards.com for all the info you need.

Finally thanks to our PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here’s a summary of what Andrew and PRmoment podcast host Ben Smith discussed on the show:

1.30 mins Andrew gives us news of a couple of tourist board wins for Lotus and PRM Global.

3 mins News of a big win for Smoking Gun PR.

4 mins Andrew brings news of The Academy’s Decathlon win.

5 mins Another win for Frank PR with Meridian Foods

5.30 mins Brands2Life win Vitality Insurance’s consumer brief.

6 mins Axicom win Sage’s multi-territory brief.

7 mins Andrew talks us through the M&A trends in the PR sector.
“The main challenge at the moment is debt financing”
“It's a positive (market) for trade deals”

10 mins News of British Growth Fund’s investment in Komi.

11 mins Born Social is acquired by Crowd.

15 mins SEC buys a Mexican agency to build its South American offer.

18 mins Tyto has bought Cuban Eight

19 mins Media Zoo has been on the acquisition trail again.

20 mins News of acquisitions for 4 Media Group and Jargon Group.

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

This week we’re talking to George Hutchinson founder of River Effra Communications about the expanding area of risk methodology in crisis communication.

It’s an interesting area which takes another perspective on PR’s increasingly complex intersection with data.

The central concept is to use risk methodology to model and understand the reputational consequences for an organisation if it behaves in a particular way.

George set up River Effra earlier this year, previously he had senior roles at Teneo and BCW.

Before we start the PRmoment Awards 2023 are open for entries - do check out the awards site PRmomentAwards.com

Thanks to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here is a summary of what George and PRmoment founder Ben Smith discussed on the show:

2 mins George talks us through the use of risk methodologies in crisis communications.

“The time has come for increased use of risk methodologies in crisis communications…to help potentially avoid the crisis in the first place.”

4 mins What are risk methodologies and how do you use them in crisis communications?

“Reputational risks are always secondary, they don’t come from no-where”

7 mins So is this approach about putting a “threat” cost on reputations by modelling various crisis communication scenarios?

“The idea that your corporate affairs director can somehow relationship your way out of a crisis just doesn’t work”

10 mins George suggests that communication and reputation crises are actually pretty predictable - Black Swan crises are rare.

12.30 mins What are the riskiest areas of crisis currently?

16 mins How cyber security crisis can become business critical.

17 mins Are poor CEO behaviour the most common reputation crisis for most large organisations?

“There are businesses that I have advised where the CEO has had to go…you can’t treat your leadership team differently from the rest of the organisation”

19.30 mins What are the short, medium and long-term implications of a reputational crisis?

22 mins What are the impacts of a reputational crisis on the different stakeholders? From the leadership, to employees, to customers…

“In a crisis, initially you feel under attack, which can lead to persecution bias…and you can only deal with a crisis if you’ve accepted the problem.”

“Your employees can feel disillusioned by the corporate’s response”

24 mins How quickly do customers desert an organisation over a reputational crisis?

26 mins What does the CEO want from their communications leader in a crisis?

28 mins What is the most common mistake people make in a corporate crisis?

“You see a lot of leaders do flight to fight”

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

Welcome to our January review of  PR Pitches and mergers & acquisitions in the UK PR scene with Andrew Bloch.

Andrew is a co-founder and non-executive director at Frank PR and is now Head of PR at the new business consultancy firm AAR. He is also a partner at PCB Partners where he advises on buying and selling marketing services agencies.

Before we start the final entry deadline for the PRmoment Awards is on 27th January - check out PRmomentAwards.com for all the info you need, including downloading this year’s updated entry form.

Finally thanks to our PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here’s a summary of what Andrew and PRmoment podcast host Ben Smith discussed on the show:

2 mins Andrew gives us his rundown of this month's biggest pitch wins in UK PR, including:

• Premier PR and the Booker Prize
• Organic and The Apprentice (with a shout-out to Taylor Herring’s long-term work with the Apprentice.)
• Splendid and Flock win the Ginster's brief
• MHP and The Royal Mint (again with a shout-out to Hope&Glory’s work on the account over the last 10 years)
• H&K Strategies and Hills Pet Nutrition
• Capture PR win Gala and Foxy Bingo 
• Praytell and Sonus

“The average decision-making period for a decent size pitch is about 6 months.”

“A real lesson for me was that…the period between the pitch and the decision is so critical - show your hunger and determination.”

“It was a 30 agency pitch…that is a huge amount of agencies. You have to be respectful of the agencies' time… it's all about the size of the prize at the end.”

“Making sure the (pitch) process is fit for purpose, respectful and informed”

12 mins A discussion about whether the of trend clients consolidating the number of agencies they use will continue.

13 mins Pitch wise “this is the busiest January I can ever remember.”  Andrew talks us through why there is so much new business activity in the PR market at the moment.

15 mins A discussion about the Tulchan Teneo deal - which saw Teneo acquire UK financial PR specialist Tulchan in a reported £65m deal.

“Teneo gives Tulchan an international footprint.”

16 mins Andrew talks us through how the Tulchan deal is likely to be structured and how the ratio of profit to revenue is important in a valuation of a business.

“Tulchan is obviously a very, very well-run company.”

“We’re seeing consolidation, the importance of scale and building a global footprint”

“The right time to sell is not when you’ve reached your peak, it’s when you feel you’ve got great growth.”

21 mins We chat about Penta’s acquisition of Dublin-based corporate PR firm Hume Brophy.

“For Penta, this deal gives them global reach”

24 mins Andrew predicts that 2023 could have a lot of trade deals in the M&A space.

“There are a lot of big trade organisations and holding groups which are sitting on piles of cash and they need to spend it…to keep their share prices high (acquisitions will bring them growth.)”

This week on the PRmoment podcast I’m interviewing Greg Jones, European chief executive at Smarts.

Smarts has a fee income of approximately £12.5m and employs 150 people. It’s an agency headquartered in Belfast with offices in  London, New York and Edinburgh.   Smarts is owned by MSQ.

Greg started his career at Shine, before stints at Slice, M&C Saatchi, Splendid and finally back to Engine joining Mischief as creative director before getting the CEO job in 2019. 

He left Mischief to join Smarts last November.

If you haven’t already make sure you download the PRmoment Awards entry form, the deadline for entering is 27th Jan.

2 mins Why did Greg leave Mischief to join Smarts?

6 mins How successful have PR firms been building themselves into integrated PR firms?

“There are winners and losers, there are those agencies that have grasped the opportunities… and there are those that have been left behind, so much of it comes down to client opportunity.

Can you create the opportunity to broaden the type of work that you do for your clients beyond the box that some clients put you into and have you got the people in place to take advantage of those opportunities?”

7 mins What do we mean by (integrated) PR today?

8 mins The implications of the increased agency services on agency businesses.

10 mins What are the expertise areas a modern PR firm needs to have?

11 mins Is it better to have social first people or SEO first people working in a PR firm today - or is it better to have PR people who’ve gained experience within these specialisms?

“I would rather have experts in the room that I know will be able to answer the questions”

“Most agencies will have invested in a head of strategy or a head of creative, that’s almost become a client expectation these days.”

13 mins Most of the creative directors in PR have a PR background: “An earned first creative thinker is worth their weight in gold.”

“There’s not so much of a leap from being an advertising planner to being a PR planner”

16 mins Will community specialists be the next big job title we see emerge from PR firms?

17 mins The need for earned first internal comms specialists within PR firms.

“Internal comms has been largely overlooked…in terms of growth and futureproofing your agency it’s a great opportunity.”

20 mins The difficulty is making it all add up! Is there a fee level you need to get to to be able to bring in these specialists?

23 mins PR has been given a huge opportunity, it’s challenge is not to mess it up!

24 mins When going into an economic downturn agencies will need to get their attack and defence right: Greg talks us through what his Boxing analogy means in practice for PR agency owners.

25 mins How do integrate your offer? 

“It tends to get brought together by client opportunity.”

26 mins A discussion of the investment PR firms need to make in technology tools: As PR has broadened its offer across more channels, so has the need to purchase channel-specific analytics tools.

Here’s a special PRmoment podcast from AMEC’s Global Summit in Prague: featuring PRmoment founder Ben Smith complete with an almost lost voice, Diageo’s Jim Alexander, AMEC chairman and CARMA CEO, Europe and the Americas Richard Bagnall and Mischief’s head of insight and strategy Gemma Moroney.

We talk through the three perspectives of PR’s measurement opportunity – the client's perspective, the measurement provider’s perspective and finally, the PR firm’s side of the story.

First up I talked to Diageo’s Jim Alexander.

Jim and I talk for about the first 18 minutes of the podcast and here is a flavour of what we discussed:

[00:00:58] Jim talks to us about where Diageo started its measurement journey and where it has got to now. 

[00:01:17] How, two years ago Diageo's measurement processes was in "a very disparate place". 

[00:02:08] Why each brand and each different specialism within Diageo’s marketing and comms had a different approach to measurement and analysis.

[00:02:21] Why one of the benefits of a large organisation with lots of different brands is that you can better hold them up next to each other to compare, learn and improve. 

[00:02:56] How Diageo has used AMEC's Measurement Framework across its business. 

[00:03:24] How the framework is used by everyone from Diageo's director of marketing Europe all the way through to account execs working in Diageo's PR agencies. 

[00:03:31] How it can be challenging to get between 200-300 people to use Diageo’s Measurement Framework document. 

[00:04:50] Whether Jim volunteered or got volunteered into the role of modernising and standardising Diageo measuring process.

[00:05:28] How did Jim tell people internally that some of the KPIs they had spent years reporting were actually worthless. 

[00:05:37] Which KPIs did Diageo get rid of and which KPIs did it introduce. 

[00:05:45] Why Diageo has only set output and outcome KPIs not impact ones.

[00:06:54] Why "opportunities to see" is Jim's "bad guy metric". 

[00:08:37] How Diageo has built its own multi-channel metric methodology called "visibility" and Jim talks us through what this metric means. 

[00:11:41] How did Jim approach the conversation with the senior internal stakeholders who for a number of years thought the comms effort had "all been going swimmingly" when in reality the true metric was minuscule in comparison?

