PRmoment Podcast

This week, in the latest of our life stories podcast, I’m interviewing Fenella Grey, chair at Porter Novelli London, on the PRmoment podcast Fenella was a director at Weber Shandwick between 2007 and 2013, then she spent almost six years at Freuds before joining Porter Novelli in 2014. She was MD of the London office, before becoming London chair in July last year. Porter Novelli in London has cir...

This week, in the latest PRmoment Podcast, we’ve got a change of format from normal. In anticipation of the PRmoment Awards 2020 I thought it would be interesting to hear from some of the winners from the PRmoment Awards 2019. So today I’m talking to Niall Couper who is head of media, PR and supporter communications for Amnesty International UK. The Amnesty International UK comms team won the in-h...

This week, in the latest of our life stories podcasts, I’m interviewing Louie St Claire, CEO of Harvard and board director at Chime Specialist Group Harvard is part of the Chime Group, has a turnover of £7.5 million and grew by 18% last year. It has 80 employees. Chime originally bought Harvard in 2000 when it employed 200 people. What I love about Louie and Harvard’s story is that when Louie join...

This week, in the latest of our life stories podcast, I’m interviewing Dan Neale, co-founder and MD at Alfred. Alfred is an independent PR shop in London focusing on the consumer, entertainment, technology and gaming markets. It has a fee income of circa 1.3m and about 15 employees. Alfred was founded in 2013 by Dan Neale and Gemma Pears.  Gemma moved to the US for a short while and during that ti...

This week on the PRmoment Podcast, in the latest of our life stories series, I’m pleased to welcome MD of Nelson Bostock Nick Clark.    Nelson Bostock is one of those firms that everyone’s heard of, but it probably punches below its weight in terms of it’s profile in the PR industry.    For those of you that don’t know, Nelson Bostock was founded in 1987 by Martin Bostock and Roger Nelson. The fou...

This week, in the latest of our life stories podcasts, I’m interviewing Mark Lowe, co-founder of Third City.  Third City is a consumer PR firm in London with a fee income of over £2 million and a turnover approaching £3 million and 28 employees. Mark co-founded Third City in 2008 with Graz Belli. Previously Mark had worked at Band & Brown for six years. Here is a summary of what Mark and I dis...

This week on the PRmoment Podcast, in the latest of our life stories series, I’m pleased to welcome co-owner and managing director of Chameleon Tom Buttle Chameleon is an independent tech PR firm in London with a fee income of £2.1m and 20 people. The business was originally owned by Helen Holland before Tom Butttle and Tom Berry (what are the chances!) completed an MBO of the business in April 20...

This week on the PRmoment podcast, I’m pleased to welcome Natasha Hill, managing director at Bottle. Bottle has a turnover of £2m and is an independent multi-specialist PR firm in Oxford. The business was previously owned by Will and Claire Cairns. Will Cairns still has a stake in the business but Natasha and creative director Colin Cather now run the business day to day. Bottle has 25 staff and a...

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 busi...

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 increas...

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...

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,...

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...

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 busin...

This week on the PRmoment podcast, in anticipation of our I nfluence 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 agenci...

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...

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,...

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 an...

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...

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:...

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...

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...

This week, in the latest of our life stories podcast, I’m interviewing Neil Henderson, group director of global media and financial communications at Zurich Insurance Group. Neil is based in Switzerland. Previously, he has was head of media, content and partnerships at Which?, director of communications at Mastercard, executive director at Golin and head of media and broadcast at Red. Before this,...

This week on the PRmoment podcast I’m interviewing Louise Turner, head of Edelman Intelligence UK & Ireland. Louise heads up a large part of Edelman’s annual Trust Barometer research and is here to tell us about the UK findings in a global context. Louise talks about a fair bit of data in this podcast and below are a few useful links where you can learn more about the context of the discussion...

This week on the PRmoment podcast, in the latest of our life stories series, I’m pleased to welcome co-founder and CEO of Diffusion Daljit Bhurji. Diffusion was established 11 years ago and has a turnover of £5m and employes 60 people - 30 in London and 30 in the US, with offices in New York and more recently LA. It has a range of consumer, travel and technology clients. From about 26 minutes onwa...