PRmoment Podcast

Natasha Hill, managing director at Bottle, on the PRmoment podcast

June 26, 2019 Natasha Hill, managing director at Bottle
PRmoment Podcast
Natasha Hill, managing director at Bottle, on the PRmoment podcast
Show Notes

This week on the PRmoment podcast, I’m pleased to welcome Natasha Hill, managing director at Bottle.

Bottle has a turnover of £2m and is an independent multi-specialist PR firm in Oxford.

The business was previously owned by Will and Claire Cairns. Will Cairns still has a stake in the business but Natasha and creative director Colin Cather now run the business day to day.

Bottle has 25 staff and about 60% of its work is in consumer markets and 40% in B2B.

Here is a flavour of what Natasha and I discussed:

[00:01:21] Why Bottle founder Will Cairns can now be found in the Cotswolds, on a bike with a bunch of American tourists!

[00:02:02] How Bottle founder Will Cairns has exited the day-to-day running of the business and handed it over the Natasha and creative director Colin Cather. 

[00:04:49] Natasha talks us through the story of Bottle as a business – how it grew to about £2m in 2014 and then lost some momentum (fee income subsequently fell to circa £1.4m.) The business has now grown back to a fee income of £2m. 

[00:05:14] How Natasha has retained a high number of retainer clients at Bottle, despite the sector trend for an increased number of project-based agency/client relationships. 

[00:07:10] Why PR clients increasingly value strategic advice over campaign implementation. 

[00:10:51] Natasha explains the recruitment challenges for PR firms near, but outside of London, in places like Oxford.

[00:13:01] How Natasha has restructured Bottle in-line with her brand marketing background.

[00:14:36] Why the fact that neither of the current leadership team of Bottle have come from a pure PR background has helped its client proposition.

[00:15:32] How Bottle has re-engineered the way the team works and the structure of the working day to reflect the challenges of modern public relations. 

[00:17:09] Should all PR teams, both in-house and agency split into reactive teams and proactive teams?

[00:19:33] How Natasha and the rest of the management team at Bottle have turned around a business that was in decline and created growth. 

[00:23:08] Why Natasha made the move from a strategic marketing director role at the UK’s biggest charity Cancer Research UK to a small PR firm.

[00:25:00] How Natasha's belief that Cancer Research UK needed to become more of a human charity, rather than purely a research-focused charity – led to the organisation’s rebrand.

[00:28:40] How post the rebrand in 2012 Cancer Research UK's income was up by 6%.

[00:29:44] As a marketer how does Natasha see PR’s contribution to the marketing funnel – which bits of the funnel are realistic for PR firms to grab and which bits are not?

[00:32:29] Why agencies are increasingly having to draw the line on the type of work that they can do – otherwise you end up just trying to cover too much with insufficient expertise.

[00:33:47] What does PR actually do for a huge charity like Cancer Research UK?

[00:37:52] How does Natasha see the relative advantages of having an in-house team compared to outsourcing to an agency?

[00:39:38] Natasha talks us through the process of digital transformation she implemented during her time at Cancer Research UK.