[00:12:37] Why PR’s use of bizarre, unjustifiably large numbers in the past has been at the centre of its historic credibility problem – senior decision makers used to just "look straight through”  these ridiculously big numbers.

[00:13:14] Jim explains why understands AMEC's campaign on the importance of getting good outcome and impact data, but adds that the "problem is getting that level of data is very difficult and often expensive".

[00:14:18] Why, for the evaluation debate to continue to move forwards, the key stakeholders are the senior in-house people – there's only so much agencies can do. 

[00:14:56] From it a tool’s perspective how does Diegeo attempt to unify its measurement across the numerous different channels that PR operates across?

Next I talked to AMEC chairman and CARMA CEO, Europe and the Americas Richard Bagnal from about 18.20 mins to 34.35 mins.

Here are some of the highlights from that discussion:

[00:18:05] Where has PR as a sector got to in its measurement journey?

[00:19:10] Why AMECs Measurement Framework Process and the Measurement Maturity Mapper (M3) mean there are no more excuses for poor PR and comms measurement. 

[00:21:00] How AMEC's Integrated Framework will help you measure r

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

Today we’re chatting with the senior team at John Doe:  Pamela Scobbie, managing partner and CCO, Gin Trewhella, partner & group CEO and Lee Beattie Partner/Joint CEO.

We cover a few different themes. Wire was merged into John Doe almost 2 years ago to the day - so we’re going to talk about why 2 independent agencies decided to merge and what Pam, Lee and Magin learnt in that process.

Also, one of the interesting aspects of John Doe is that 33% of their employees across their Manchester, Glasgow and London offices are people of colour. So we’ll also talk about how the agency had been so successful at building a diverse workforce.

The third thing we’ll talk about is the type of work coming out of the agency. In our pre-show chat, I asked CCO Pam Scobbie which agency she wanted to model John Doe on, and her reply was Uncommon. So we’re going to talk about the type of work coming out of the firm.

John Doe is a 60-person creative PR firm with 3 offices in the UK. Lee and Pam founded Wire in 2009, which then merged with John Doe 2 years ago. Gin has been at John John Doe for 5 years

John Doe’s clients include Under Armour, Guinness, Captain Morgan, Instagram, Iron Brew and The Scottish Government. It has a fee income of £5.2 which has almost doubled since 2020 - so it is an agency on the rise.

Before we start the final entry deadline for the PRmoment Awards is on 27th January - check out PRmomentAwards.com for all the info you need, including downloading this year’s updated entry form.

Finally thanks to our PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here’s a summary of what Pam, Lee, Gin and I discussed on the show:

3 mins The merger between Wire and John Doe was almost 2 years ago. Why did these two independent agencies merge?

5 mins Wire was the bigger form so why did they decide to keep the John Doe name?

12 mins What was the role of The PRmoment Podcast and Rachel Bell in the Wire/John Doe merger?

14 mins How do they merge 2 agency cultures together?

18 mins Why recruitment for PR talent is just as tough outside the M25 as it is in London.

20 mins 68% of the agency is from a working-class background, 33% of the firm's employees are people of colour, and 50% of the London office are people of colour. All PR firms want to build a diverse team - how come John Doe has been more successful in doing this than most?

“We will always prioritise non-white candidates for the first interview”

“It (finding non-white talent) gets easier as you go on, it becomes a virtuous circle. People want to work for agencies where it (diversity) is part of the agency’s DNA.”

“Diversity is a fundamental decision for agencies, it can’t be an optional extra. We (John Doe) don’t want to pick up a diversity award.”

“We did a campaign for Tinder at Pride. Almost the entire team that we put on that brief identified as queer…which means that work was just that much more authentic to the audience.”

“We’ve got clients (which) as part of their procurement process ask for statistics on diversity and change payment terms to 1-week payment instead of 2 months based on the relative diversity of your agency against the rest of their roster - that’s a really clear and interesting example of big businesses that are taking diversity seriously”

32 mins Are there are a bunch of consumer PR firms in the UK at the moment who are pushing each other hard, resulting in a very competitive, innovative market?

“You can see the ad agencies trying to catch up with the channel-agnostic perspective…most of them will still pitch a TV spot because that’s wh

On the show this week we talk to Howard Kosky, founder and CEO of Markettiers4DC.

Kosky founded Markettiers4DC in 1994. Clients include Rolls-Royce, Linkedin and Unilever. The business employs a team of 150 people in the UK and UAE

As many of our regular podcast listeners may know, last week Waterland Private Equity took a majority stake in Markettiers4DC for a reported amount of £50 million. The business has been well known for its broadcast PR credentials in the UK for decades but it’s grown significantly in the last couple of years - with the growth of its research business Censuswide and its digital production firm Through The I.

On the show today we’re going to talk to Howard about the deal and what it means for the future of Markettiers4DC and his role within the business. We’ll also be talking to Andrew Bloch from PCB partners about its role in the deal and how the valuation of Markettiers4DC was made.

Do check out our latest free-to-attend webinar “The State of Social 2023: Channel Disruption, Influencer Growth and The Great Data Integration Challenge.”

Thanks as ever to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors The PRCA. 

Here is a summary of what Howard and PRmoment founder Ben Smith discussed:

2 mins Howard talks us through why he decided now was the right time to sell.

“We were very pleased with everyone’s reaction internally to the shift in behaviour (required) to working remotely…with that productivity increased, broadcast popularity increased, the use of technology in virtual events increased and the use of data increased.”

“Rather than sell the business, we looked for an investor, a backer.”

“In professional services consultancy businesses, if you can get the people management right, you can flourish”

6 mins Why Howard believes the culture of Markettiers4DC is better now than before the pandemic.

“It’s not work-life balance, it’s just life. It’s where work sits within the parameter of people’s lives.”

7 mins Howard talks us through the shape of the Marketteirs4DC group in terms of the venues and headcount.

8 mins The reported deal value is £50 million. Is that what Waterland bought the majority stake in Markettiers4DC for, or does that include their future investments in acquisitions? 

“They (Waterland) shared our ambition with the desire to create a war chest for us to match our M&A plan and ambition.” 

10 mins Is Howard trying to replicate the broad shape of the UK Markettiers4DC business in America?

“North America is a huge opportunity for us.”

10.30 mins The revenues of the Markettiers4DC group are about £30m and the business has grown by about £10m in revenue (30% or thereabouts) in the last 24 months. That’s going some, how did they do that?

13.30 mins Markettiers4DC have been purchased by a private equity group. Did they consider a trade sale?

15 mins As a sell-side advisor to the deal, Andrew Bloch from PCB partners talks us through what his role was in helping put the deal together.

17 mins The private equity debt market is a tough one at the moment, did that add a layer of complexity to the deal?

“We were probably at a stage where we had agreed on the numbers 3 months before…”

23 mins When you’re agreeing on the final number, is it basically a game of poker?

“Waterland is a buy and build specialist”

29 mins Howard talks us through the due diligence process and the psychometric tests!

“When these guys come in they put a periscope us every part of y

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

Today we’re chatting with Andrea Hartley, founder and CEO of Skating Panda about the role of communications in organisations' approach to ESG.

For those of you that are not aware -  ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) is a set of standards measuring a business's impact on society, the environment, and how transparent and accountable its governance is.

Skating Panda is a social and environmental impact creative consultancy in London

Do check out our latest free-to-attend webinar “The State of Social 2023: Channel Disruption, Influencer Growth and The Great Data Integration Challenge.”

Thanks as ever to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors The PRCA. 

Here’s a summary of what Andrea and PRmoment founder Ben Smith discussed: 

2 mins What is the role of communications within the ESG strategy of most organisations?

5 mins Thinking about the internal ESG stakeholders within an organisation, how do you see the role of each? Who needs to own ESG within a firm?

8 mins Where is the intersection between the financial reporting investor relations part of ESG and the softer communications strategy?

8.30 mins How often is the central ESG role of the PR/comms team to simply PR the ESG report?

12 mins How PR and comms people can grow their ESG knowledge? Subscribe to PRmoment’s weekly ESG review here.

13 mins Is the PR/Comms team best placed to write a company’s ESG Report?

14 mins Take a look at some good ESG reports on the ESG Foundation’s website.

16 mins Andrea highlights the Global Reporting Initiative and Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) as ESG frameworks for you to look at.

18 mins Andrea discusses the difficulties of greenwashing, ethics authenticity in the communications of ESG and purpose.

“We have planetary boundaries, there are boundaries to what our planet can do and we’ve got to remember that”

23 mins Andrea talks us why are the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals a useful way to understand, formulate and plan an organisation's approach to sustainability and ESG.

26 mins Much of the work that PR and marketing people do has the objective of persuading people of the need to buy more stuff. To what extent can the ever-increasing demand-led consumerisation of modern society correlate with the need for us all to consume less?

“The risk is to confuse increasing revenue with buying more stuff.”

Here is some more information about The ESG Awards.

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

This is a bonus podcast where we chat about Rajar’s latest results. For those of you that aren’t aware of Rajar - it was established in 1992 and operates the single audience measurement system for the radio industry in the United Kingdom

Each quarter it publishes the listenership figures for UK radio and this offers a really interesting insight for PR people on how the UK public is engaging with this important channel. 

On the show today we have Alex Williamson, senior newsroom producer at Markettiers to talk us through the latest Rajar results for Q4 2022

Before we start do check out our latest free-to-attend webinar “The State of Social 2023: Channel Disruption, Influencer Growth and The Great Data Integration Challenge.”

Before we start, thanks to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

1 min Alex gives us the highlights of this quarter's Rajar results.

2 mins 49.7 m people in the UK listen to the radio each week with an average of 20.3 hours per week

3 mins The BBC has a 47% share of radio listening, but which BBC stations are on the rise?

4 mins How did commercial radio do and which commercial stations are on the rise?

5 mins A discussion of the rise of targeted radio channels, including Boom Radio and The Greatest Hits Radio Network.

12 mins What are the opportunities for brands on the radio?

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

Today we’re chatting with 3 Monkeys Zeno UK managing director Jo Patterson about the encouraging trend of female leaders occupying more of the big PR agency roles in the UK.

