1775 – The Evolving Role of Communication Agencies with Jules Herd

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0:58with us right now jules heard jules you are the managing director for five in a boat you're found on the web at five in a boat.com jules thank you so much for joining us thank you for having me very happy to be here today yeah give us an overview of the work that you do so five in a Boat is predominantly a comms agency, strategic communications agency, and we work with a variety of different clients across multiple spaces. The common denominator tends to be that they're clients that sit within technology. So it could be any form of technology, AI, robotics, gaming, music tech, anything. And they usually sit within a funding round of between A to C.

1:39So it's scale-ups more than anything else. Although saying that, we do work with big brands like Universal Music, and we do work with companies that are just going through their stages of angel investment. Yeah. All right. So what sorts of services do they need on the communication side generally? So I would actually say that the communications remit has shifted over the course of the last few years. We're now really more in the business consultancy space. A lot of clients come to us, specifically those who are operating as scale-ups, with a view to get the next round of funding. and actually they're struggling with investment.

2:15And part of what they need to do if they're looking for investment is to make sure that they're in front of investors. And there is a ranch of different publications and platforms and portals that investors read and engage with that a lot of those companies aren't even present on. So part of our role, on the one hand, is to advise them around investment and on the other hand is to make sure that they're getting in the likes of Forbes and Entrepreneur and TechCrunch and those very important titles for them. um beyond that we do an awful lot of stuff with reputation management so we have a lot of companies that have come through or are facing challenging times we've had one company that was owned by russians and then the russians were sanctioned and we had to make sure that that was reported in in the right way and you know the relevant messaging came through we do a lot of issues and crisis communication as part of that we do a lot of product launches so we've launched absolutely everything you could possibly imagine.

3:10But as I said, it's predominantly that built nowadays for us, the business consultancy piece, where we're really adding value above and beyond what would traditionally have been media relations, send out a press release, write an opinion editorial. It goes a lot further than that today. Yeah. What would be some examples? Someone is like, okay, I'm familiar with reputation management. Can you maybe define that a little bit for those who are curious about typically what that might entail. It's not usually when someone says, well, look, we've had some negative reviews, we had this one social media person kind of blast us and now we need to turn things around.

3:49Is it a little bit different than that? It's a little bit more proactive, right? Yeah. And I think you're absolutely right there. I think where a lot of people go wrong when they look for comms specialists is they assume that it is just that reactive piece and not the proactive piece. And actually, it still plays a part. So for example, we see a lot of companies that come to us and are having real problems recruiting. And we look at their Glassdoor profiles, which is where a lot of people go to to find out information about that company. And they're absolutely atrocious. So a reactive job would be to respond to some of that criticism, and make sure that their Glassdoor scores improve.

4:25But conversely, there is obviously the proactive piece, you look ahead at what the, I guess the economic climate's doing or a particular business environment in which a company is operating and if you can foresee that there are going to be problems your job is to put in place a plan to manage a reputation before the hits the fan for one of the best phrase so for example we work with a lot of companies the games industry is a perfect example so the games industry has taken an absolutely ginormous hit this year there's been an awful lot of redundancies you're seeing companies like Epic Games, Riot, and others that are changing their businesses round because there isn't as much money going into the industry.

5:07There was an awful lot of money that went in around COVID because more people were spending time playing games. And obviously, things have changed off the back of that. And actually, what we're trying to do is we're trying to manage reputations and get ahead of what might come out of that that could potentially be negative for a games company. So here's a prime example. We put somebody, we put one of our clients on the BBC this week to talk about opportunities in the game space at a time where it can be quite challenging. And that's managing their reputation in a positive way, because it's enabling them to be that spokesperson for an industry, which without us, they potentially wouldn't have had that opportunity to do that.

5:43Yeah. Would you say like for early, let's say for early, early stage businesses that maybe don't necessarily have like a communication strategy plan. They're just like, well, look, we'll take any PR we can get. But other than that, we haven't really thought about it. Like if you had the opportunity to meet with someone that was pretty early stage, you said, okay, here's what I want you, here's where I want you to start thinking today. And so that you could truly be proactive that as you continue to grow and scale, because you had the right ideas or plan in place, this was something that then has been pretty beneficial for them.

6:23So what you tend to find is that a lot of these early stage companies are bringing something new to the table. So they're doing something that's transformative. And that's a lot of the businesses that we work with. And here's a recent example where this worked well. We work for a very early stage company called CurboCharge, which operates in the electric vehicle space. And there's been an awful lot of, not necessarily negativity, but criticism around beyond EVs, based on lack of government funding, based on them being more expensive in theory than petrol cars. And actually what CurboCharge is doing is creating that infrastructure to make it a lot easier for people to be able to use electric vehicles.

