After a 17-year agency career in PR, Flic Howard-Allen took on one of the UK’s highest profile in-house comms roles – director of communications at Marks & Spencer. Now back at Hill & Knowlton, she talks to Neil Gibbons:

It sounds like classic nightmare material. You’re at work but the offices are deserted and have been plunged into darkness. You’re running down seemingly endless corridors, desperately trying to find your colleagues and get to a meeting on time.

For most of us, that’d be the result of too much cheese before bedtime. For Flic Howard-Allen it was just another day as director of communications at Mark & Spencer.

The episode occurred during the dramatic period in 2004 when M&S was the subject of an indicative bid from Philip Green. Unhelpfully, this came in just as the corporate division was moving premises to new headquarters and vacating the building team by team, floor by floor.

“The bid team was the last to go,” she says. “So we built a TV studio there and were able to broadcast from the building. But it meant running through a deserted building and down these echoey corridors as the lights were going out.”

Mind you, it would take more than the hallmarks of a teen slasher movie to keep Howard-Allen from getting the job done. Her career has been characterised by a tenacity, passion and determination that led to her being named PR Week’s PR Professional of The Year in 1996, during her time at M&S. By the sound of it, it was well deserved. “M&S took up my entire life,” she laughs. “I’m not exaggerating. I literally didn’t turn my phone off for seven years.”

Not that she puts her feet up much in her current role. Now client services director at PR consultancy Hill & Knowlton and working on global accounts, this is someone who by her own admission “goes wherever clients need me”.

Back in the mid-80s that drive took her to not-quite-so-far-flung places such as Shaftesbury, where she went to boarding school; Oxford, where she attended sixth form college; and the University of Leeds, where she studied English. There, she flirted with a career on the other side of the communications fence. Writing for the university newspaper beside the likes of James Mates – now a familiar face on ITN - she covered everything from news to sports reporting. She admits to being genuinely interested in a career in journalism.

But, as she saw first-hand in Leeds, these weren’t halcyon days for British journalism. The Yorkshire Ripper was still on the loose, and with the press swarming all over the city, Howard-Allen saw a side to the media that ended any lingering desire she had to join the fourth estate. “I’d see journalists lugging cameras everywhere and constantly door-stepping people, “she recalls. “It wasn’t journalism at its best.”

Instead, she found herself drawn to the overlap between communication and business and left university seeking a career in that space. It took a little time – she left university in the middle of the 1980s recession – but soon enough she found her first communications role in the press office of retailer WH Smith. “I was the lowest of the low,” she says. “They had me doing everything under the sun.”

That she did it uncomplainingly was indicative of a work ethic that has come to characterise her career. And before long, she had joined PR consultancy Charles Barker Lyons as an assistant before joining its inaugural graduate trainee scheme. It was Howard-Allen’s first exposure to agency work and she was given experience across the entire business. “It was a fairly structured programme,” she says. “I was passed
around all the departments and learnt a lot – although I’m sure I was probably getting in the way.”

Howard-Allen stayed with the company for four and half years, ending up as account manager, before scoping her next move. “I felt four and half years was a good length of time and I wanted to go somewhere bigger, somewhere with more ambition.”

So in 1988 she joined Hill & Knowlton as an account director – and 13 years later, she was still there.

Although known now as one of the leading corporate communicators in the UK, Howard Allen actually spent nine years on the consumer side – and not just for any clients. Hers included leading international brands such as Kodak, Adidas, Petsmart, Blockbuster, Shell and Barclaycard.

In 1997, she moved over to the corporate side of the business, a transition “which at the time was quite unusual.” It sated her desire to keep learning – which she says has never left her – but did she find it a culture shock?

“Not really,” she laughs. “I’ve always wanted to know the full story. And I’ve enjoyed being able to look at a problem from all sides, with lots of different players around the table. So I’d found a focus on just one side quite limiting. Besides, the lines between corporate and consumer communications had been blurring for a long time.”

By the time she left Hill & Knowlton in 2002, Howard-Allen was managing director of three of its divisions – corporate, internal communications and crisis – and was responsible for around 40 staff, as well as having been a board member for ten years.

But a phone call out of the blue had opened the door to one of the most high profile communications role in the country, and it was too good to pass up.

“Someone rang me up and said, ‘Would you be interested in Marks & Spencer?’” she says. “I had been considering a new challenge, and this was a company with a fantastic brand.” Back in 2002, Marks & Spencer was hardly riding the crest of wave. But nor, says Howard Allen, was it on its knees. She pointedly insists that the start of its upswing didn’t coincide with her arrival. “When I joined the company was already coming up,” she says. “Under [chairman and chief executive] Luc Vandevelde, the business was going well. I joined on rising sales trend.”

That isn’t to say that she foresaw an easy ride. Once installed, she quickly saw the need to inject impetus. “I arrived to find a very nice bunch of people who weren’t necessarily as focused on the tasks that the business needed doing as I’d have liked.”

Her remit was broad. She managed all communications with the City (bar IR) and for all products, as well as internal communications, government relations, and corporate social responsibility. “Luc wanted the whole communications team to be brought up to a level that would operate more effectively for the business,” she says.

