For Natalie Deacon, comms is a career-long passion. She talks about her role, her admiration for Avon’s stakeholders and her ambitions for the future with Andrew Thomas

There are some people who are destined to end up at the company for which they work. They are the stuff of dreams for those who specialise in employer brand management. Not only do they sing the praises of their company, but their career journey could only have led them to the roles they now do. For Natalie Deacon, director of EMEA communications at global beauty and cosmetics firm Avon, that is not hyperbole.

With sales of $10bn worldwide, Avon is the fifth-largest beauty firm in the world. Its direct selling approach, however is that for which Avon is most famous. Ultimately, Avon is a business built for women, by women. Not exclusively, though as 25% of the UK senior management is male and 5% of field sales agents are men. Yet it is a business that, almost without parallel, has grown through an evangelism stemming from its customers and its staff.

“Our representatives are fantastic ambassadors,” says Deacon. “They have passion for the brand. They love the products, and can talk about the lingerie or the lipsticks till they are blue in the face. But more importantly, they are fantastic examples of women who are managing their own lives on their own terms, juggling home and family commitments, earning what they want in the way that they want.”

It is, therefore, no surprise that women loom large in Deacon’s life. She and her brother were raised by a single mother, a woman who still plays a large part in her life, now looking after her daughter’s children and helping run the Deacon household. It was a happy childhood, that segued into happy days at university, where, unable to commit to one subject, Deacon took on a course that combined English, French and politics and stayed on to study a master’s degree, focusing on the role of women in tragic drama.

“I do speak to people nowadays who study PR, and I think there are real benefits to it. I just wasn’t ready to have made that decision so early on” says Deacon. “But I really loved university and I thought life would end when you started work. That’s ridiculous given that I now enjoy work more and more every year.”

Deacon went into university without a solid career plan, and it was only in her last year that she gave the question of her career much thought. By then she was investing more time than most into researching her options, taking personality tests and talking to career advisors. The result was a determination to work in PR.

This was 1998, an exciting time to work in PR as disciplines, and agencies, began to merge. Deacon got a job in the Northampton office of Citigate Technology, the tech offshoot of the corporate PR agency that was soon to merge with Dewe Rogerson, founded, and then still run by Suzy Frith.

At that time, Silicon Valley was just beginning to produce the likes of Google and Yahoo, but in Northampton, technology came from different organisations. Deacon says, “It was very much the unglamorous end of tech PR. Mainly business to business, but it gave me such a good grounding, working for the smaller clients. You had to fight for every single piece of coverage.”Deacon recalls many call centres among her clients, “They were really at the sharp end at the time, so I got a good grounding in crisis communications as well.”

Citigate’s Northampton office doesn’t exist any more, although it still has a regional presence. During her tenure with the firm, though, Deacon would split her week between the two. “I had two or three days when I was down in London and playing the London PR girl thing and then two or three days in my trainers and jeans in the Northampton office with clients that just didn’t want a London-based agency.”

Deacon says the benefit of working for an agency, particularly a relatively small one, is the range of responsibilities. “The fantastic thing about working for a small regional agency is that you get to do a little bit of everything.” Deacon eventually took command of the Northampton office. “By the time I was running the Northampton office I was keeping an eye on what spend we were doing, what business was coming in, what hours we were working, who was doing what. Everything."

That breadth of responsibility has proved invaluable to Deacon. “I got to do a lot of stuff that I wouldn’t have done if I’d gone into a much bigger organisation. When you’re in a small agency you just cope – you roll you sleeves up and do it"

Citigate and London-based corporate PR firm Dewe Rogerson merged in 2002, forming Incepta-owned Citigate DeweRogerson. With the merger came work on bigger brands. The tech division and the corporate division were seeing increased crossover in their client bases, and were even coming up against each other in pitches. Eventually the tech and the corporate divisions were rolled into one, and with this came greater experience for Deacon.

Deacon says this shift to corporate PR work caused a major reinvention of her abilities. She says, “I’m a huge believer that PR skills are transferable. Whether it’s working for a call centre or a tech supplier, these skills equally apply to a security firm. Or a company that sells lipsticks.”

Deacon enjoyed the increased corporate work. Her tech experience gave her a sense of creativity in selling the stories in to the press, and this was put to even more use as she started working with larger brands. “We were working with big organisations like Group 4 Securicor, and many financial services brands, such as Halifax, General Insurance and so on. It is challenging getting those brands away from the financial services pages or away from the back of the paper. But I really got into working with big brands. I loved it.”

