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So, how did you find yourself at the top of such an influential communications group?

Well, we sold the advertising agency I was part of, Howell Henry, to Chime in 98, and because I'd spent my early career in both marketing and below-the-line marketing, I let Tim Bell know early on that, although I loved being in advertising, if there was anything else wherever he had a need, Id be very happy to change. Which to be honest, my friends in advertising thought was mad, because in those days advertising was seen as superior to public relations. And very quickly he said, look theres a job in Bell Pottinger, to run that, and if youre serious and if youre prepared to learn, come over.

What do you think are the challenges facing the PR industry?

I think they all come from the internet. If I can put it this way, all the challenges of advertising fifty years ago really came about because of television, and the challenges have increased because television has fragmented to the extent that now you have television on the internet and therefore the impact of advertising isnt as easy to make as it used to be.

And the reason I say the internet is that is provides, or rather necessitates, a transparency in companies, to a degree that has never happened before. Its not just true for companies, its true for individuals, its true for countries when you see the monks in Burma blogging to get their message out, or women in Iran, you realise this is a global phenomenon. So the first trend that comes out of the internet, I think, is transparency, and therefore companies and organisations are going to be much more in the limelight.

The second thing is connectedness. And those two things, transparency and connectedness, make every way we communicate dependent on the internet and so the biggest challenge is for all the communication industries to get with whats happening in the digital world, otherwise you become irrelevant.

How is Bell Pottinger leading the PR industry?

Well, I think in a number of ways. Its been number one in the industry for five years, and the first way I think it leads is its a great believer in specialisation, and I think want clients want is specialists. Im sort of sceptical about jacks-of-all-trades and masters of none. And obviously those specialists come together on specific briefs, where clients need more than one specialist piece of advice, and increasingly theyre becoming specialists in the digital world.

What would you say to a smaller PR agency who was building up their business and perhaps was thinking about becoming part of the Bell Pottinger group?

Id say have a very clear proposition. Dont just worry about your clients - worry about building a business, building a brand within the marketplace. And thirdly, I would say embrace the digital world so firmly that sometimes some of your clients say you’re almost excluding everything else. But everything I see is going in that direction, and that will become more and more important, and I think that doesn’t just mean understanding bloggers, it means understanding how to make films like this, how to make your website interesting, how to attract attention in the right way, how to listen to the voices that contact you via the digital world. So if I was a young agency I would just get with the internet, above all else.

If you could say one thing to all the PR professionals, what would you say?

This is going to sound like a weird story, there’s a Benedictine monk who does the rounds of after-dinner speaking - I can’t remember his name but I’m rather influenced by Benedictines because I went to a church school – and he says that Solomon, when offered all the riches in the world by God, didn’t choose the obvious things that we all might think of, he said: ”Grant me, Lord, a listening heart.” And what I think is interesting about that is not just listening, which I think all of us in communications do too little, but the thing is he didn’t say “Grant me, Lord, a listening mind”, he said “Grant me, Lord, a listening heart”, and I think that, again, the secret of great, great communications, is where the communication touches an emotional nerve, if such a thing exists – but an emotional facet, which makes people see the world in a different way than they had done previously and that’s when communication is not just good, it’s great.

Music by Midfield General from the album General Disarray © Skint Records 2008 Produced and directed by Daryl Willcox © Daryl Willcox Publishing www.dwpub.com

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