PR & Media Relations

A slightly different approach to PR

I work with businesses, founders, public figures and organisations on proactive PR and media relations, whether that's building a profile, launching something new, establishing credibility, changing an existing perception or simply making sure the right people know who you are and what you do. I've worked across B2B and B2C businesses, as well as with public figures including actors, celebrities, politicians and founders.

Crisis PR is my particular specialism, but I've always considered it part of the same discipline. Ultimately, most PR is reputation management in one form or another. Sometimes you're building a reputation, sometimes you're maintaining or changing one, and sometimes you're protecting one when the stakes suddenly become much higher. I also work extensively with Google, search results and how people and businesses are represented by AI, because today those things are increasingly difficult to separate from PR. A piece of coverage doesn't disappear once the news cycle moves on. It can influence what ranks for your name, what somebody finds when they research you and what AI systems understand about you long afterwards.

That's why I tend to look at PR as part of the bigger picture. Press, search, social media, Google and AI all contribute to reputation, and the work should make sense across all of them. That said, sometimes you simply need good PR. I do that too.

PR should have a purpose

I'm not particularly interested in getting your name into the press simply so we can add another link to a monthly report. I don't promise a set number of pieces of coverage every month, nor do I grade publications into arbitrary tiers and promise a certain number from each. Quite simply, I don't think good PR works like that.

No publicist can guarantee that a credible journalist will write about you. If there isn't a story, there isn't always something worth pitching, and even very well-known people have quiet months. Of course, it's often possible to manufacture a reason to generate coverage, but before doing that I think it's worth asking a much more important question: why do we want this coverage in the first place?

Every piece of PR should have a purpose. It might be introducing you to a new audience, establishing you as an expert in your field, supporting a business objective, changing what appears when somebody searches your name, creating credible third-party references, communicating a particular message or building the foundations of a stronger public profile.

Sometimes the smartest PR decision is actually to say nothing for a while. There is such a thing as overexposure. If somebody appears everywhere without having very much to say, people can become tired of seeing them and journalists can become less interested when there eventually is something important to talk about. I'd rather build a reputation strategically than chase coverage for the sake of being able to say we got it.

My relationships with journalists

One of the less obvious benefits of specialising in crisis PR is the amount of time I spend talking to journalists. A large part of my working life involves speaking directly with reporters, editors, producers and broadcasters, often in circumstances where those relationships really matter. Over the years, that's allowed me to build strong relationships across national newspapers, magazines, television, radio and digital media, and those relationships aren't only useful when something has gone wrong.

I use the same understanding of how journalists work, what makes a genuinely good story, what gets ignored and what makes somebody worth coming back to when I'm working proactively with clients. I'm also regularly approached by journalists myself for commentary on reputation, crisis communications and stories involving public figures, so I'm not approaching media relations from the outside. I spend a considerable amount of my working week dealing with the press from both directions.

That doesn't mean I can phone a journalist and instruct them to write about you. Nobody credible can. It does mean I understand their world, know how to approach them properly and, when I put something in front of them, I want there to be a good reason for doing it.

What we might work on

There isn't a standard PR formula because there isn't a standard reason for wanting PR.

Depending on what we're trying to achieve, our work together might include:

• National and international press

• Interviews and profiles

• Television and radio

• Expert commentary

• Thought leadership and opinion pieces

• Podcasts

• Business and trade media

• Announcements and launches

• Founder and executive profiling

• Public positioning and messaging

• Awards and speaking opportunities

• Social media strategy

• Influencer and creator work

• Reputation and search strategy

• Media training and interview preparation

I don't automatically recommend all of those things.

If your audience isn't reading national newspapers but is listening to three very specific podcasts, I'd rather get you onto those podcasts. If an intelligent social strategy will achieve more than another interview, we'll concentrate there. If we have one genuinely excellent story that deserves national coverage, we'll put our energy behind that.

The channel follows the objective, rather than the other way around.

How I work with clients

I prefer to work collaboratively rather than disappearing for a month and returning with a coverage spreadsheet. At the beginning of our work together, we'll establish what you actually want PR to achieve and, just as importantly, what you want people to understand about you. From there, we look at what's happening in your world, what you're launching or working on, the conversations you can credibly contribute to, the messages we want to establish and any existing perceptions we might want to change.

We continue those conversations throughout the relationship rather than working from a fixed PR formula. Some months there may be an obvious media story and we'll move quickly on it. Another month might be better spent building journalist relationships, preparing a larger feature, working on your positioning, improving your online presence or developing something we can use later.

I don't believe your PR activity needs to look identical every month for the retainer to be doing its job. What matters is that the work we're doing is contributing to the bigger objective.

Reputation comes first

My crisis background means I'm probably more cautious about publicity than the average publicist. Before putting something into the public domain, I'm thinking about more than whether we can get coverage from it. I'm thinking about the headline, the quote that could be pulled out, how it fits with everything else you've said publicly, what it might look like out of context, what appears on Google afterwards and, ultimately, whether it helps the reputation we're trying to build.

There's an old saying that all publicity is good publicity. I don't particularly agree. Visibility without strategy can create as many problems as it solves, and the objective isn't to make you famous for a week. It's to build a public reputation that actually supports what you're trying to achieve.

Sometimes that means knowing when not to pitch.

You don't need to be in crisis to work with me

Because I'm particularly known for crisis PR, people occasionally assume that if I'm representing somebody, something must have happened. That's not the case. Some clients come to me in the middle of incredibly difficult situations. Others come to me because their business is growing, they're launching something, they want a stronger media profile or they simply want somebody experienced looking after how they're represented publicly.

You don't need a problem to take your reputation seriously. In fact, it's considerably easier to build a strong reputation before you ever need to protect it.

Working together

If you're looking for a PR agency promising a guaranteed number of articles every month, I'm not the right fit.

If you're looking for someone who will understand what you're trying to achieve, tell you when I think something is worth pursuing, tell you when I don't, and think about every piece of publicity as part of your wider reputation, then we should probably talk.