This week, on the PRmoment podcast, as part of our life stories series, I’m interviewing Nik Govier, founder and CEO of agency Blurred.
Previously, Nik was the co-founder of consumer PR shop Unity. At its peak, Unity had a turnover of circa £4m.
Nik has recently founded and self backed her new venture Blurred, which launched last month.
Here is a flavour of what we discussed:
- How a job as a tour guide at at Madame Tussauds led to a career in PR 1 min
- How Nik’s early career was in corporate PR, but despite this she then moved to consumer PR when she started Unity 2.30 mins
- How a random account win set the tone for Unity’s consumer specialist success story 4.45 mins
- How awards built the momentum for the growth of Unity 6.50 mins
- What the creative process looked like for Gerry and Nik at Unity 8.50 mins
- Why the combination of being able to be a planner and a creative is such a rare skill set 10.15 mins
- What the link between creativity and planning looks like in practice 11.40 mins
- Is it possible to be creative everyday? 14.40 mins
- Whether people have a creative life cycle 15.50 mins
- Understanding creative fatigue 16.10 mins
- Why the rise of the freelance creative may lead to the ‘vanilla-isation’ of creativity 18.30 mins
- How PR is doing in the race for integrated communications 20.10 mins
- Why some big famous PR firms have ‘let the sector down’ 20.30 mins
- Why doing ambitious, integrated work is vital to increasing budgets 22.10 mins
- Why the budgets are often smaller in PR, but the margins are better 24.34 mins
- Why ad agencies may have a great idea, but they don’t know how to make it "run across earned media" 25.05 mins
- Why the market is there for PR to thrive as integrated communications firms, they just need to confidence to pitch for larger budgets with bigger ideas 25.20 mins
- Why Nik has a chip on her shoulder 25.50 mins
- Nik says agencies of Ogilvy’s size have no choice but to restructure; they will have to break something before they will be able to rebuild it 29.30 mins
- Where Nik sees the marketing communications agency market in 10 years’ time 32.00 mins
- Why PR people’s uncertainty about their role in the world is so frustrating 33.35 mins
- Why the PR measurement debate is over and needs to move on quickly 35.10 mins
- Why advertising people are not smarter that PR people 37 mins
- How the advertising and media agencies are dealing with the seismic changes impacting their sectors 37.40 mins
- How Nik has structured Blurred and what does the skill make-up of the team look like? 42.20 mins
- Why the era of one-size-fits-all creative is over 45.45 mins
- Why naivety can bring creative advantages 47.30 mins
- Why Nik wants to scale Blurred ‘very quickly’ and is a ‘lady in a rush’ 48.45 mins