A day in the life of Launch Group’s Niki Wheeler

My Day:

A busy day for Niki Wheeler, consultant director at integrated PR agency Launch Group …

6.30am: Wake up call from the Today Programme. Catch some of the headlines of the day (plus a few wildlife stories) with a strong cup of builders tea while I get ready for work.

7.20am: Set off for Soho armed with copies of the FT and Daily Mail and my phone at the ready.

8.30am: At my desk with a cup of coffee and it’s time to review emails, check in with the team, listen in to our paper review (which takes place in the centre of our sell-in floor) and see what Netvibes has found online. It’s then time to send coverage we’ve generated (plus ideas on how to amplify it further), useful media insights and risk alerts to our clients.

9.00am: Quick look at who is doing what on LinkedIn – constantly reminds you that the people you like working with are generally connected to each other in some way. Then it’s time to chat with clients who may need to talk through our perspective on a breaking news story which presents a risk or opportunity to their business – often we act quickly to correct misinformation online so that we stop inaccurate stories becoming unnecessary headlines.

9.30am: We’re an integrated agency so internal one to ones with our Digital, Integration, Experiential, Operations and Finance leads are critical to making sure we’ve always got the right talent lined up for our existing and potential client briefs and that we’re meeting key objectives too.

9.45am: We like to think of ourselves as an extension of our clients’ teams so they often send their new recruits in to Launch for inductions on agency life. I’ll pop in to give a media relations or crisis management overview before handing over to the team.

10.00am: Everything we do starts and finishes with a phone call, so I’m generally on the phone to journalists or new business prospects for the next couple of hours as are the rest of the team. It creates a fantastic buzz!

12.00 noon: Though we’ve painted them Launch red, our offices in Soho are in a beautiful old rehearsal room. This means we’re often an open house for clients based out of town who want to use one of our meeting rooms to catch up on their emails, make calls or drink our extra strong coffee. Popping my head round the door is a great chance to catch up informally outside a status meeting or a phone call.

1.00pm: If I don’t have a business lunch (Dean Street Townhouse is a new favourite), one of the team and I stride out to grab a takeaway salad or sandwich – we’re spoilt in Soho and rarely go to the same place two days in a row. The news is on all day long on the office flat-screen, but we’ll often catch the lunchtime headlines – there may also be a team discussion about which radio station everyone wants to listen to that afternoon.

3.00pm: We’ve been invited in to meet some interesting businesses following our PRCA Campaign of the Year Award, so this is a great time to facilitate a creative session with the team and clients if they’d like to be involved. Crayons and biscuits help to beat the mid-afternoon slump.

4.00pm: Providing clients with a weekly update and coverage tracker is a great way of keeping focused and making everyone’s lives more straightforward – so we often use these as tools with which to update clients on conference calls – particularly if they are based outside the UK .

7.00pm: We often help our clients compile award entries and many host evening events where we’ll be on hand to co-ordinate diary editors and photographers. However, if we’ve got a night off I’ll head out in Soho or towards the gym before having a last look at emails when I get home …