When Jo and I talked about this in our pre-show chat it got us thinking and here is a non-exhaustive list of top female PR agency leaders in the UK:

We’ve got Jo at 3 Monkeys Zeno, Jo-ann Robertson at Ketchum, Jo Carr at Hope&Glory, Nicola Todd at Ogilvy PR, Pippa Arlow at Smarts, Ruth Kieran at Cirkle, Ruth Allcurch at WE, Sian Morgan at Cow, Sharon Bange at Kindred, Rebecca Grant at BCW, Ali Maynard at Manifest, Cath Taylor at Taylor Herring, Angie Moxham at The Fourth Angel, Kate Stevens at Axicom, Georgina Blizzard and Nicky Regonzonni at The PR Network, Mandy Sharp at Tin Man and Emma Kane at SEC Newgate, Fenella Gray at Porter Novelli and Bibi Hilton at Creative Access.

And to be clear there are loads more I could mention - but you get the point. There seem to be more female leaders in top agency positions than there have been in recent memory - perhaps than there has ever been before. And one of the things Jo and I will talk about on the show today is the potential reasons for that.

For those of you that are not aware 3 Monkeys Zeno has a fee income of £9m in the UK and 80 employees. Zeno started out as Edelman’s conflict shop but has grown into a global agency with a fee income of about $150 m. About 70% of Zeno’s revenues are in the US.

Jo became the UK MD of 3Monkeys Zeno in October 2020. Previously she was UK MD at Porter Novelli and a board director at Red.

Zeno bought 3 Monkeys in 2016. I always think of Zeno as a fairly new agency but for any PR agency history buffs out there, it was founded in 1998.

Before we start do check out our latest free-to-attend webinar “The State of Social 2023: Channel Disruption, Influencer Growth and The Great Data Integration Challenge.”

Thanks as ever to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors The PRCA. 

Here is a summary of what Jo and I discussed:

3 mins Jo talks about why we’re seeing more women PR agency CEOs.

“We’re (women) still only tracking at about 40% for leadership roles.”

7 mins Jo talks about the benefits of female leadership traits in a progressive working environment.

“It’s the people you surround yourself with… charismatic leaders who are prepared to stand up and shape their organisations…and having the freedom to do that.”

10 mins We’ve probably seen a rise of misogyny in society. There seems to be an upward trend of obnoxious macho culture.

13 mins How do we make sure that in PR we don’t lose those gains that we’ve made?

“Greater protection for the challenging life stages that people go through”

“Enshrining policies into governance”

“Openness and confidence go hand in hand”

17 mins Jo talks about the role models that have helped her in her career - Lesley Brend at Red, Fenella Gray at Porter Novelli and Barby Siegel at Zeno.

“I like working with good people regardless of gender”

20 mins How is the Zeno business doing both globally and in the UK?

“About 50% of our work now is global”

21 mins In the UK 3 Monkeys was known for its consumer work, how has that evolved since the acquisition?

23 mins You are the first leader of the business in London who wasn't part of the original 3 Monkeys team. Has that been an advantage or disadvantage for you do you think?

25 mins When an agency like Zeno buys an agency li

 Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast. 

Welcome to our February review of PR Pitches and mergers & acquisitions in the UK PR scene with Andrew Bloch.

 Andrew is a co-founder and non-executive director at Frank PR and is now Head of PR at the new business consultancy firm AAR. He is also a partner at PCB Partners where he advises on buying and selling marketing services agencies. 

Thanks to our PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here are a few of the highlights that Andrew and I discussed:

2 mins News of big wins for Citypress with Siemens, The Romans with Heineken and BCWwith Swissair.

“The best corporate agencies think with a consumer lens”

PHA bag a couple of wins 

Andrew talks us through wins for Ranieri and Stir.

“It’s a never-ending journey between appointing specialists and consolidating agencies”

12 mins Finn Partners win Wagamama’s and Greater Palm Springs.

14 mins Good Relations wins the Kuoni account.

15 mins Andrew gives us his rundown of this month's PR M&A activity, including the big Markettiers deal.

16 mins Andrew explains the Social Chain deal.

18 mins Clarity continues its acquisition strategy by purchasing Australian agency Sefiani Communications.

20 mins Andrew talks about ANM’s vertical acquisition strategy.

21 mins Spider buy a Tiger!

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

Today we’re chatting with Rachel Allison founder and CEO of Axe & Saw about whether there is a tension between using inclusive communications that are able to reach a diverse audience and the most one size fits all approach in most marketing campaigns. 

We’ll also talk about what Gen Z and minority groups want and need from their PR employers.

Axe & Saw has 10 employees, a fee income of £600K and was founded in March 2021.

Thanks as ever to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors The PRCA. 

Here’s a summary of what Rachel and I discussed:

2 mins Is there a tension between inclusive communications and the one size fits all approach used in most marketing campaigns?

3 mins Communicators now have a proliferation of channels and multiple customer segments - does that mean multiple and varied bespoke marketing campaigns will become the norm or are scale and consistency still important?

“There is a need for both…talk about people on the fringes of your community”

6 mins To what extent do we all think and feel differently depending on our ethnicity and background?

8 mins How can a better understanding of these differences help brands better plan their communications?

9 mins An important part of this change is the need for the communications teams to include a diverse range of communicators. How are we doing?

12 mins What does success look like when it comes to the diversity of PR and communications?

15 mins What do minority groups need from their employers?

“Class can play a huge impact on whether you feel that your voice is heard”

23 mins There are plenty of stories of larger agencies hiring aggressively from smaller firms that have a diverse workforce. How much of a problem is that at the moment for smaller independent agency owners?

26 mins Rachel’s agency employees work 4 days a week. How does that work? Does Rachel employ 20% more people because the agency works a 4-day week?

30 mins What do Gen Z employees want from their employers?

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

Welcome to the latest PRmoment Podcast with me Ben Smith. Today we’re catching up with David Hart. David has had over 20 years of experience working in corporate affairs - both in-house at the likes of Coca-Cola and SAB Miller and agency side at Fleishman Hillard and Burson Marsteller (now BCW.)

Before Christmas, I saw him posting about the lessons he wished he’d told his younger corporate affairs self and so we invited him onto the show to talk in more detail about his nine lessons of corporate affairs.

Before we start do check out our latest free-to-attend webinar The intersection of PR and SEO 2023.

Thanks as ever to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors The PRCA.

Here is a summary of what David and I discussed:

2 mins Why did David decide to write his 9 lessons of corporate affairs?

5 mins Lesson 1: Be bold, creative, take risks and help to sell

“When done right the power of comms is massive…it surprises me when some organisations don’t want to communicate”

8.30 mins Lesson 2: Be confident and bring your sixth sense of “perspective” to a crisis

11 mins Lesson 3: Make your job sustainable by understating the detail of ESG

14.30 mins Lesson 4: Don't just be a story writer

“The worst view of any business is the view from the window of the headquarters”

“Don’t just focus on the leaders…everyone within the business has a story to tell”

18 mins Lesson 5: Stop the press release

21 mins Lesson 6: Be like Jack Reacher - hope for the best; prepare for the worst!

“You're going to have a lot of difficult conversations with a lot of senior people”

“It’s about making sure the team is prepared (for a crisis)”

“There are 2 important pages in any crisis manual…”

26 mins Lesson 7: It’s an exciting time to work in Corporate Affairs - enjoy it

“I’m convinced more corporate affairs and communications professions… will in the future be CEOs - the ability to talk, the ability to engage, the ability to open and to lead discussions around business-critical issues are vitally important to that (the CEO) role“

30 mins Lesson 8:  Give yourself a break

“It (the corporate affairs role) can take over your life”

33 mins Lesson 9: Embrace change

“You want to be ahead of the innovation curve”

From losing £500K of client fees in 3 weeks in Q2 2020 to selling Taylor Herring to Publicis in April 2021 - we get the inside track on perhaps the most tumultuous couple of years of any agency in recent history

On the show this week we talk to James Herring about the story of the last few years of Taylor Herring. 

In Feb 2020 things were looking rosy and James and Cath were no doubt planning their summer vacation in the South of France. Then in 3 weeks, their agency lost £500,000 in monthly fee income.

Today we talk to James about the turnaround job which resulted in Publicis buying Taylor Herring in April 2021 and how the agency reported a 40% increase in annual revenue in 2022 (£6.72m, up from £4.9m.) 

Recent client wins include Nintendo, Natwest, Iceland and McVities. The likes of Samsung, Easyjet and Disney are long-term clients.

On the show, today James and I will also talk about where he sees the future of earned media within integrated communications.

Thanks as ever to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors The PRCA.

2.30 mins This is a story that starts at the beginning of the pandemic. What did the pandemic do to Taylor Herring?

"For 6 weeks we spent quite a lot of time scratching our heads thinking about whether there was going to be a business at the end of all of this"

4 mins During the worst depts of COVID - how many people were on the team, so those not on furlough?

4.30 mins At the start of the pandemic, Taylor Herring lost £500K in monthly fees in 3 weeks. You’d spent nearly 20 years building Taylor Herring and seemed it seemed to be disintegrating before your eyes?

8.30 mins Why did the PR market come back much quicker than we all anticipated?

"We had a resoundingly good summer probably better than the summer of the year before…it was a boom summer in terms of spend"

9.30 mins Did Taylor Herring approach Publicis or did they approach you? 

"I was mowing the lawn at 5:30 pm on a Friday afternoon and Chris (McCafferty) called"

11 mins Why were they interested in a business that had so recently lost so many clients and fee income?

12 mins What was the due diligence process like?

"There were 2 bits to it, the informal due diligence process…and the harder end of the legal and financial due diligence - it was a full-time job for 8 weeks."

"Cath runs an extremely tight ship when it comes to the organisational side of things"

"The process took about 18 months in all"

14.30 mins Since the deal was done Taylor Herring’s fee income has increased by 40% - so the earn-out is going well? 

"Internally we called it the third runway, it was about putting that infrastructure in ahead of the growth"

"We've grown from 25 to 55 people over that 2-year period"

16.30 mins Is this a rare example of a PR acquisition that has worked?

