Almost two decades in marketing and communications. Here is what I have learned…
I did not plan to spend two decades in marketing and communications. I do not think many people do. You fall into it, find you are good at it, find you love it, and before long it is not just what you do but how you think.
Looking back now, from the vantage point of almost twenty years and more briefs, campaigns and newsrooms than I can count, a few things stand out. Not as a greatest hits reel but as the honest lessons that have shaped how I work and what I believe great communications looks like.
Start in an agency. Stay curious.
I started my career in agency life, working across consumer brands in the north of England before moving to London. Those early years were formative in ways I did not fully appreciate at the time. The pace, the variety, the exposure to different sectors and different clients in quick succession, it builds a kind of instinct that you cannot get any other way.
Working at Weber Shandwick, Brazen PR and later M&C Saatchi PR taught me how to think about a brief properly. Not just what the client wants but what their audience needs. Not just what is newsworthy today but what will still matter tomorrow. That curious instinct, the habit of asking one more question before you decide you understand a brief, is the single most valuable thing I took from those years.
In-house changes everything
Moving in-house for the first time, at Merlin Entertainments, was a recalibration. Suddenly the communications function was not a service being sold. It was a core part of how the organisation operated and how it was perceived.
That shift in perspective made me a better consultant. Understanding how in-house teams work, what pressures they face, how decisions get made and unmade, means I can embed in a client organisation quickly and speak their language from day one. It also taught me that the best communications work is rarely done in isolation. It is done with finance, legal, HR and the leadership team all pulling in the same direction.
Scale changes the game
The years I spent building and leading communications functions at scale across Uswitch, Confused.com, money.co.uk and Mojo Mortgages were the most commercially formative of my career. Founding a communications function from scratch, hiring a team, building the infrastructure and then delivering 25,000+ pieces of media coverage and 16,000+ high-authority backlinks across four of the UK's highest-traffic digital brands, that is where I learned what integrated really means.
It is not a buzzword. It is content, PR and social working from the same brief, toward the same commercial objectives, with a shared understanding of what success looks like. When those three things align, the results compound. When they do not, you get noise.
Leading communications during the energy crisis across government, regulatory, media and consumer audiences was one of the most demanding and most rewarding periods of my career. It required rapid strategic thinking, clear messaging under pressure and the ability to hold a consistent brand narrative while the story around you was changing by the hour. I would not swap that experience for anything.
The work I am most proud of
Joining Chemist4U as Head of PR, Content and Social and taking the brand from virtually unknown in media to dominating national health headlines in twelve months is the work I am most proud of. Not because of the coverage numbers, though the number one share of voice in UK weight loss media is something I am genuinely proud of. But because the Eat Less Move More campaign did something rare. It shifted a cultural conversation, not just a brand metric.
Putting real patient voices at the centre of a national debate about weight loss stigma, bringing in Fat Tony and Amy Tapper to front an original track, partnering with the National Bullying Helpline, that campaign had a point of view. It said something. And the communications industry rewarded it because audiences responded to it.
That is the standard I hold myself to. Not coverage for coverage's sake. Work that earns its place because it genuinely means something to the people it reaches.
What going freelance taught me
Making the move to freelance was the best professional decision I have made. Not because the work is easier, it is not, but because it clarified everything. Every engagement is a choice. Every brief is an opportunity to bring the best of almost two decades of experience to bear on a problem that matters to someone.
Without the internal politics, the legacy thinking and the organisational inertia that can slow even the best in-house teams down, I can focus entirely on the work. The strategy, the instinct, the creative edge and the commercial discipline that makes communications genuinely effective.
Almost two decades in. Still curious. Still asking one more question before I decide I understand the brief.
Great work starts with a spark. It always has.
Find out more about my background.
If you are looking for a senior marketing and communications consultant who brings that kind of experience to your brief, get in touch. I am available for freelance, contract and interim engagements.
