Our Services

Together, we will build a strong presence for your business and brand to communicate with your audiences and stakeholders— from writing content, engaging social media campaigns to nurturing media relationships and connecting you with key influencers and stakeholders.

I provide a wide range of communications services including assistance with:
•    Integrated media relations

•    Inclusive Communications

•    Social media & digital PR management

•    Crisis planning, crisis communications, issues and reputation management

•    Communications strategy

Remember: It is about the outcomes, not the outputs; the relationship not the press release.

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Integrated media relations

Monitoring the changing media landscape , I can advise you on the best use of communications channels to promote your business.

I work with clients to understand their business goals, their objectives, key messages and target audiences.  Together, we will explore results-driven opportunities.

I will then work to achieve real results,  both in print and online.

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Inclusive communiucations

We live in an age where  minority communities can be harder to reach especially if they don’t follow the mainstream media and prefer to hear the news from their own sources or they feel their concerns are ‘ignored’ by the traditional news media.

So how do you engage?

How do you frame you frame your messaging? Organise an event which engages your target audience? Are you considering being an ally, advocate or accomplice?

I will work with you to understand your audience and stakeholders especially those from ‘minority’  communities. With that knowledge, we will look at what platforms should be used to have a full dialogue.  

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Social media & digital PR management

Digital PR and social media is a dynamic area of marketing, offering cost-effective and measurable ways of reaching your stakeholders. I can help you establish a strong digital communications presence by working with a network of specialist partners in web design, online copy-writing, blogging and search engine optimisation in order to  develop your social media presence.

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Crisis planning, issues and reputation management

Many organisations only seek crisis communications support once they are in the thick of a dilemma. Rather than running your company, you are in the midst of handling a crisis

I understand the importance of raising profiles and protecting reputations. As well as having extensive experience of providing effective support to organisations in a crisis, I also have vast experience of crisis communications and issues management and putting in place effective crisis plans to avoid reputational disaster – protecting your brand and your organisation.

When a crisis hits

I will provide round the clock assistance. Set up a 24/7 press office to deal with the news media, monitor social media and train and brief your key spokespeople, prepare your communications for internal and external audiences, advice on how to communicate your messages, ensuring your voice is heard, and your response is clear.

Crisis PR Planning – Be prepared

I will work with you and your teams to review your existing crisis PR strategy, plans and response, to identify potential or emerging crisis, to anticipate likely scenarios and plan the most effective responses. If you do not have a strategy or a plan then I will develop them in partnership with you.

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Communications Strategy

Do you need:

•    Help developing a communications strategy from scratch?

•    To address a specific stakeholder group?

•    To head off or manage a communications crisis?

•    To ensure your communications plan supports your business objectives?

•    To build in measurements to evaluate the effectiveness of your Communications Strategy?

You can trust us to ask the right questions and recommend clear and practical courses of action.

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Eyes on the prize

I have decided to become an independent practitioner.

That is a sentence that is loaded with much expectation and meaning especially as it was not an easy decision for me to take.

I started in PR back in 1990, because pay in local journalism was poor. I thought a (temporary) move to the Met Police’s Press Bureau would help and that I would soon return to newspapers.

Twenty four years later after a number of job changes and a stint aboard, I had a rude awakening when I was advised by a PR recruitment agency to consider changing careers as my CV would not get me a job in Public Relations.

Perhaps a career with the police, Mayor of London, healthcare in Vancouver and the Probation service was very public sector but having dealt with major issues which needed liaison with central government and communication with multiple-audiences, I thought that I could tackle what would be thrown at me.

Or was I being told that I was dangerously close to 50 and that I couldn’t keep up to speed with today’s digital world? Well having argued for and led the project to have a mayor’s online press office in place in 2002 and having run a number of website I couldn’t understand why this would be considered a problem.

And guess what? It is not a problem for me.

This is an opportunity for me to try something new and to challenge myself by taking on a new venture.

Fortunately, there is a guide available from the CIPR and the PRCA are pulling together a network to support solo practitioners. Equally important I have friends within the industry to give practical advice and support.

I am expecting wins and fails, busy periods and lean ones and times when I will question/doubt myself.

But I will be more in charge of my career and my success and failures will be my own.