"We've declined more pitches than we ever have before - because when you add up the money spent on those pitches it adds up to hundreds of thousands (of pounds) in terms of the hours"

"The blending of social and PR and content and brand and events means there is a much bigger playground"

19 mins Do Taylor Herring and MSL share many clients?

20 mins How does it feel for James not owning his own business anymore?

21 mins In our pre-show chat, James said prior to the sale to Publicis he'd "basically run Taylor Herring as a lifestyle business for 19 years” James talks us through what he meant by that.

23 mins What is the opportunity for PR-integrated briefs? 

"Integrated is the single biggest opportunity for a con

This week on the PRmoment podcast, I’m pleased to welcome Jon Lonsdale, CEO and joint founder of Octopus. 

Octopus has a fee income of £5m and is an independent technology-focused PR firm in London. 

The business has been going for nearly 18 years and was founded by three mates who worked together at Bite. Those friendships are still intact and are still at the heart of the business. 

Octopus has also, in Jon’s words “bet the farm” on its brands to sales positioning of the agency and we'll be talking about that, amongst other things, in this podcast. 

[00:01:14] Why Jon reckons "running a business with your mates is about as good as it gets." 

 [00:02:44] How Jon, Billy Hamilton-Stent and Pete Hendrick have retained such a good working environment between themselves over such a prolonged period of time.

 [00:03:04] Why Jon and the partners of the business have treated themselves as employees to avoid Octopus having a "cult of the owner."

 [00:06:03 ] How Octopus has codified and developed a methodology for its brands to sales approach. 

[00:06:13] Why Octopus has specified hard sales metrics in many client contracts. 

[00:07:03] Jon discusses how PR firms are able to have radically different commercial conversations with clients when you're willing to commit to hard sales metrics.

 [00:07:23] Jon talks us through Octopus's client scorecards approach to KPIs. 

 [00:08:27] The interconnectivity of reputation and sales.  

 [00:13:23] Jon describes the structural changes they made to the business as a result of its brands to sales approach "ripping the business up." 

[00:13:35] How it took four years to restructure the business to the new approach. 

[00:14:01] Why Octopus has had to reskill the whole agency around digital techniques and digital marketing.

[00:14:49] Why Octopus's net client fees have gone up since taking a brands to sales approach.

[00:16:02] Why Jon believes PR teams moving to an impact on sales approach, increases budgets and means that as an agency you become a sales tool, not an overhead. 

[00:19:30] Jon discusses Octopus's internal training programme called the Brand to Sales Academy.

 [00:24:43] Why modern agencies need to have the capacity to flex and move skills and people around. 

 [00:25:07] Jon talks us through the reasons Octopus had a tough year in 2017.

 [00:28:20] Why a failed pitch lead to Jon and his business partners abandoning a multi-brand approach for the agency. 

 [00:31:08] Jon describes why he loves running a business in the technology sector.

 [00:33:07] Jon and I explore the theory that it's easier for B2B PR firms to win larger parts of an integrated brief than their consumer peers.

 [00:35:10] Why Jon believes that the creativity in B2B campaigns is just as good as the creativity in B2C, it's just not as loud.

 [00:40:14] Jon identifies the type of PR buyer who wants to purchase all their marketing services from one place.

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

Today we’re chatting with Clarity CEO Sami McCabe. 

For PR industry observers, Clarity has been an interesting watch over the past few years. It’s had investment from Matthew Freud (which was bound to draw attention), it’s hired some expensive senior talent and it’s acquired 7 or 8 businesses.

So today we’re going to talk to Sami about the business, its acquisition and growth strategy and where he sees the future of an earned media consultancy.

Clarity is a $20m PR firm with about 200 employees and offices in London, Cornwall, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Amsterdam. It was founded in 2012.

Before we start do check out our latest webinar The intersection of PR and SEO 2023.

Thanks as ever to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors The PRCA. 

Here’s a summary of what Sami and I spoke about:

2 mins Sami updates us, briefly, about the story of Clarity so far.

3 mins Clarity has taken investment from an early stage. Matthew Freud invested in 2019 and institutional investors Thincats in 2022. Sami talks about why investors see PR firms as an attractive proposition.

“Not everyone is looking for a Unicorn”

6 mins Is Sami surprised more PR firms don't take external investment?

“If we were doing this buy-and-build strategy off our balance sheet and with cashflows, it would be a very slow and painful process but capital gives us the ability to go out to the market and acquire businesses much more quickly than would have been able to do otherwise.”

“Some deals take 2/3 months, other (deals) are much slower”

12 mins Sami identifies his top buyer priorities when Clarity is buying a PR firm.

16 mins How do you maximise the chances of success of the integration of 2 agencies

“It’s a change management process…we massively over-communicate!”

18 mins Sami lists the agencies Clarity has bought over the past few years.

21 mins In our pre-show chat, Sami reckoned Clarity will grow at 50% in 2023, so presumably, he intends to continue to go shopping?

22 mins Sami on how he intends to build Clarity into a $250 firm in 5 years.

“On an annual basis, we are looking to acquire $25m of revenue per year for the next 5 years”

24 mins Which vertical sectors are the investment priorities?

27 mins Clarity hired quite a few expensive senior people quite earlier in its story - how much of a risk was that and has it paid off?

29 mins Why Sami's move to the US, which initially didn’t work out as he had intended, led to the acquisitional strategy of Clarity.

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

Welcome to our March review of PR Pitches and mergers & acquisitions in the UK PR scene with Andrew Bloch.

Andrew is a co-founder and non-executive director at Frank PR and is now lead consultant - PR, Social, Content and Influencer at the new business consultancy firm AAR. He is also a partner at PCB Partners where he advises on buying and selling marketing services agencies.

Thanks to our PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Tickets are now on sale for The PRmoment Awards in London on Thursday 20th April and in Manchester 25th April 2023.

2 mins Andrew gives us his PR pitch wins update

• News of wins for The Academy with Peroni and Marie Currie
• Maven wins The Perfume shop
• Forster wins Transform (a public/private partnership)
• Full Fat wins a raft of festival brief
• PHA win Lucozade, Ribena and Orangina
• MSL win Renault’s social media brief

10 mins Are PR firms winning more social media briefs from their social media agency peers?

“PR agency’s should always have an edge when it comes to generating engagement”

“There are noticeable differences in the way different (types) of agencies approach it from a strategic perspective”

“9/10 the creative I see coming out of PR agencies is right up there with the best in the world, it’s the other elements that sometimes let them down”

14 mins Andrew talks about what the future looks like for influencer marketing agencies

16 mins Andrew completes his review of this month’s pitch wins 

• Hope&Glory win Trainline
• The Romans win Candy Crush
• Tin Man wins Smart Energy GB

18 mins Andrew’s PR M&A update

• Finn Partners acquire Hyderus
• JIN buy Opinion Act
• News of Martin Loat’s exit from Propeller

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

Today we’re chatting with Dee Gibbs, founder of Liberty Communications. Liberty is an independent tech PR firm, with a fee income of £1.7 m and this year Liberty celebrates its 25 birthday! So we thought it would be good to get her on the show to chat about 25 years of agency ownership hindsight.

Do check out our latest webinar The implications of changing consumer digital behaviours for PR and communications professionals.

Thanks as ever to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors The PRCA.

Here’s a summary of what Dee and I discussed:

2 mins Dee talks about why she decided to set up Liberty 25 years ago.

3.30 mins Liberty has a fee income of £1.7 m after 25 years. Does Dee regret not growing the business more?

Dee’s 10 lessons of 25 years agency ownership hindsight:

5 mins Lesson 1: The pace of technology innovation and what this means for a technology PR business, in terms of the type of work and the client base.

8 mins Lesson 2: How CEOs are prioritising PR and how agencies need to demonstrate the benefits of great PR

10 mins Lesson 3: The future of the press release

13 mins Lesson 4: Hiring talent - making sure the talent matches the ethos of your agency.

15 mins Lesson 5: How social media has changed PR skill sets

20 mins Lesson 6: Changes in media networking and media relationships

21 mins Lesson 7: The rise of social influencers

22 minsLesson 8: Don’t lose your nerve!

25 mins Lesson 9: Remote working and embracing the way your team want to work.

28 mins Lesson 10: Does an PR independent firm needs to re-invent itself over 25 years

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

On the show today is Jenny Halpern, founder and CEO of Halpern. Today we are talking about PR in the cost of living crisis.

Halpern has a fee income of £5m. It's a consumer PR firm based in London. It was founded in 1993 by Jenny.

Halpern is owned by The&Partnership, which is part owned by WPP.

Jenny sold to business in 2013 to what has become The &Partnership.

Clients include The Co-Op, Unilever and Headspace.

Don’t forget you can purchase your tickets for The PRmoment Awards here.

Thanks as ever to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors The PRCA.

Here’s a summary of what Jenny and I discussed:

2 mins Jenny gives us a brief insight into Halpern's story.

4 mins Jenny’s earn-out is long since finished - she talks about why she hasn’t exited the business.

5.30 mins The intersection of publicity, influencer marketing and consumer PR - have they all become the same thing?

“Affiliate  marketing has changed the nature of our game (PR) - that is the reason (PR) now sells more."

"Consumer PR has become a direct sales channel because of affiliate marketing.”

9 mins What is the role of a consumer PR firm in the influencer, influencer agency and brand triangle?

11.30 mins How impactful is media coverage on sales, compared to influencer channels?

18 mins How is the cost of living crisis impacting the PR and communications of brands?

23 mins What did the great resignation look like for PR firms?

26 mins What are the most popular training courses Halpern runs for its employees?

27 mins Jenny talks about 2 charities she has helped found - the Lady Garden Charity and Access Aspiration.

This week we are talking creativity with a review of some of the best bits of creativity our panel has seen in the past month or so.

On the show today to help us review some of the best creative work are:

Kim Allain, creative lead, MSL
Ottilie Ross, creative director, Halpern
James Gordon-MacIntosh, co-founder and chief creative officer, Hope&Glory

This new regular episode of the PRmoment podcast will feature a rolling panel of PR creatives and in each episode our panellists will choose the favourite creative work they’ve seen recently.

This special PRmoment Podcast about creativity is, naturally enough, bought to you in partnership with Creative Moment.

