Hill & Knowlton’s Sally Costerton on the art of conversation

For anyone out there like me who hates networking, you must have hoped that social networks offered the perfect solution. In these challenging times, social networks seem like a godsend. Instant, free and ideally suited to shy Brits who find it hard to make friends without Dutch courage, they combine convenience with the promise of creating networks of interesting people all over the world, just dying to offer you business.

All through my career I have disliked the idea of networking. It always felt uncomfortable – sidling up to some poor marketing director at a conference over the biscuits. This didn’t stop me secretly wanting to be brilliant at it. To be the person gliding effortlessly round events working the room and my phone ringing off the hook with intrigued prospects. 

I have tried different things over the past 25 years – lost afternoons in the Fleet Street pubs with journalists and clients (Beaujolais breakfasts anyone?); a stint working in Surrey in the early 1990s where it was Pizza Express or golf – no drinking, everyone drove everywhere; and getting back to London in the late 1990s to discover that thanks to the tech boom everyone had become American while I was away and business was being done over serious, mineral-water-fuelled lunches. Hill & Knowlton (H&K) was then in an office in “Mid-Town” – clearly the agents had never been to New York – which was only slightly more dynamic than Camberley High Street and the local centre of networking was the Square Pig pub. In desperation, H&K had fixed the networking problem by opening its own bar. 

Things looked up when we moved to Soho, but by the end of the decade recession was entrenched and it was depressingly easy to get a table on a Friday without booking. By then, social networks were going strong. I’m a believer.  I now Tweet. I am on Facebook. I know how to use BBM (because RIM is a client). I’m on LinkedIn. But truth be told, it hasn’t delivered the results I’d hoped. Rather the pressures of trying to build business as the world’s stock markets fall makes us want to herd together. I’ve never seen the PRCA so well attended – I think we’re enjoying a moment of realising that screens don’t replace real conversations and business is built on relationships forged in the real world. On the continent, they have always had this view. No guilt for them – my Italian colleagues love their technology, but won’t consider doing business with anyone they haven’t broken bread with. 

And I think they’ve got the balance right. Social networks have their place – and for those who have grown up knowing nothing else they’ll get the benefit of a wider global group of contacts to use as a basis for building their own fruitful relationships. But give me a civilised conversation with a long standing contact any day. It is so much easier to explore possibilities over a good meal than on your Facebook wall. In my experience, real business comes from real relationships with real people – whether they live in your backyard or three time zones away. 

PRCA chairman Sally Costerton is chairman & CEO Europe, and chairman Australia, Middle East, Africa, South and Central Asia (AMEASCA ) at PR firm Hill & Knowlton.