Even with this much on her much on her plate, Howard-Allen was aware that she was under the microscope. Marks & Spencer is, after all, a British institution whose fortunes are headline news. That scrutiny must have felt weird?

“I remember Luc saying to me early on: ‘People treat us as a different kind of business. You think you understand that but you don’t yet.’ It operates differently. Individuals working for M&S can attract controversy in a way those at other businesses don’t. I wouldn’t describe it as a shock. But you have to think ‘OK, the rules are slightly different here. We’re public property, not just a listed company, so people have a view. You’re working in a goldfish bowl.” Throughout her time at M&S, Howard-Allen was vigilant not to become the story – in fact, she never gave a single interview in seven years.

The fortunes of the company had been erratic through Howard-Allen’s time and, when on a downward spiral and subject to that hostile bid from Arcadia, Sir Stuart Rose was installed as CEO to steady the ship and steer it towards success.

“I’ve worked with some very talented people over the years, and I like to magpie, I see something in that person’s style and I hang onto it.”

Howard-Allen worked closely with Rose for five years and regards him as an inspiration, albeit a tough one to please. “Whatever you’re  orking on, Stuart wants it done yesterday. Or the day before yesterday. You’re late now. He’s extremely demanding but working with him was a huge and amazing journey.”

Sir Stuart, meanwhile, has a clear view of the attributes Howard-Allen brought to the role.

“She’s highly experienced at both a micro and macro level and is used to dealing with a team that gets literally thousands of media calls of week – from big corporate governance issues to questions about Jeremy Paxman’s underpants,” he says. “She’s a great communicator and is passionate about getting the job done.”

Like many of the most productive working relationships, there were times when sparks would fly.

“I can’t say our whole relationship was a bed of roses,” he says. “She doesn’t suffer fools. But we had a healthy respect for one another. And, because she stood up to me and I stood up to her, we’d more often than not come up with the right answer. It would often be a case of bish bang bosh, but we were always working in the best interests of M&S and that meant we usually worked out the right course of action.”

Howard-Allen admits that Rose taught her a lot, but she doesn’t credit her learning to one particular mentor. “I’ve worked with some very talented people over the years, and I like to magpie,” she says. “I see something in that person’s style and I hang onto it.”

During her time at M&S, Howard-Allen began work on the project she admits to being most proud of: Plan A, an 100-point initiative to combat climate change, reduce waste, safeguard natural resources, trade ethically and build a healthier nation – so called “because there is no Plan B”.

“I was part of initial core team of five,” she says. “That was pretty extraordinary: devising the strategy and then seeing it through to execution.”

But once again, the time came for a change of scenery. “I never intended to stay seven years. One day I just realised I’d been there hat long. But it was the right amount of time at an exceptional business. Four years would have been a bit short; eight or nine too long. I didn’t want to become stale and I felt that was enough. Stuart made me work a seven-month notice period though, so I don’t think he agreed!”

Howard-Allen says it took her quite a long time to decide on the next step. “I just knew I wanted something utterly different. For seven years, I’d been utterly focused on one business. I missed working with lots of different business and different sectors.”

And so it was that she found herself re-joining Hill & Knowlton as client services director. “One reason was the international dimension,” she says. “Hill & Knowlton is an absolute player in that space. I’m frequently on campaigns spanning more than one country or region, which is the way communications are going anyway. Another reason was that what I enjoyed at M&S was the perspective from the top, looking at the whole thing. At Hill & Knowlton I knew I could tackle problems in the round and as client service director, my stock-in-trade is advising senior clients.”

Now headquartered in new premises, the Hill & Knowlton Howard-Allen re-joined was a different beast to the one she’d left in 2002. “I’d say 20% was familiar and 80% unfamiliar,” she says. “For me, that was good. I’d hate to feel I was just coming back to same business. We have the same global leadership and the same ethos. But we have different clients and different people. That’s really refreshing.”

Reporting to CEO Richard Millar, Howard-Allen’s role is almost without portfolio. “Because I’m not attached to one division or team, I can come with fresh view. I’m really enjoying it. It’s full of variety.”

For Millar, Howard-Allen brings something quite invaluable to the practice. “Quality’s guaranteed,” he says. “She has passion and focus. She’s fast and efficient. She also readily and easily understands the client agenda, simplifies the complex, and brings focus and energy to the teams around her. And she’s the evidence that the communications director has licence to be a business driver.”

Now living in Surrey with three sports-mad teenage sons, a husband “and a fat cat”, Howard-Allen’s life away from work is, she says, “very dreary.” Then again, who can blame her? When your professional life is this much of a whirlwind, you’re probably entitled to a little dreariness.

Curriculum Vitae: Flic Howard-Allen
June 2009–present Client services director, Hill & Knowlton
2002–2009 Director of communications, Marks & Spencer
1988-2002 Hill & Knowlton – from account director to MD of corporate, internal comms and crisis
1984-1988 Charles Barker Lyons – from assistant to account manager
1983-1984 Press office, WH Smith
Education: St Mary’s Shaftesbury; University of Leeds, BA English
Hobbies: Skiing, dinghy sailing, watching rugby