Thanks as ever to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors The PRCA.

Here’s a summary of what I discussed with Kim, Ottille and James:

1.30 mins Kim talks about IKEA’s collaboration with Shelter.

Campaign: Temporary Roomsets
Client: IKEA and Shelter
Agency: Hope&Glory

“A real visual representation of temporary accommodation”

“I really like the commitment from Shelter to get 9000 more social homes built by 2030.”

9.30 mins Ottille talks us through British bike helmet manufacturer Endura's recent collaboration with The Brain Charity.

“It was a really simple campaign, super visual…backed up by research.”

Campaign: Project Heid
Client: Endura with The Brain Charity

12.30 mins Ottille talks us through the Honest Eggs Co. chickens with a pedometer campaign.

Campaign: FitChix
Client: Honest Eggs Co.
Agency: VMLY&R

15.30 mins Google Streetview marks the year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“You can switch between footage when you watch it so it shows the streets as they were before the invasion and switch to how it looks now”

Campaign: The Undeniable Street View
In partnership with United 24, Voices of Children and War Up Close.
Client: Google Street View

19 mins James Gordon-Macintosh talks us through Climate Clubs Sinking Stadia campaign with Copa 90.

Campaign: Sinking Stadia
Client: Climate Clubs

“I feel like the partnership with Copa 90 was a bit mismatched...was there another platform that could have sat on? But the insight was great. ”

21.30 mins James talks about the second campaign he liked this week: A World Without Nature by WWF.

“I don’t think anyone has done a creativity session in an agency lately without ‘How shall we use AI’ coming up at some stage or another…there have been some terrible travesties that have come out of the creative industry as a result of that question being answered badly but WWF came up with quite a cute one.”
"The work was wonderfully bleak…in a way that was compelling.”

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

Today we’re chatting with Lucy McGettigan, partner at The Romans. Lucy was the 7th employee at The Romans when she joined Frank in 2017.

The Romans has 80 employees, 70 in London and 10 in New York. It had a fee income of £8m globally in 2022 and grew by a remarkable 97% last year.

On the show, Lucy is going to talk about the challenges of growing a consultancy business that quickly, the challenges of recruiting talent in public relations and whether process and creativity are a paradox!

Don’t forget to purchase your tickets for The PRmoment Awards from the awards site PRmomentAwards.com

Thanks as ever to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors The PRCA.

Here’s a summary of what Lucy and I discussed:

2 mins Is The Romans still the Millwall of PR?

2.30 mins Lucy updates us on The Romans story specifically the growth the business has had in the last 18 months.

3.30 mins Is growth at 97% unsustainable?

4 mins Growing a 97% is difficult for any type of business - for a consultancy business where revenue is inextricably linked to the number of employees - recruitment becomes a huge problem doesn't it?

6 mins What percentage of new recruits don’t work out?

7 mins Has the Mother relationship impacted the speed of growth for The Romans?

8 mins Why Mother and The Romans share many clients.

9 mins Has the creative work changed as The Romans has grown? Are bigger clients more risk-averse?

12 mins The Romans is infamous for not having too many processes - has that has to change as you’ve added scale?

14 mins What does lead creative agency actually mean these days? Is there any such thing any more?

15 mins Is media relations still the dominant channel for The Romans' work?

“If you haven’t got a journalist on WhatsApp they are probably not going to reply to you”

16 mins How has Lucy’s job changed since she became a partner last year?

17 mins Lucy was the 7th joiner of The Romans - and 4 of those 7 people still work at the firm. I think people will be surprised by that…

“When agencies are growing you can find room to keep hold of your best staff”

20 mins What is the biggest growth limiter for The Romans at the moment - finding talent or finding clients?

21 mins Has The Romans gotten better at keeping hold of its clients in recent years?

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

Today we’re chatting with 3 of Google's communications team to give us an inside view of how a modern PR and communications team works.

On the show are Jo Ogunleye, B2B communications lead, UK, Julie Dilger, head of external communications, Google Ireland and Olivia O'Brien, senior associate, product communiou can still purchase your tickets for The PRmoment Awards from the awards site PRmomentAwards.com

Thanks as ever to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors The PRCA.

I’d also encourage you to check out this week’s Good and Bad PR on PRmoment. As ever there’s a range of highlights and lowlights but one of my favourite stories this week was that Pepsi has rolled out a new visual brand identity and also revealed that it would include 57% less sugar.

Exclusive analysis from Meltwater shows how the news exploded across social media resulting in 137k mentions and 1.03m engagements.

Do check out this week’s Good and Bad PR for more insight on that from Meltwater.

Here’s a summary of what Jo, Julie and Olivia and PRmoment founder Ben Smith discussed:

2 mins Jo, Julie and Olivia have very different job titles and here they each tell us a bit about their jobs, how their roles are different but also how they work together.

4 mins Jo talks about her 20% role (a Google initiative to enable its employees to work on passion products) and how that enables Jo to work on building networks of diverse communities within the communications industry.

8 mins There are only 9 people in the UK and Ireland Google comms team.

8.30 mins A discussion of how Google uses agency support.

“I would be lost without my agency…when you get a good agency you hold onto them with both hands and hope the personnel don’t change too much!”

10 mins There are so many specialisms within communications and a brand like Google uses the full breadth of comms capabilities - from crisis communications, to exec comms, to corporate and public affairs, to brand, consumer, product PR and B2B comms.

How do in-house communicators coordinate that?

13 mins How much of Google's communications are proactive and how much are reactive?

“If it’s a big issue it’s all hands on deck”

“Some people thrive in a crisis”

“We have issues comms at least once a week”

“A lot of PR is problem-solving…reactive requires a completely different part of your brain”

“Where my agency comes into its own is when they burst by bubble…I spend so much time in Google land.”

“My expectation of them (my agency) is 100% all-around creative and strategic ideas”

“We might not go 100% of the way but we might go 25% of the way - and that’s us innovating.”

“I don’t want to feel like a client all the time…I want to feel like we’re colleagues”

25 mins What are the suite of measurement KPIs for Google's comms team?

29 mins How does Google get a balance between the standardisation of the message and localised communications?

31 mins With Google’s development and rollout of AI tools - is this a priority for Google's comms team at the moment?

An insiders view of the structure, skill set and role of a modern in-house communications team

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

Today we’re chatting with Bibi Hilton, CEO of Creative Access 

Known to PR people everywhere for her first career working in public relations which included stints and The Red Consultancy and Golin - Bibi was appointed CEO of Creative Access in September last year.

Creative Access describes itself as a social enterprise providing career-long access, opportunities, support and training for people from under-represented groups, to help make the creative industries reflect society. It offers individual support, employers help and partnerships and has a range of resources aimed at helping underrepresented groups break into the creative sectors.

Time is now short but you can still purchase your tickets for The PRmoment Awards from the awards site PRmomentAwards.com

Thanks as ever to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors The PRCA. 

Here’s a summary of what Bibi and PRmoment founder Ben Smith discussed: 

2 mins Bibi explains the mission and raison d’etre of Creative Access.

“Our mission is to build a creative economy that really reflects the society it serves”

“We work to improve access to (creative) careers..through training, development programs and helping employers build more inclusive cultures”

“There are a lot of commonalities in terms of the challenges that creative organisations face when it comes to diversity equity and inclusion but there isn’t a one size fits all solution to any of those challenges.”

“If you don’t have the data it’s impossible to put in place an effective plan”

8 mins How is Creative Access funded?

8.30 mins How can creative employers become better employers of minority groups?

“Salary transparency is critical”

11 mins What do creative employers who don’t have a diverse range of employees get wrong?

17.30 mins How can individuals come to Creative Access for help

19 mins How representative of the population is the creative sector? And what about PR?

21 mins What does good representation look like? What are we aiming for?

26 mins What can PR learn from other sectors of the creative sector in its journey towards greater diversity?

This week on the PRmoment Podcast, in the latest of our life stories interviews, I’m pleased to welcome Torod Neptune, who is worldwide group vice president and chief communications officer at Lenovo Group.

His CV is a beautiful thing – he’s previously spent time at Weber, WE, The US House of Representatives and Verizon before joining Lenovo in 2017.

Torod is also a passionate supporter of increasing the number of BAME people working in PR.

Here is a taster of what Torod and I discuss:

[00:01:36] Torod talks about his time working as director of strategic and crisis communications at US House of Representatives during 9/11. 

[00:03:22] How his time working in politics gave him an acute understanding of the detail required for stakeholder relationship management. 

[00:03:42] How Torod learnt very quickly that there is no such thing as an apolitical role in an organisation such as the Congress.

[00:05:51] Why Torod has always been interested in the stories that were attached to issues involved in politics.

[00:06:07] How, aged 8 or 9, Torod remembers going out with his politician mother and campaigning door to door.

[00:08:07] Torod talks us through the difference in priority and skill that you need between an enterprise (product) based role and a group level global communications role.

[00:09:42] How at an enterprise comms level you need to sell products or protect or build a sub brand that helps drive revenue at the operations level.

[00:09:55] How at a group level the emphasis is on the need and the power of a master brand and a master narrative.

[00:11:08] Why Torod believes product specification is no longer the sole incentive that motivates consumers to purchase – consumers today are more interested in what an organisation is about in terms of its values, principles, ethics and transparency.

[00:12:48] Torod explains the reasons why he buys agency advice and time.

[00:13:26] What is the most effective agency advice that Torod gets?

[00:15:01] Torod talks us through Lenovo's current comms strategy and the challenge to differentiate the business by establishing it as a contributor to society with the aim of wanting "consumers to root for us and want us to win." 

[00:15:46] Why Lenovo is focused on creating that emotive attachment to who we are and why we make great products as opposed to the products themselves. 

[00:19:34] How Torod and Lenovo have changed the way they buy agency PR advice to force agencies to increase the diversity of their businesses.

[00:20:00] How Lenovo mandated any agency, holding company or independent agency, which wanted to be a part of its RFI and RFP process, to disclose their diversity stats data. Also how Lenovo's account team would also have to reflect Lenovo's customer base and its employee base. 