7:05So it's ensuring that people can charge their cars by putting in place technology that enables them to do it from the street into their home if they don't have driveways. So very early stage, but what they're doing is something that's incredibly interesting. So therefore they become a thought leader. and what early stage companies can do very early on in their respective industries is become mouthpieces for those industries so with curbo got curbo on sky news and a bunch of others talking about how their technology is driving the industry forward and as i said they are absolutely tiny they're doing a brilliant job and they're growing very quickly but they're very small and actually putting them in in that place as a thought leader and you know providing a different perspective on the industry often starts to cement their position in that market and in that space.

7:51Yeah. Jules, when would somebody or when should somebody hire an agency like Five and About? So first of all, a company has to have their product right first. And I've had a number of companies come to me and try to engage us. And I've looked at the product and said, you're not ready. Because the last thing we want to do is to have a company spending their money on us when the product's not viable. It's a waste of money. And then you just end up having to defend them from a reputation management perspective because they haven't got their stuff together. If their product is ready, however, I would suggest right from the start because one of the things that we do incredibly well and good communications practitioners should do is put in place those messaging frameworks that are really important when you start out as a business.

8:35If you don't have those in place, you will find that you don't have any strategy in terms of how you get your information out there. And that could be a product launch, or it could be an investment round, or it could be a new CEO, everything's sort of done in a little bit of a hit and miss fashion. Sorry, put my teeth back in. And, and if you have that strategic communications framework in place, which effectively talks to every single part of your business, then when you do start communicating externally, you will find that your messages start to resonate. And that's really important because that helps build your brand.

9:07It helps ensure that your tone of voice is right. It makes sure that your share of voice is there. So arguably, I would say right from the start, but the product has to be ready and you have to be in the right headspace to do it because using communications professionals in not the right way will not be advantageous to anyone. Yeah. So I'm on your website, by the way, five in a boat. Yes. What does that mean? so I'm a former rower and I rode for a number of years and it's extremely competitive and very hard work and the particular boat that I would row in that I found it very difficult was a coxed four and each of the rowers have their own place in the boat and they have their own role in the boat but if they're not pulling together as a team they're not going to win the race and it's exactly the same in business I have my job my number two has his job the rest of their team have their jobs and they're all important individually.

10:04But if they don't pull together, if we don't pull together as a team, we're not going to succeed as a company. So that's the analogy. And that's why it's called five and a boat. And there aren't five of us. There's more than five of us, but there you go. Well, that's quite a team. So when you begin, or like, let's say someone reaches out and oftentimes I think this is pretty common, my background's in PR. You know, folks may come in or a client may be referred to you. And usually they are looking for something like they might come in and just say, well, we want PR, we want visibility or we want media.

10:39Right. And usually they don't know why they usually don't have a lot of thought necessarily behind why they just want visibility. What are those initial conversations typically like? And I think this is really informative, by the way. If someone's just saying, well, listen, we want to grow scale. We want to improve our sales. So therefore, we need PR. As an example, and not everyone says this, but for those who do and others, what do those initial conversations usually sound like? Well, that's an interesting one because actually a lot of the time we find ourselves convincing people that they need communications.

11:21So we do a lot of cold outreach. And what generally happens is we spot something in the media, or we read something, or we see a customer comment, and we think, God, they're not doing this very well, let's approach them and tell them how they could do it better. That's kind of the route we usually go. But back to your point, when it comes to people that decided that they want PR, it's usually because someone's told them that they need it, they don't really understand what it is, you tend to find you've got a group of people that sit within an executive team that one is very good at marketing, has no clue about PR, one hasn't got a clue about anything that's outside of technology, one's going along for the ride.

11:59So you've got this whole different team of people that are coming in from different points that the thing that they all have in common is they want their business to succeed. So it's about getting them on the page, the same page, and communicating and demonstrating to them how communications can help deliver them success only if it's aligned with their business objectives though so if somebody was to call me up and say I'm going to put I want you to put a press release out about x y and z my first question is okay why my second question is how does it align with your business objectives because if it isn't going to deliver sales and PR doesn't really deliver sales it delivers brand awareness but on occasion it has but if it isn't going to deliver something that is absolutely aligned with whatever that your core objectives are it's a pointless exercise don't bother And I think in an ideal world, I'd see more comms professionals sitting around the board table because actually they bring a lot of business value.

