Putting 30 years of PR agency experience to good use

I’m a senior Sydney based independent PR consultant who is available to work Australia-wide exclusively for PR Directors and PR Managers in an advisory, coaching or mentoring role, helping them to get the best out of their PR Department and PR agency – and themselves!

They say it’s never too late to re-invent oneself. So in mid 2009 after 30+ years on the PR agency side of the business I decided to swap sides, leave the agency business behind me and look to working exclusively on the client side – and among things help PR Directors and PR Managers get more out of the PR agencies they employ.

Why? I was tired of the hassles of running an agency, with all the pressures of staff, new business generation and deadlines! And when you are in a middle-sized – but niche – PR agency, which is where I had taken mine in an attempt to differentiate, it can be tough.

It was time for a change. Time to put all my experience to better use than had been possible in recent times! 

It seems a long journey.  These ‘PR Insights’ attempt to capture a little of the diversity of PR and the situation in which I have found myself. There’s much, much more to tell – but it can’t be put in print!Over my career I’ve spent about equal time in Australia and New Zealand. I’ve also set-up, directed or managed programs in Asia, the UK and the US.I founded Network PR in New Zealand  which is still among the best in that country and has won a heap of awards.	The PR Insights of Grant Common
	PR – is history repeating itself?
	Corporate PR – so much diversity
	Marketing – PR: a much under-rated tool
	Public education/information – a good cause
	Industry Organisations – a special challenge
	Social Media – what a buzz

I spent several years working in the Australian marketplace before actually physically running Network in Australia for about a decade. 

I’ve consulted to multi-nationals. I’ve worked for Governments, industry associations and done a heap of marketing-related PR as well as investor relations work. In more recent times I’ve done a considerable amount of stakeholder communications work around re-structuring, plant closures and acquisitions.

On reflection I think my ‘second career’ had its beginnings when I founded a newsletter/website I called PR Influences back in 2001. It started as a forum for providing ‘tips’ and ‘commentary’. Within 3/4 years over 4500 PR and marketing people had registered to receive the newsletter (and hundreds more including many from competitive agencies just went to the website). It seemed most in Australian PR had heard of PR Influences.

The person I was writing for at PR Influences was the in-house PR practitioner.  During the past decade I’ve probably written more on PR for the internal PR person than anyone else in Australia. And there were lots of kind words of encouragement to keep me going (but not enough hard ongoing business to keep my agency going in the style I aspired to!).

So when I began to think about ‘moving on’ it was natural to focus on the needs and challenges of the internal PR people. What I am offering is really just an extension of what I have been writing and commentating about; except that now I can play the role of  coach, mentor or advisor.

In life and business it’s always necessary to keep looking forward and be on the cusp of new developments.

Four years ago I saw the potential that the new online world offered for communicators. As a result Network became the first Australian PR agency to really embrace this new emerging area.

There’s not many of my vintage who can claim to have traversed such a spectrum – from typewriters to social media!

Anyway, that’s me. There’s been quite a few chapters to my book. This is a new one – with quite a bit yet to be written I suspect.