[00:20:57] Why Lenovo in Torod’s words decided to "put our foot down about wanting to see real meaningful action as opposed to a lot of what's unfortunately still rhetoric in this area." 

[00:25:16] Why, in the US, if PR firms are not diverse. increasingly they are going to be unable to win contracts with the bigger firms.

[00:25:30] Why agency diversity will become a core procurement-driven issue.

[00:26:25] Why increasing diversity in your team is not only the right thing to do, it also makes good business sense. 

[00:27:49 ] Why Torod believes the promoting of PR as a varied and interesting career in the universities is critical.

[00:28:18] Torod talks about his personal career story and the important role that mentors have played in that.

[00:31:55] The problem of retaining BAME people within public relations. 

[00:34:14] How the use of data&

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

Today we’re chatting about how generative AI change PR. To be frank, there’s been no shortage of articles and LinkedIn posts on this but on the podcast today we’ll get to have a proper chat to talk about generative ai in PR.

On the show, I’ve got a wise panel to chat about these issues including:

• Maya Koleva, head of research and insight, Commetric
• Rosie Bannister, managing director, Axicom
• Paul Wooding, vice president, corporate communications, KX

We’ve all watched AI slowly increase its relevance in our lives until about 4 months ago generative AI Chat GPT exploded into our consciousness and PR folks, like lots of other people, started questioning our roles in life!

More recently we’ve seen the launch of Chat GPT 4 which is bigger and better and more accurate than Chat GPT 3.

On the show today we’re going to talk about how, when and why generative AI will impact public relations and the people that work within it.

Before we start don’t forget to purchase your tickets for The PRmoment Awards from the awards site PRmomentAwards.com

Thanks as ever to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors The PRCA. 

Here’s a summary of what Maya, Paul, Rosie and PRmoment founder Ben Smith spoke about on the show:

2 mins For those out there listening to this who may not have followed this story - what is Chat GPT and what is generative AI?

4 mins Rosie talks us through a generative AI-produced report from CES that Axicom partnered on.

7 mins Paul Wooding gives an in-house perspective on the value of generative AI in content creation.

“You play with it (generative AI) and you just get better and better at using it.”

“(As an in-house PR professional) I’m thinking ‘What am I going to be paying agencies for in the future that previously was considered an absolutely bonafide use of (agency) time?’ That’s a useful thing for us to have in all of our minds - it sharpens us in our understanding of where this technology is going to go.”

“Very soon we will be able to stick a front end on a media database and within minutes be able to ask it… to bang out a briefing document for a journalist. That used to take 3 to 4 hours. That is something we all need to get our head around.”

12 mins How will AI change the role of PR agencies?

13 mins How will AI change agency job titles?

14 mins How will PR firms continue to add value to their clients?

16 mins Maya Koleva reviews the implications of generative AI for the media measurement market.

18 mins Are we a step closer to AI automated measurement of the media?

“You need structured tagged data for AI to learn. We’re seeing that sentiment personification with GPT-based models works better.”

20 mins Who owns AI content?

23 mins How might the NLA respond to AI scraping publisher websites?

“The value of really good earned media is going to bubble up right to the top”

“Effectively - content from publishers is being used to train AI models..neither the journalist nor the publication will get credit for this.”

“The copyright of generated content from AI models: in a way you own some sort of  creativity by prompting even though the output is based on models”

“If you are feeding an article by a scraper or by copy and pasting…you get the summary out of the model and then distribute that to your clients - this is called derivatives and most publishers would require (you to have) separate licenses for this.”

28 mins Will PR agencies need to evolve to

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

Welcome to our April review of PR Pitches and mergers & acquisitions in the UK PR scene with Andrew Bloch.

Andrew is a co-founder and non-executive director at Frank PR and is now lead consultant - PR, Social, Content and Influencer at the new business consultancy firm AAR. He is also a partner at PCB Partners where he advises on buying and selling marketing services agencies.

Thanks to our PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Don’t miss our trio of webinars that are currently live on the homepage:

• LinkedIn as a Marketing Channel
• What are the implications of generative AI for public relations?
• The March of PR: The increasing dominance of earned media ideas in integrated marketing

2 mins Andrew gives us his rundown of April’s biggest PR pitch wins

• Kingdom Collective win the PR brief for the energy drink Relentless.
• Mind + Matter win Superdrug
• Hope&Glory win Powerleageue
• Richmond Towers win Calrsbeerg Marston brief Shipyard, Wainrights and Hobgoblin beers
• Frank win Revel and Crockpot
• Full Fat win Puttshack
• Speed win Haven Holidays
• Visible win Flying Tiger
• Ketchum win Iceland
• Ready 10 win Brewdog
• Pitch win Autotrader
• Adhuro win Tetley and Tea Pigs

12 mins Andrew gives us his monthly rundown of the most significant PR mergers and acquisitions in April, it’s mainly trade deals this month:

• Edelman buy Landmark Public Affairs in Brussels
• Weber buy Diverse Interactive
• WPP buy the influencer agency Goat
• APCO buy Camarco
• KKR buy FSG Global
• SWNS buy Pinpep

On the show this week we talk to Rich Dawes, managing director of DawBell. 

DawBell is one of the UK’s largest entertainment PR firms, working across talent, music and events.

Clients include The Brits, Paul McCartney, Harry Styles, Elton John, James Corden and The Prince Estate.

The firm has over 40 employees.

Today we’re going to talk about the role of a modern publicist - and how it's changed in recent times.

We’ll also talk about the story of Rich and DawBell, including a discussion of what has been a pretty tough 12 months for Rich on a personal level and the implications of that on his professional life.

Don’t miss our trio of webinars that are currently live on the homepage:

• LinkedIn as a Marketing Channel
• What are the implications of generative AI for public relations?
• The March of PR: The increasing dominance of earned media ideas in integrated marketing

Thanks as ever to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors The PRCA.

Here’s a summary of what Rich Dawes and PRmoment founder Ben Smith discussed:

1 min Why is the role of the publicist back in vogue?

1.30 mins How does the role of a publicist differ from a more generalist public relations role?

3 mins What does a modern publicist do?

“There’s been a shift from broadcast to narrowcast”

6 mins Has the rise of the celebrity CEO increased the demand for publicists?

9 mins Two of DawBell's clients are Elton John and Paul McCartney. It must be pretty cool working for a couple of legends?

11 mins Rich talks about how his passion for music led to a career as a publicist.

13 mins Rich talks us through how he and Stuart Bell met and why they decided to go into partnership to set up DawBell

17 mins Rich discusses how he’s had a tough couple of years personally.

“Life won’t always give you lemonade”

“I learnt to be optimistic but prepare for the worse”

19  mins Why everyone should record a Desert Island Disc with their parents

“As the years go by you do forget what they (your parents) sounded like”

21 mins Is it tougher to scale a publicity business than a general PR firm?

24 mins Rich likes a quote or 4 and recommends 5 books he reckons PR people should read.

Rich’s favourite 5 quotes:

• “The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it’s taken place”, 
• “To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.”
• “The 3 stages of truth: ridicule, violent opposition and acceptance”
• “If the shit is bigger than the cat, walk away”
• “There are 2 rules for success: never reveal everything you know”

This week we are talking creativity with a review of some of the best bits of creativity our panel has seen in the past month or so.

On the show today to help us review some of the best creative work are:

• Lora Martyr, creative director, Taylor Herring
• Daniel Glover, co-founder & creative director, The Academy
• Indy Selvarajah, chief creative officer, Global Markets, Ketchum

This is the second episode of our now newish monthly global creativity review on the PRmoment podcast.

Each month we will feature a rolling panel of PR creatives and in each episode our panellists will choose the favourite creative work they’ve seen recently.

This special PRmoment Podcast about creativity is, naturally enough, bought to you in partnership with Creative Moment and I’d highlight the Creative Moment Awards which are now open for entries, the final entry deadline is Friday 30th June.

I’d also encourage you to check out this week’s Good and Bad PR. One fun story from this week is about a river in Cumbria called the Swindale Beck. Over 200 years ago the locals cut out the meanders and made the river straight, to increase the footprint of the farmland. 

But the move killed all the fish that had happily swam up and down the river up until that point. The straightening had made the water flow faster and the fish could no longer survive.

So the RSPB and United Utilities and their friends have “re-wiggled” the river and the fish have come back and nature is at one with itself once again.

A beautiful story to end on and our dear friends at Meltwater have been in touch to put some data behind this PR wonderfulness - unsurprisingly the word fish dominated the top positive keywords and there were 3.2 thousand engagements of the story on social channels. Do check out this week’s Good and Bad PR for all the background.

Thanks as ever to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors The PRCA. 
Here’s a summary of what PRmoment founder Ben Smith discussed with Lora, Indy and Dan

4 mins Indy Selvarajah tells us why he loves the Ravi Superstar Adidas collab.

“The campaign is built on a lovely human insight from an immigrant community”

“It’s beautifully crafted - it’s got that beautiful key visual you can use across all channels”

“This is about integration, about seeing something that lives across everything.”

“The best campaigns I see are those that are crafted within an inch of their life”

“This is a campaign where Adidas start to feel like an underdog again”

13 mins Dan Glover talks us through 3 of his favourite recent campaigns:

Ford recreates the 100-year-old story of Aloha Wanderwell’s pioneering drive around the world in a Ford Model T, this time with travel influencer Lexie Alford behind the wheel of a Ford all-electric Explorer launch.

On the show today we’re talking about the results of the PRCA’s Governance Review with Ray Eglington, who is a board member of the PRCA and Group MD of Four Communications.

Before we start a quick plug for our next couple of webinars: LinkedIn as a Marketing Channel and The March of PR: The increasing dominance of earned media ideas in integrated marketing.

Here’s a summary of what Ray and PRmoment founder Ben Smith discussed:

2 mins Ray gives an overview of the PRCA Governance Review.

“This is about creating a structure for the next phase of the PRCA’s growth”

“It (the size of the PRCA) probably got a bit ahead of the governance of the organisation.”

“We’ve completely reworked the Memorandum and Articles of Association of the organisation - the rules of how the organisation can operate”

“People need clear authority so they know what the bit of the PRCA that they are part of can and should be doing.”