I love a challenge. If in a year’s time it has failed then be it but I’ll give it 100%.

I am prepared, as the phrase goes to, “Go Hard or go home”.

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Of small steps and giant leaps – Moving towards a Global Competency Framework

When you tell co-workers that you are a Public Relations professional, what are you actually saying about yourself?

That you subscribe to the tenets that make up a profession such as being ethical, have a certain standard of training and adhere to professional standards of practice? That you are an experienced practitioner, who provides strategic communications advice?

But, would you say you belong to a profession, which plays a major role in society, politics and commerce worldwide?

Perhaps it is understandable that we do not often think in those latter terms as we have a parochial and practical view of Public Relations.

An attempt to develop a Chartered PR grade has not captured the imagination of many practitioners. While the PRCA has recently said that talk of a PR profession belongs to the 1950s and we should concentrate on being professionals.

Yet it is important that the industry/profession improves Public Relation’s standing and that of individual PR professionals. So, how do we encourage people to sign up to a scheme promoting expertise and proficiency that, up to now, they have done without? Can we be professionals without the supportive framework of a profession?

Perhaps, what is needed is an approach that promotes both professionalism and is integral to a person’s career progression.

Next year, the World PR Forum is to be held in Toronto. The theme “Communication across cultures” chosen to reflect the global nature of Public Relations. What caught my attention was a discussion at the Conference on the Global Alliance’s ambitious review of PR credentials across the world.

Jean Valin, FCPRS, who leads the project said:

“What has been missing so far was a global competencies framework leading to the double down of credential framework and curriculum standards. Since the ‘Global Body Of Knowledge’ project focuses on learning outcomes, we can achieve both goals.”

The Global Alliance has worked for many years to put in place the pillars to support PR’s move towards professionalism. This project has seen the Global Alliance analysing 30 existing competency, educational and accreditation frameworks from around the world leading to a draft list of criteria which has been shared with professional PR associations worldwide for consultation.

There is still way to go both to ensure that it is truly Global rather than western oriented and to make it as future-prof as possible. But having arrived at this interim stage, they are now a step closer to internationally agreed competency criteria focused at two professional levels: entry and mid-career, leading to universally recognised PR qualifications.

Some may say this is just more academic concept getting in the way of people doing their work. In fact, it is the opposite.

Imagine this. If you are an experienced practitioner, who can prove that he/she has met the required standards you will be able to practice anywhere in the world. Your skills and expertise will be recognised anywhere in the world, as would your PR qualifications, opening up PR as an international career choice to practitioners from across the world.

Maybe you are just beginning you are a prospective PR Student and concerned which college or university will give you the best start in your career.

If accepted, there will be one set of competency benchmarks for the global PR industry, flexible enough to be adapted to individual countries, leading eventually to recognition of PR qualifications that embrace the competencies. Talent shouldn’t be landlocked and Public Relations should not be restricted by borders either.

As former Global Alliance chair, Professor Anne Gregory, said when launching the project:

“The time is now right for a global conversation that looks at our profession’s body of skills, knowledge, attributes and behaviours, determines the common strands that apply to us all, but also allows for national or cultural adaptation.

“We will explore how we can involve employers in the process so that they recognise and understand agreed schemes and actively ask for people holding those credentials when recruiting.

“This is a significant project that will lay the foundations for professional recognition of public relations and communication management across the world.”

It is easy to underestimate the importance of this major step for the PR profession. It would set global standards for CPD and provide employers and recruiters with a definitive statement on what practitioners of professional standing should know.

From a selfish professional perspective, adopting such a standard might also help rid our profession from both the untrained unskilled practitioner who labels themselves as a PR Practitioner but hasn’t invested in the training or has adopted neither the code of conduct or ethics.

The grandly titled ‘Global Body of Knowledge Project’ is currently with the various member organisations of the Global Alliance for Consultation. They are to respond by the end of September – employers will be consulted in due course before a proposal will be made at the PR Conference in Toronto to accept the finalised version as a global standard.

Often our industry is wracked with low confidence, lower aspirations, and an inability to express the importance of the role and self-doubts when it should be promoting itself.

A new global standard of professionalism might help change this.

If you are interested in reading the draft list and sharing any observations, please click here.