However, by 2005 Deacon was ready to move on seeking fresh challenges. Although she looked at agencies first, she had been so happy during her Citigate years that other agencies weren’t able to excite her. She says, “I had such a great experience at CDR, going to another agency seemed like either swapping like for like or working for an agency that I didn’t believe in as much."

And then Avon came calling. From the outset, the job interested Deacon. The opportunity to go in-house and work for a big brand with an interesting story to tell, with built in career progression and the chance to work with other people and learn from them was exciting. When she talks about Avon, it is instantly clear she is still happy with her decision.

“Maybe I’m biased but the Avon story is amazing. Here is a company that operates in over 100 markets with $10bn revenues. There are over six million Avon representatives worldwide so there are clearly certain things that this organisation is doing right.”

There is so much pride in her voice as she talks about the heritage of Avon. “There were women selling Avon before they had the right to vote in America,” she says. “It was one of the first concepts of women selling to women and building communities, and those social networks of women.”

Avon is a global company but, as Deacon points out, it also operates in a hyper-local way. “Whether you’re in the UK or South Africa or the Philippines people look upon their Avon representative as a local brand and a trusted brand. That idea of global yet local is so hugely relevant at the moment.”

The Avon agent adds an extra dimension to the communications challenge. Avon splits its communications three ways. In addition to the internal audience and stakeholders, there are six million Avon representatives. Some might do a few hours at Avon a week and some might have it as a full-time role where they have another 100 people in their team. While this audience can be active – a vocal and loyal group of brand ambassadors – they are not employees and there is always the potential for reputational damage from any mavericks amongst their numbers. Deacon says, “We don’t employ them. Of course we have guidelines when it comes to branding that say what they can and can’t do. But it’s really about helping to coach them and mentor them. It’s a unique challenge. There isn’t any other organisation in the UK with as many representatives as we have. But one of the wonderful things about working for Avon is that we do have this amazing network of women talking to women with a passion for the brand. Yes, of course there is a risk associated with it, but the positives by far outweigh the negatives.”

Avon divides the world into four regions: North America, Latin America, Asia-Pacific and EMEA. She joined the company as head of UK PR and after a couple of years took up the wider remit of leading the western European PR team. This was again widened to include internal communications and, more recently, she moved into her current role which includes leading the communications for all of the EMEA region, internal and external. She splits her time neatly in two, with half on the EMEA role and a more hands-on half in the UK. This split has resulted in Deacon effectively having three bosses. “I report into the head of EMEA, but I also report into our head of UK. I also have a reporting line into our global head of communications. It’s a lot less complicated than it sounds because I think even if I didn’t have a formal reporting line into any of these people it would happen anyway."

Deacon says she benefits from having the two roles, “Being grounded in the UK actually helps the wider regional role. I think that if you just work on a regional team with, as in our case, operations over 30 separate markets, you are in a bit of a bubble and perhaps a bit theoretical. Having the down and dirty approach of having to actually do roll your sleeves up and carry out the functions in one particular market can helps you understand the issues."

Deacon still feels challenged. As with any high achiever, however, she has an eye on the future and, surprisingly for someone in her position, is happy to discuss her longer term options. The most obvious, but, potentially least attractive option, is to leave Avon, possibly to attack the learning curve of working for a challenger brand. The other options both involve remaining at Avon. One would be to continue in communications, moving into a more global role. The other would be to have a position in the broader leadership team, taking a more strategic role. “I think that when communications is most effective is when it’s embedded in strategy, in telling the story of Avon and where the brand is going, where your direction is and how you’re dealing with that strategy,” she says.

What is clear is that it will take much to tempt her away from Avon. The role models that surround her seem important to Deacon. “I work for an organisation where 75% of the UK leadership team are women, we have a female CEO, my boss in the U.S. is a woman with young children who is juggling being a senior VP with looking after three kids; there are so many positive female roles. It certainly contributes to my enjoyment of the role and it certainly inspires me.” She is equally inspired by wider contribution Avon makes, “I work for a company with a really strong social role, providing this earnings opportunity to women around the world. I think this makes Avon really relevant right now. The challenge, as it is for every comms professional, is to make sure we are getting out and telling our brand story.”