“Currently the board is of over 30 different directors..that will slim down to a total of 10 people, 8 of them from within the industry, from a clear election process. We’ll have 2 independent directors.”

“There will be an audit and risk committee - so we’ve got clear management of the finances of the organisation…it will oversee a nominations and remunerations committee so that senior executives within the PRCA - how they are chosen, how there appraised, how they are evaluated and how they are rewarded is done transparently”

9 mins Does the governance of a non-profit organisation membership organisation differ from a normal commercial organisation?

10 mins Why did the PRCA decide it needed to have a governance review?

“There was a huge amount of goodwill from members but they wanted to be sure that the PRCA is operating to UK and global best practice.”

“We only need to look at the CBI to understand the importance of good governance and a good reputation for trade bodies” Ben Smith, founder, PRmoment

12 mins What is the rollout for the governance changes at the PRCA?

“There will be an extraordinary general meeting in September of this year, where members will have a chance to review and agree on a new management board and a new president (which is a new role) that will then take us forward to the next AGM in April/May (2024.)”

14 mins Ray talks about the new President and Vice President roles that are being proposed.

16 mins Ray talks about whether the death of Francis Ingham was covered in the governance review.

Here is PRmoment founder Ben Smith’s post which gives some more context into the death of the PRCA’s ex-CEO Francis Ingham, if you haven’t read it already.

Welcome to a new PRmoment Podcast format where we look at the PR job market with Dean Connelly, founder & PR recruitment director at Latte.

We talk about all things PR recruitment - looking at some of the biggest moves we’ve seen recently and discuss some of the trends in the PR job market at the moment

If you haven’t taken a look already - do check out the Creative Moment Awards website, the early entry deadline is on Friday 26th May 2023

And thanks so much to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors The PRCA.

Here is a summary of what Dean and I discussed:

2 mins Dean tells us some of the most interesting people move that have caught his eye.

3.30 mins Dean gives us his PR jobs market barometer update.

“We haven't seen a slowdown in the hiring spree…it’s still a candidate-driven market…we’ve seen a plateau in salary increases.”

“You’d be hard-pressed to get an AE for £24K, it’s starting at £26/27K”

“We’re still seeing a lot of the small and medium-sized agencies who maybe don’t have such a strong brand in the market have jobs open for up to 6 months, they really struggle to attract talent”

8.30 mins Dean gives talks about PRmoment’s Top PR 10 Jobs feature and why there are some great PR roles out there in the market.

10 mins Dean talks about why it’s often harder to recruit in PR outside of London.

13 mins Dean tells us what are the main drivers for people leaving agencies at the moment.

17.30 mins Why it’s important for PR agencies to build a good brand.

19 mins How do PR employers get the recruitment process wrong?

“Hiring managers rarely prepare for the interview!”

“There are a few hiring managers out there who make candidates feel uncomfortable from the outset”

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

Welcome to our May review of PR Pitches and mergers & acquisitions in the UK PR scene with Andrew Bloch.

Andrew is a co-founder and non-executive director at Frank PR and is now lead consultant - PR, Social, Content and Influencer at the new business consultancy firm AAR. He is also a partner at PCB Partners where he advises on buying and selling marketing services agencies.

Thanks to our PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

If you haven’t taken a look already - do check out all the categories on the Creative Moment Awards website, the early entry deadline is on Friday 26th May 2023.

2 mins Andrew brings us news of wins for:

• Words + Pixels win Graze
• PHA win The National Gallery
• Freud and Pizza Express
• Teneo and Easyjet
• Kingdom Collective and Doc Martin
• Houston and Dominos
• The Herd and W Hotels

11 mins Andrew reviews this month's PR mergers and acquisitions

Pearl acquires Kinetic

Definition acquires OTM, its sixth purchase since 2020.

Here’s the link to the article mentioned in the podcast from Heather Baker, CEO of Definition Group, discussing why agencies benefit from joining forces.

News of a huge potential private equity deal for Syneos Health 

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

This is a bonus podcast where we chat about Rajar’s latest results. For those of you that aren’t aware of Rajar - it was established in 1992 and operates the single audience measurement system for the radio industry in the United Kingdom

Each quarter it publishes the listenership figures for UK radio and this offers a really interesting insight for PR people on how the UK public is engaging with this important channel. 

On the show today we have Alex Blakemore, newsroom producer at Markettiers to talk us through the latest Rajar results for Q1 2023.

If you haven't taken a look already, the early entry deadline for The Creative Moment Awards is coming up on Friday 26th May.

Thanks to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here’s a summary of what Alex and PRmoment founder Ben Smith discussed:

1 min Alex gives us the highlights of this quarter's Rajar results.

88 % of the population listens to the radio each week!

49.3 m adults in the UK listen to the radio each week with an average of 20.4 hours per week

Total radio listening overtakes TV.

7 mins Alex summarises who’s winning the battle between BBC local radio and commercial local radio.

10 mins Alex discusses the rise in Talk Sports listenership, potentially linking the rise to the recent men's football World Cup and Women’s Euros.

12 mins The ups, downs and flatlining of the Ken Bruce effect!

14 mins Heart’s Breakfast Show with Jamie and Amanda surpasses 4 million listeners a week for the first time, closing the gap on Greg James’ Radio 1 show.

15.30 mins The trend of using radio content across different channels - simulcasting.

17 mins The opportunities for PR people across radio

 Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast with PRmoment founder Ben Smith. Today on the show we’re chatting with Fran Ashcroft, senior director, of EMEA Communications at Intel. 

Fran has worked for Intel for nearly 15 years at the firm and is currently preparing for an 8-week sabbatical.

We’re going to talk about Fran’s 15 years in-house at Intel. We‘ll cover what modern international communications looks like, how the in-house side has changed and what a modern agency partnership looks like.

If you haven’t taken a look already - do check out the Creative Moment Awards website, the early entry deadline is on Friday 26th May 2023.

And thanks so much to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors the PRCA.

Here is a summary of what Fran and Ben Smith discussed:

1.30 mins Fran talks about her excitement that she’s off on sabbatical in a few weeks' time.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had 8 weeks off work”

3.00 mins Over 130,000 people work for Intel globally - what is the role of comms in an organisation of that size?

5.00 mins Fran gives an insight into the complexity of running a global comms programme.

“You have to focus your energy on what is going to make the biggest moments”

“We have to make music not noise”

“A key point of 360 communications is that anything you put out internally there is always the possibility of a leak”

7.30 mins Fran talks about the globalisation of communications and the implications of that on strategy and team organisation.

12 mins What is the mix between leadership, coordination and strategy in an international communications role?

“Our corporate narrative was inconsistent depending on where you were in the world”

“We were quite dictatorial when it came to managing who could be a spokesperson”

16 mins What do communications as a strategic function look like for an organisation like Intel?

“Communications became absolutely critical when COVID hit - whether you’re talking to your employees, whether your talking to external, whether you’re helping your customers… Because of that comms become the spearhead of all company activity - communications has never been more respected than it is now.”

“Everything that we do we measure…having the data that supports our activity makes us accountable for what we’re doing.”

20 mins Outside of the PR team - who are the biggest cheerleaders for PR inside Intel’s senior leadership?

“We do very few third-party press releases because the return on investment on it is tiny”

21 mins  If Intel’s comms and marketing department were in the same function comms would be less effective?

“Nowadays the recognition and understanding of our craft has changed that (the understanding of the different role of comms compared to marketing) rapidly.”

23 mins What does the business demand of the comms dept?

“Our number one goal  is to protect and promote Intel's reputation and share our vision with the world”

26 mins Fran explains Intel’s hub and spoke model including in-house and agency teams globally.

27 mins Fran talks about Intel’s quarterly scorecard for the communications team - including what KPIs are included in the scorecard.

29 mins Fran describes Intel's comms team as an “outcome-driven team” - what outcomes do they concentrate on?

Today we're chatting with industry legend a long-time owner of Propeller - Martin Loat. We look back on his 30 years working in public relations and including 22 years as a PR agency owner at Propeller.

Martin talks about the ups and downs of agency ownership and why he decided now was the right time to exit. In March Martin sold the business via an MBO to Kieran Kent, Jody Osman and Rose Bentlley in an MBO backed by Triple Point Ventures.

Propeller is a B2B PR firm with a turnover of £4 million with 44 employees.

If you haven’t taken a look already - do check out the Creative Moment Awards website, the final entry deadline is on Friday 30th June 2023

And thanks so much to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors of the PRCA.]

Here is a summary of what Martin and PRmoment founder Ben Smith discussed:

1.30 mins Martin tells us why he decided now was the right time to sell his business.

“I did feel I’d taken Propeller as far as I could in my own vision - I was at the helm for 22 years!”

3 mins Why did Martin decide an MBO was a better option, rather than an EOT?

5 mins How does it feel after 22 years to not be involved with Propeller? Relieved, sad, happy?

8 mins Martin reflects on the stages of Propeller over the 22 years.

Lesson 1: Work for a well-run PR firm before you start your own business

Lesson 2: Cashflow!

Lesson 3: How to focus on growth.

“Win them, keep them, grow them!”

Lesson 4: What hiring the best people really looks like.

Lesson 5: Developing a proper new business plan

“My story is about a range of self-learnt lessons”

Lesson 6: Your staff/ people

Lesson 7: Keep developing your offer

“If you only have one egg in the basket - if something goes wrong you’re under a bit of pressure”

Lesson 8: You have to change your structure as you grow.

“One of the lesions is that the structure you are now is probably not the right one for growth”

Lesson 9: Learning from your mistakes

Lesson 10: Delegation

38 mins Having spent 25 + years in PR - is Martin hopeful or fearful about the future of the sector?

41 mins What does good B2B communications currently look like?

42 mins What’s next for Martin?

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast. On the show today we’re revealing the six key themes from AMEC’s Measurement Summit 2023. To reveal those trends we have Steph Bridgeman, founder of Experienced Media Analysts and Richard Bagnall who is a co-managing partner of Carma. 

Before we start if you haven't taken a look already, the final entry deadline for The Creative Moment Awards is Friday 30th June.

Thanks to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here is a summary of what Steph and Richard PRmoment founder Ben Smith discussed:

2 mins Theme One: Why earned media is value not vanity for brands. 

