Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.
This week we’re chatting to Rebecca Grant, UK CEO, BCW Global.
Rebecca has one of the biggest jobs in UK PR. She heads up a team of over 200 people at BCW’s London office and she led the Cohn & Wolfe London operation through the merger with Burson Masteller to a period of significant growth for what was already a big PR and comms operation.
Rebecca joined BCW in 2011, previously she worked for Weber Shandwick and The Red Consultancy. She was appointed UK CEO on 2016.
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Here is a summary of what Rebecca and PRmoment founder Ben Smith discussed:
3 mins Rebecca on what it's like running a PR team of over 200 people.
5 mins Rebecca reflects on how PR has changed so much in a relatively short period of time
6 mins Rebecca’s personal story is an interesting one. Her grandmother moved to the UK as a refugee from Zanzibar - so she is living proof of the moral and economic benefits of welcoming refugees into the UK.
10 mins I put it to Rebecca that she’s got the second biggest PR agency job in the UK!
11 mins What is Rebecca most proud of during her time as UK CEO of BCW?
14 mins How has the type of work that BCW has changed in the last couple of years?
“When I started this job (in 2018) the briefs and client problems were contained at a practice level, so you’d have a consumer brief and a corporate brief or a healthcare brief, the client work we’re doing now isn’t confined by those silos, it’s about a business challenge.”
“As a PR agency, you have a very different perspective on your client’s business than many of your competitors within the marketing (consultancy) world.”
16 mins WPP’s PR Division grew by 27.4% in Q1 2022 - how did the UK bit of BCW fair?
18 mins Has the cost of living crisis impacted the PR agency market yet?
19.30 mins It's been a full-on couple of years at BCW - they had the merger of Burson Marsteller and Cohn & Wolfe and then Covid. What's the shape of the business at the moment? Is the bulk of the revenue still in corporate and healthcare?
22 mins What type of consumer work is coming out of BCW London?
24 mins BCW has just moved into WPP's office in Bankside - does Rebecca worry that it will be an increasing challenge to retain the BCW brands and culture in a multi-firm office?
25 mins A discussion of how multi-disciplinary, multi-agency teams within a holding group can work together.