Welcome to the latest PRmoment podcast.

On the show today we’re talking to Heather Blundell, the UK CEO of Grayling. Heather joined Grayling in late 2023 after a brief spell at Ketchum as deputy UK CEO. Before that she’d headed up Weber’s Manchester office and been part of the leadership team at Weber in London.

On the show today we’re going to talk through Heather’s career story, from her time as a trainee at Edelman, which she describes as “like SAS training” through to her MD role at Grayling today.

Grayling has global revenues of £40m with about half of those in the UK. It has 30 offices globally.

Clients include Visa, Birmingham Football Club and Grindr.

Before we start, two pieces of good news at PRmoment this week. The first is that the programme for PR Masterclass: AI in PR is now complete. The PR Masterclass series are hybrid events so you can attend either in person or virtually. The event is on July 3rd and themes include:

How to Integrate AI into your PR Workflow
The impact of AI on Journalism
AI as a content production tool
Is LLM optimisation PR's biggest opportunity of our lifetimes?
How will AI impact the agency business model?
How to build and scaling AI-powered PR tools
The legal implications of AI in your communications
The intersection of PR and AI for in-house communicators
How to move from AI experimentation to implementation

Check out the microsite PRMasterclasses.com for all the details including the speaker line-up.

The other vital bit of information is that The Creative Moment Awards are now open for entries. You can see all the categories for 2025 at the microsite creativemomentawards.co.

The early bird entry deadline is Friday 16th May.

Here’s a summary of what Heather and PRmoment founder discussed:

3 mins Heather on the current health of UK PR would you say?

“The agency model and way of working is continuing to evolve.”

“We’re seeing clients be cautious.”

“Pitching is more aggressive than ever.”

8.30 mins Heather started her PR career at Edelman. Looking back, is that where she learnt how to be good at PR?

“There was a high level of expected excellence. I’ve tried to emulate that throughout my career. It was a high challenge, high support culture.”

15 mins How did Heather make the move from Edelman in London to Weber Shandwick in Manchester?

16 mins Heather talks about the role Colin Byrne and Jon McLeod played in her becoming MD of Weber Shandwick Manchester aged 29.

“Agencies must be a meritocracy, not a test of longevity.” Ben Smith

19 mins How Heather and her team turned around the fortunes of Weber Shandwick in Manchester to have a fee income of about £5m and 40 odd employees in 2014.

24 mins Heather and Ben reminisce about the PR legends that were Colin Byrne and Robert Phillips.

Here is the link to the PRmoment Podcast with Colin Byrne, referenced in the show.

28 mins Why did you leave Weber to go to Ketchum?

29 mins What did Heather learn from her time at Ketchum?

31 mins Heather on why she moved to Grayling.

“Grayling is the first PR firm I’ve worked at where the UK business is bigger than the US. That makes a difference.”

Here is the link to the PRmoment Podcast episode with Sarah Schofield reference on the show.

35 mins In some ways, the defining trend of the last 5 years of the PR agency landscape has been the increased ownership of PR firms by private equity. How has Heather found it working for a PE owned PR firm, compared to her previous roles where the PR firms were part of a holding group?

38 mins The anticipation of how AI will impact PR teams is that there will be fewer entry level roles, so rather than PR firms having a pyramid junior to senior talent profile, they’ll have a diamond junior to senior talent profile. But has anyone worked out how we’re going to get more senior account managers tomorrow if we’re going to hire fewer account execs today?

43 mins We seem to be in a mini era of the PR firms owned by the holding companies merging. We’re anticipating news of what the IPG/Omnicom merger means for its PR firms. How is that uncertainty impacting the talent and clients markets in UK PR currently?

44 mins Does Heather foresee Grayling making any acquisitions in the next 12 months?

46 mins What type of work does Heather want Grayling to be famous for?