“The role earned can play in PESO”

“There’s nothing quite like an AMEC disco”

“Paid is 4 times more expensive than it was 5 years ago, brands simply can’t afford to put paid first anymore”

5 mins PR people don’t need to feel they are on the back foot with their data.

7 mins Theme Two: The impact of AI on PR measurement

“Learn how to ask better questions to get better answers”

“The bulk of future content on the internet will be produced by AI, in turn, this content will train the next family of generative AI tools”

“ The Gen Zers of today are probably the most insular group we’ve ever had”

11 mins Where are we on the evolution of the accuracy of AI measurement?

“It’s incredibly powerful and impressive but it needs strong guardrails…you need to check everything, it’s so compelling with what it produces you think it must be right but if you don’t check it mistakes will follow.”

14 mins Richard explains the copyright concerns with Generative AI.

17 mins Theme Three: Programme logic models are here to stay.

“If we want to demonstrate our measurement journey we have to move from outputs to outcomes”

(PR) must as an industry avoid substitution error”

Here is a link to AMEC Integrated Evaluation Framework that Richard and Steph discuss on the show The Integrated Evaluation Framework.

And here is a link to the “AMEC Integrated Evaluation Framework Tutorial - which PRmoment has negotiated free access to for our readers/listeners for the next 60 days (normal cost £149 apparently, thank us later!) Discount code: PRMoment23

And here is the link for the “AMEC Foundation course in Media Measurement & Evaluation.” Discount code: PRMoment23

23 mins Theme Four: The importance of data storytelling

“The importance of being interesting and useful!”

“Don’t have a data puke into your reports”

“Can we find the one key insight that will guide our strategy”

28 mins Theme Five: The importance of data confidence in public relations

31 mins The difference between last-click attribution and contribution

Theme Six: The importance of ongoing measurement education in PR and communications

“The time for excuses is over”

“Earned media’s time is now”

“We can’t just count stuff”

“We mustn't confuse counting and measuring activity (ie: being busy fools) with demonstrating value”

37.30 mins Steph gives PR a 3/10 on its measurement journey in the last 5 years - but for some organisations, it's a 10/10.

Every six months or so I like to catch up with the shy and reserved Warren Johnson from W Communications on the podcast to talk about the financial state of UK PR.

And to my surprise- it’s that time again. The first 6 months of 2023 are basically done and dusted.

My sense is that it’s been a bit of a phoney 6 months or so - the PR sector has been expecting a downturn but beyond a significant tech sector-wide wobble at the start of the year, which has in the main come back, it’s been OK, not stellar but OK. And in many cases surprisingly OK.

But on the show today we’re going to chat about some of the recent league table results we’ve seen in PR, what constituted good numbers last year, and how the last 6 months have been. We’ll also attempt to put some predictions on what might be about to happen next.

W has a fee income of £15m, with offices in London, New York and Singapore. It employs approximately 180 people globally and 150 odd in London.

A reminder that the final entry deadline for The Creative Moment Awards is Friday 30th June.

Thanks to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here’s a summary of what PRmoment founder Ben Smith and Warren discussed:

3 mins Warren reviews the performance of UK PR in the first half of the year. What’s up, what’s down, what’s flat?

“What was quite alarming...was that despite the UK agencies reporting strong growth, they were falling down the international rankings”

“We (the UK) are not fully aware of our own demise at the moment and what a second-rate country we’re becoming”

“UK PR had a strong start to the year… and there is now some preemptive belt tightening client side”

Everyone had a strong Q1 with a slight softening in Q2 as the economic outlook, which doesn't get any worse but shows no sign of recovery.”

“Overall H1 was relatively robust but we all (PR firms) had to work a bit harder than we were expecting to make those numbers”

9 mins Bearing in mind inflation how much did PR firms need to frow last year, to increase their profits?

“Our profits grow in line with our revenue…we’ve not had any challenges in our margin.”

“It’s something Graham Goodkind once told me - he said he wanted one thing as a KPI for him as a CEO and that’s a margin number”

“It’s harder t maintain that margin than it ever has been, there’s been rampant wage inflation and a requirement to offer greater benefits than there ever has been.”

“We’re big advocates of in-person collaboration so we’re doing as much as we can to encourage people into the office but that comes at a cost.”

“The other big hidden cost is mental health - which increasingly seems to be sitting away from the government (as a responsibility) and on employers.”

“We just rolled out private health care for our company and extended to private mental health care - important to do but these are all costs that chip away at the margin.”

“As an industry, we are very good at being inventive…as our margin gets challenged in one area we are able to find opportunities… in certain other areas.”

“I certainly get the sense that people are pitching a lot less…pitching is probably the most inefficient thing you can ever do.”

“The less you pitch the better…that will hit your margin more than wage inflation”

13 mins  What do clients want at the moment?

Richard Fogg, CEO at CCgroup on the PRmoment podcast

This week on the PRmoment podcast I’m pleased to welcome Richard Fogg, CEO of CCgroup.

CCgroup has a fee income of £3.5m and is an independent, technology-focused PR firm in London.

The business was previously known as Companycare and rebranded as CCgroup in 2006

Rich and his business partner Paul Nolan completed a management buy out of the business in 2018 and we talk in detail about that process.

[00:03:16] Why Rich believes his Bournemouth PR degree gave him a massively unfair advantage in his career. 

[00:04:16] Why it annoys Rich that PR courses get such a panning in the industry. 

[00:04:20] How it frustrates Rich that the sizeable body of PR theory out there is rarely used.

[00:04:27] How Rich believes there is a correlation between our industry's inability to use its academic models and our difficulties in getting onto boards.

[00:05:24] Why Rich believes that PR grads have a much broader appreciation of what PR is and how it’s evolving.

[00:06:12] Whether you make a better PR person if you have a PR degree as opposed to someone who has a geography degree or a degree in politics. 

[00:09:34] Why CCgroup has made PRCA CPD a necessary  condition so a group for pay rises, promotions and bonuses.

[00:09:57]  Why the pace of change in the PR sector means that unless you invest in your career by listening to podcasts, going to events and learning you will become less and less valuable to your employers.

[00:13:24] How as the CEO of CCgroup Rich is about to go on sabbatical for three months. 

[00:17:29] How it is that Rich has only ever had one job and has been at CCgroup for 20 years? 

[00:18:18 ] How the working relationship between Rich and Paul Nolan has been critical to the growth of CCgroup

[00:19:38] Why Rich's dad's company going bust whilst he was at Uni meant he was at first terrified of running his own firm.

[00:19:53] Why Rich has had Neil Backwith as a mentor for 15 years.

[00:22:52] CCgroup has launched a couple of new divisions in recent years, in hindsight Rich talks us through which ones have worked and which ones have not. 

[00:24:12] Why CCgroup launched and then ‘unlaunched’ its B2B audience insight business Aperture. 

[00:27:54] Why CCgroup sold its consumer tech business Escapade as part of an MBO. 

[00:29:57] Why 80% of CCgroups clients are headquartered in the US. 

[00:30:52] How the US business will be 10% of CCgroup’s revenue in 2020 having only started in 2017.

[00:35:49] Rich identifies consistency of work as the key to business development. 

[00:37:00] How a merger that didn't happen started the process of Rich and Paul Nolan completing an MBO of the business. 

[00:39:15] Why Rich and Paul Nolan decided against using bank loans or private equity money to buy the business.

[00:41:03] How the CCgroup MBO worked for both the buy side and the sell side.  

[00:41:15] Why Rich believes there aren't more management buyouts in the industry. 

[00:47:05] Why Rich believes PR as a sector lacks confidence.

[00:51:15] Why the PR sector needs to close its ears to the people that slam the industry for column inches and in conference platforms.

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast, on the show today we’re discussing how to improve the connectivity between public relations and journalism - is there a way to create a more efficient workflow between PRs and journalists?

We’ll ask whether the relationship between PR and journalists is becoming damaged beyond repair and look and the reasons why this mutually beneficial relationship isn’t working better.

To talk about this we’ve got Charlie Russell who is the founder of Synapse. Synapse is aiming to take more of a marketplace approach to the intersection of PR and journalism by trying to remove the inefficiencies and frustrations of email from the daily workflow of PR professionals and journalists.

Before we start if you haven't taken a look already, the final entry deadline for The Creative Moment Awards is Friday 30th June.

Thanks to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

1.30 mins Is the communication bridge between PRs and journalists broken?

“It’s bonkers that email has become the default channel for PR: journalist relations…it’s not an efficient or effective 2-way communications channel”

7 mins How useful are PRs for modern journalists? Are journalists, in the main, still keen to engage?

12 mins Why the SEO sector’s evolution to “digital PR” and its desire for editorial links has resulted in a massive increase in the number of press releases sent to journalists.

“One journalist I spoke to got about 1000 emails a day…another got roughly 1 a minute, mostly from PRs.”

“Every email spawns another email.”

“It’s a real shame email has become the go-to channel for media relations, but it has.”

“PR teams spend far too much time writing/sending repetitive emails.”

17 mins To what extent do the pressures of email impact the mental health of both PRs and journalists?

20.30 mins Charlie talks us through the functionality of Synapse that he hopes will improve the PR: journalist workflow.

Can AI revolutionize journalism and help us create more compelling stories? Join us in this fascinating conversation with Jane Wakefield, a former senior tech journalist at the BBC, and Aaron Kwittken, founder/CEO of PRophet, as we explore the impact of AI on newsrooms, PR teams, publishing models, and the free press. 

We'll discuss the potential of AI for spreading misinformation, its role in storytelling, and even how The Guardian has been an early adopter of AI technology.

As we delve into the future of journalism, we'll examine how data journalism and AI can transform newsrooms and the free press. Learn about speeding up story turnaround times, managing bias with private AI systems, and adapting to the public's changing relationship with mainstream media. Plus, get insights into training newsroom staff on how to effectively prompt and query AI tools for better results.

In an era where trust and quality journalism are critical, we'll consider how organizations like the BBC are adapting to the challenges posed by AI in news. Discover the importance of public education in identifying real and fake news and the potential reactions to an increased reliance on AI in journalism.