Welcome to the PRmoment June 2024 iteration of the Global Creativity Review collection. In this series, founder of PRmoment Ben Smith joins a host of PR industry creatives to discuss, and sometimes dissect, the standout creative moments of the month.

This is the audio version of the Global Creativity Review: you can watch the video version, with all the campaign/work films on PRmoment's YouTube Channel.

The Global Creativity Review is produced In partnership with our sister title Creative Moment.

The only catch? Guests are not allowed to choose their own work.

Speaking on this review:

• Kat Thomas, founder and chief creative officer at One Green Bean
• Lora Martyr, executive creative director at Taylor Herring
• Olivia Mushigo, senior creative at Good Relations
  

Not got time for a whole podcast? Don’t worry, here is the TL/DR discussion points for time-pressed listeners:

1 mins: Sweethearts - Situationships by Tombras

5 mins: Heineken - Pub Museums (Ireland)

13 mins: NUFC x Sela - Unsilence The Crowd

21 mins: Red Bull - Flying Through London’s Tower Bridge

29 mins: Burger King - 70th Anniversary, Old Flames

32 mins: Heinz - Reviews For Naturalisation in Brazil

39 mins: Just Eat - More Beef Than Kendrick and Kanye

40 mins: Dove - Mom Experience Translator Tool

This is part of our regular series of creativity reviews, so if you like what you hear, look back at the PRmoment Podcast archive on iTunes or Spotify to listen to more creative ideas.

You can watch previous episode of The Global Creativity Review on PRmoment’s YouTube channel.

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

I’ve been looking forward to this one. We’re chatting with James Wright, the global chairman of Havas PR.

James is one of a decent number of British PR folks who have moved to Australia.

Havas PR has had a good run globally and in the UK over the past few years. Global revenues are reported to be $236 m in 2023, up 5% on the previous year. Havas PR has 1600 employees globally.

Before we start, a plug for our new subscription training service for senior folks within agencies, PRmoment Leaders. The programme of activity, including the tutorials, is now underway. If you're interested in learning more about this bespoke training programme for agency leaders, we’ll include the link in the show notes.

Also, do take a look at our latest PR Masterclass: PR and AI, which will be held on July 2nd in London.

At this one event, 12 experts will give 10 Masterclasses on PR & AI. Face-to-face and virtual tickets are available.

Finally, thanks so much to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors the PRCA.
Here is a summary of what James and I discussed:

3 mins James talks us through the recent growth of Havas’s PR revenues.

“Some markets are going really, really well, some markets are sluggish this year.”

“2023 was a very good year for us.”

“Havas Red started at $19 m in 2019, now $57m. Part of that is through acquisition. A great deal of that is organic.”

4.30 mins James talks us through the shape of Havas PR. Where do Havas Red, H/Advisors and One Green Bean fit together?

“We’ve gone from having 28/29 PR brands to 5 or 6.”

“Our global PR group is now Havas Red. It now exists in 19 markets, soon to be 20 and 21 before the end of the year.”

8 mins How does PR fit into an integrated offer within Havas? What type of work and what channels is PR responsible for?

“The strategy for Havas Red was to continue to own the earned but now to earn the owned…Over time, we have put social content and data solutions at the centre of our agency. In the US, when we started, only 3% of our revenues were social content. It’s now 40%. In the UK, it's a similar number.”

“For me, the concept of earned has changed from earned coverage to earned conversations.”

“Ad agencies just aren't set up to fast turnaround content.”

22 mins “The UK has been a massive success for us since we started in 2019 with just a few hundred thousand pounds to where it is now. The team there, led by Rachael Sansom, have done a phenomenal job.”

24 mins PR revenue-wise, Havas seems to have outgrown your holding group peers, albeit from a lower base.

24. 30 mins Does the Havas PR group follow the broad revenue model of most other international PR firms? Are the bulk of the revenues in North America?

25 mins What’s it like doing a global role from Sydney? Does James ever sleep?

“Sydney is the only place in the world where you can live a world-class lifestyle and do world-class work.”

28 mins James talks about the Australia PR scene in Australia.

“Consumer confidence is super low at the moment.”

“We hub some of our global accounts from here now. They just love the talent here.”

31 mins James talks about Havas’ approach to digital technology.

36 mins How big does James want Havas PR to get to?

“There is a very good opportunity in the next five years to break the $300 m mark.”

37 mins

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

On the show today, I’m chatting with Jim Hawker. Jim has returned to PR. We lost him to performance marketing for ten years, but he’s now back amongst old friends. But it seems he’s still criticising us!

Over the past three months, Jim has been on a bit of a tour de force around the PR sector, assessing its digital credentials in the context of his ten years working mainly in performance marketing.

Today, he will give us a critical report on the state of digital in PR firms.

Jim is the co-founder of Threepipe Reply, which he started in 2004.

Threepipe was an interesting case study for PR because it transformed itself from a traditional PR agency to a fully integrated brand and performance agency with 90 experts in PR, data and analytics, paid media, SEO, creative, and social channels.

This was achieved by merging the original Threepipe, a PR and organic social agency, with a paid media agency before acquiring a creative agency and then an SEO agency. Specialist teams were built across data science, marketplaces and retail media channels.

In 2019, Threepipe was acquired by Reply, a global technology consulting firm. Jim left the business in April 2024.

Before we start, a plug for our new subscription training service for senior folks within agencies: PRmoment Leaders. The line-up of speakers for the first semester is now complete and even if I say it myself - it’s almost perfect!

Also, do take a look at our latest PR Masterclass: PR and AI. We've filtered out the snake oil salesman, the bluffers and the AI dead ends to create PR Masterclass: PR & AI.

At this one event, 12 experts will give 10 Masterclasses on PR & AI.

Finally, thanks so much to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors the PRCA.

Here is a summary of what Jim and I discussed:

5 mins Does PR still have a digital problem?

9 mins What does the digital offer for most PR firms look like now?

“PR agency’s digital offer is still quite shallow”

“One of the things I always found odd was that people gauged your success by the number of people you employ, which I always thought was crazy. The aim wasn't to have a bigger Christmas party every year. The aim was to build profit and margin protection.”

12 mins Should PR firms be building their own tech?

17 mins How digitally curious are most PR people?

“The only way we were able to do it (bring in a greater range of digital skills into the agency) was through an acquisition strategy… it was a safer strategy.”

20 mins “One of the benefits of having a lot of paid media running through our agency was that we ended up having really close partnerships thiet eh technology platforms…the only way to get that is to spend money through them… Which meant we had a lot more access to insight.

“The net result of that is that your platform understanding becomes much deeper.”

23 mins Jim talks about how PR firms need to link attribution modelling and consumer behaviour to PR activity.

“I think the budget is going to end up going up the funnel, rather than further down it.”