Messaging & Proposition
Messaging & Proposition
Messaging & Proposition
Effective communications are founded on good messaging; why choose your business to solve a customer’s problem, what makes it different, what is happening in the market.
Clear messaging helps you find and showcase points of difference, and add impact to all communications, in sales, marketing and PR.
Executive Profiling
Messaging & Proposition
Messaging & Proposition
People buy people. Journalists are more interested in people than products. High-profile business leaders carry an aura. Well-connected, authoritative, influentials have an edge over others in business.
Develop a personal brand, become a key person of influence, showcase expertise and grow your network.
News Management
Messaging & Proposition
Content Strategy
Impactful moments, such as launching a big product, entering a new market, making a major hire, raising new investment - are PR assets you shouldn't waste.
Beyond writing a press release, it's about the tactics, timings, targets and building a story to make the most out of what you have.
Content Strategy
Messaging & Proposition
Content Strategy
Great content sits at the heart of any communications plan - bringing the benefits of a product or service to life, or taking bold points of view on the issues that affect the sector.
A content strategy sits at the heart of a LinkedIn & social programme, newsletters & blogs, comment and opinion for media, and lead-gen content such as white papers.
Media Training
Partner Selection
Media Relations
How do you know if your value proposition will resonate? How well can spokespeople get messages across under pressure? Can spokespeople add expert insight and analysis to news events?
Role-playing different types of media interviews (accountability interviews, business profile interviews, thought-leadership views) will help you see if your messaging stands up.
Media Relations
Partner Selection
Media Relations
Where do you want to earn coverage? Which media are likely to be interested, given the brand profile of the business and its people? What do they write about? How do you engage them, and get them to pay attention?
A media CRM. and supporting media engagement plan will help you reach key journalists, building strong media relationships that will serve you and your brand for years.
Comms Operations
Partner Selection
Partner Selection
How does PR work within your organisation? Is it a function that lies within the marketing team, or the C Suite? How does content get approved? How will your PR partner work with the rhythm of the business? What tech to use?
Use my experience of working with dozens of PR teams to help you 'bake' PR into the business so it is delivered efficiently and effectively and meets the businesses' goals.
Partner Selection
Partner Selection
Partner Selection
Looking to hire a PR partner, but where do you look? Who do you choose? What does the budget include? On what criteria will you award the contract? How will you run the process?
I've won contracts (and lost a few), worked with intermediaries and new biz teams, audited & managed PR agencies run selection processes, hired PR people - this experience helps you avoid expensive mistakes.
Why I do what I do.
I've loved business since I was at school.
We'd watch shaky VHS recordings of the BBC’s 1980s TroubleShooter series, fronted by Sir John Harvey Jones (a respected business leader for his turnaround job at chemicals giant ICI). He'd go into a struggling business and offer advice on how they could turn things around. I was inspired.
I went on to do a business degree, and I think the business-outcome-centric approach I've always taken to PR, is down to being inspired by those programmes.
My first proper job led me to become lead spokesperson for the British recorded music business.
Working up from intern, I became an influencer of sorts - building a personal brand that resulted in me making 100+ media appearances including a grilling from Jon Snow on Channel 4 News, appearances on BBC Breakfast and This Morning couches, dozens of talking-head TV soundbites and radio interviews on BBC, Sky, CNN and more.
I ghost-wrote articles for titles like the FT and The Sun in defence of the principle that for all the benefits of technology, creative people deserve the right to be paid for their work.
I then spent three years at the BBC, after the launch of the BBC iPlayer, as it underwent its own digital transformation. Working behind the scenes I ran corporate comms for the 'future media and technology' division, leading the team responsible for promoting digital services like BBC iPlayer, its apps and TV platforms.
After the BBC, I worked for a range of startups and services firms. I was part of the leadership team at Propeller PR as it transitioned from a founder-managed lifestyle business into a serious growth business, doubling in size in three years.
I then founded and ran PPR, a pay as you go PR agency. Starting with no clients, and no money, it went on to employ five people and dozens of PR freelancers. It survived the pandemic, delivering hundreds of pieces of coverage for over fifty different clients - all of which were small firms punching above their weight.
So I've worked in-house, running departments, in agencies at director level, as a company founder and independently as a consultant. An avid reader of business books and a proud ambassador for the Read To Lead community, I also hold a degree in Management Science, and love to use that experience to advise others.
Outside of work, I'm very active (running, bootcamp, tennis, cycling). I love to snowboard, a bit of karaoke, and I'm also an amateur actor with twelve productions under my belt.
Most of this thanks to the community in my beloved village of Blewbury in Oxfordshire where I live with my wife, two teenage kids, and Basil the cat.
Quick-Start
Full-Proposal
Full-Proposal
In a rush to get going? Don't have a full brief? Not 100% sure exactly what to invest, on what, or where your story is strongest?
With quick start you'll get an outline proposal and we'll work out the detail as we go. Just give me a five-minute summary brief, I'll reply over email with an outline and estimate and we can work out the detail together as we go.
Full-Proposal
Full-Proposal
Full-Proposal
Got more time to decide on who you want to bring in? Have a clear PR brief, a sales and marketing strategy you can share, and know what you need?
I'll create a full proposal to address your brief in detail with specifics on what I'll do, when, and how. We'll create a detailed brief together (through conversations and my detail briefing form) so you have a fuller more-considered proposal.