12:53And I think with communications and PR, it isn't just about that one magical thing that's gonna change the world overnight because the reality is, is the media landscape, influencers, bloggers, customers, partners are fickle. So you have to do something that's meaningful. And if it isn't meaningful, it's pointless. You're wasting their money and they're wasting your time. and i wanted to point something out so i'm on your website correct me if i'm wrong but you're a painter and i think i'm looking at some of your work right uh no on my on the five and about website oh okay that's not yours that's not mine but funnily enough i do happen to have a i don't know whether you can see that it's a camel um i am a painter yes but i'm an amateur painter and I have a website called the Kooky Creator.

13:44It's actually, it's not a website, it's an Instagram page. And I have been painting my spare time since lockdown and I've had commission. Really? So this is a newer hobby for you? Yes, it is a new hobby. Yeah, and I do it because it gives me a bit of downtime. But yeah, for some bizarre reason, people seem to like my stuff. So I get asked to paint all sorts of random things and I love it. Oh, my gosh. That's did you do you find that that was a skill that you were able to get good at over time? Like, when did you start noticing a progression of your abilities? Well, there's this phrase, isn't there, that you have to spend 10 ,000 hours to be accomplished at some really accomplished at something, be it musical instruments or whatever it might be.

14:31And actually, the truth is, is that the more you practice, the better you get. there's obviously a base talent there I'm not necessarily saying I'm hugely talented because I'm really not but I you know I've been doing a couple of paintings a week now for more or less for the last sort of two three years anything between three hours or I painted I can't remember what it's called but it's basically three paintings that you put together that make a full painting or you can have each of them separately that took me about 20 hours so you do have to invest quite a lot of time, but yeah, it's progressive and I think it's getting better.

15:08My dad seems to tell me it is. So there we are. And I love it. That's the main thing. I think everyone should have something outside of work. Yeah. And the brain is so remarkable when we think about new skills, talents or, you know, in business, right. In, in leadership, you know, if we're malleable and we're willing to be, you know, I think in, in learning something, right. I've been so this summer, I started learning the bass guitar for the first time ever. And it's remarkable how much I've improved in just four months time. And it really is just a testimony to how amazing our brains are, if we're willing to, you know, kind of do this thing over and over and over again.

15:50And, you know, I see applications of this in business, certainly, you know, when you find something you love, and you just have a, you know, just a real dogged personality to, you know, to really excel at that one thing, whatever your role is in business. But you know, there's something to be said for time invested. I think also that you benefit more as a business person, when you are doing something that is out of your comfort zone. Because A, you become more focused on what you're doing within your comfort zone. And B, it brings a sort of different perspective onto things, because you're actually having to retrain the way that you look at things, because it's not something that you're used to doing.

16:27So I can see the benefits outside of business and also as a person that runs a business. You know what I love about these hobbies? Sorry, I didn't mean to, like I just, I'm geeking out with you here on this. This has been something that I've been processing a lot lately too. You know, they talk about the benefits of meditation and that sort of thing. And for me, you know, when I am playing or trying to learn something, you know, in music, Like I'm not thinking about the stresses of work. I'm not thinking about, you know, that one unfortunate incident that I may be replaying in my brain, you know, too many times.

17:05When I'm engaged in something like that, that's all I'm thinking about. I'm 100 % focused. So I feel like I'm getting the same benefit of meditation. Yeah, absolutely. All right. So getting back to the subject du jour, fiveinaboat.com, when somebody goes there, Jules, what would you recommend they do? Well, first of all, have a look to see what services we offer. We're quite prevalent on LinkedIn and Twitter as well as a company, but look at what services we offer. I genuinely think that as a business, we're in a very strong position and that we can support companies of any size. We tend to stay away from kind of big consumer branded stuff.

17:46as I said, we very much sit within the technology space because that's where our level of expertise sits. But go and have a look because guaranteed there'll be something on there that will be of benefit for you for a company that's looking for some comm support. But as I said, it has to be aligned with business objectives and growth. Otherwise, especially when we're looking at smaller companies and scale-ups that they have to answer to people that have invested, you know, or they're bootstrapped or, you know, they've got so much more pressure on where they put their money. they need to make sure that it's being spent in the right place.

18:17So as I said, go and have a look on the website. There'll be something on there for you, but it's largely dependent on your business objectives in terms of what's actually right for your particular company because one size doesn't fit all. Jules Hurd, again, Managing Director of Five in a Boat, your website, fiveinaboat.com. Thank you so much, Jules, for joining us. It's a pleasure. Lovely to meet you and have a great day.

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