For soon-to-be CIPR president-elect Rob Brown, the long road to running his own consultancy has been paved with invaluable experience. He discusses his journey with Andrew Thomas

Photographs by Jeff Leyshon

Although, at the time of going to press, the election for the next president-elect of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) is yet to happen, the result has, effectively, been published. Rob Brown, founder and managing partner of Manchester-based PR agency Rule 5 has already tasted victory and, having stood unopposed, will assume the position in January 2015. It is a post which automatically accedes to the position of president the following year.

“I was actually quite keen for there to be other nominations. When I first discovered there hadn’t been any, I had an initial sense of elation. I was going to do the role and I wasn’t going to spend time over the next month phoning people up and asking them to vote for me. Doing all the things that you need to do. But then there was a sense of disappointment that there hadn’t been a campaign.”

Brown doesn’t think the lack of other candidates is a reflection on the lack of vibrancy within the industry, citing instead a recent change to the way nominations are announced, with candidates being named as they throw their hats into the ring. As Brown comments, “I decided that I wasn’t going to put my nomination in on day one. If you put it in on day one it’s almost throwing down the gauntlet and saying ‘Right stand against me if you dare.’ I also didn’t want to leave it until the last minute.”

But Brown is seen, by many at the CIPR, to be a worthy victor. According to current CIPR president Stephen Waddington, “There are a small number of people in the UK that understand the opportunity that the internet and media fragmentation provides brands. Rob is one of them. There’s no nonsense with Rob. He listens and hears. His decision making is always rooted in analysis and insight gained from data. He’s a professional, a grafter working at the coal face, that wants to help the business of public relations grow up.”

Brown has stood for the CIPR presidency before, in 2012. It was perhaps fortuitous that he lost the election then, as later that year he was to launch his own agency. Eighteen months after the launch, he is clearly still excited about the shift from employee to employer. The agency is going, “As well as we could have possibly hoped,” and the head count, currently at six with another soon to join, has been an even increase, mirroring a steady rise in client growth. “We were very fortunate to attract some good brand names, quite early on. British Cycling was an organisation I’d worked with before and so we carried on working with them, which has given us a sporting strand of the business. We got an opportunity to do a project for Waterford Wedgewood Royal Doulton, and that went so well that they asked up to do more and more things for them. Then more recently Bostik and Virgin Money came to us. Most importantly we enjoy it. I think the whole team enjoys the work we do and I’m certainly enjoying work more than I have for a very long time.”

Brown has had a lifetime in PR. His first foray into public relations was not only an accident, but something he almost actively fought against. Having studied politics and economics at the University of York, he was in the process of transitioning from intern to employee at Manchester’s Piccadilly Radio (now Key 103). While celebrating his mother’s birthday, a presenter’s partner and director of a local PR firm, started asking the young Brown about his career, telling him local radio was a waste of time. Brown’s ire was raised, “I was quite rude. I told him I didn’t know anything about PR and I had no desire to find out. But he phoned me on the Monday and told me I’d have better hours and better pay working in PR. That’s how my career started.”

That agency was Staniforth Williams, founded and run by a couple of former newspapermen, Phil Staniforth and John Williams. “They were slightly maverick in their attitudes and it was great fun – a really vibrant place. Interesting work, interesting clients”

Brown was hooked. He was there for three years and when the partners fell out he left to join Williams’ new venture, Mason Williams. He stayed there for two years before brief stints at Shandwick-owned Paragon PR and Cole Communications. Brown’s earlier career excitement seemed to be slipping, “Rather naively, I decided I wanted to be my own boss and at the tender age of 27 launched Pro-Action.”

That naivety remained throughout the four years of Pro-Action’s existence. “It was incredibly fun and I got to do lots of really interesting work, for ITV, for Channel 4 and it was great, but I didn’t really know anything about running a business. We trundled along for a few years, until I was approached by Jane Howard the managing director of a well-established firm called Leedex.”

Leedex bought Brown out, “I was commercially naive and probably didn’t get what it was worth.” He insists, however, that he has no regrets. “I got the job of running their Cheshire office and it was great because I learnt all the things that perhaps I should have known when I was running my own business. When Leedex was bought by Biss and merged with GTPR, Brown returned to Manchester to run the new office.

He was with Leedex for five years, but left as managing director in 2001 to become PR director for the new PR wing of McCann Erickson. The attraction was clear, “It was part of a big company, with some very big clients and some very, very clever people.”

At McCann, Brown had success quite quickly. Given a free reign in his first year he brought in a quarter of a million pounds, doubling it in the second. It wasn’t long before incomes reached £1m. “By the time you’re that kind of size there’s much more attention and expectation from the business and that’s when the kind of politics kicks in,” says Brown.

“I was very lucky that I had a good run there where I was given a great deal of freedom and it was quite successful. The upside was working with big clients. The budgets are there, you get to recruit people. But there was a down side and it did become more political as we got bigger. But mainly I was very happy and that’s why I stayed there seven years.”

Before the frustrations became too deep, however, he was approached by Staniforth, after a take-over by global agency group TBWA. They wanted him to replace departing MD Emma Chadwick and were prepared to wait for him to serve out his gardening leave from McCann.

Brown has always been somewhat of a geek. In fact Pro-Action was one of the first PR agencies in the UK to have an email address, (100342.2451@compuserve.com, the address still effortlessly trips off his tongue) and his name constantly comes up in top 10 PR blogger lists. One of his frustrations at McCann had been a reluctance from leaders to integrate their digital and PR offerings. He was determined that his gardening leave would not be wasted and used the time to write ‘Public Relations and the Social Web.’ That was in 2009 and the book remains something of a set text for PR professionals. It’s still in the top 100 books on Amazon’s PR list.

When Brown joined Staniforth it was losing money and Brown was attracted by the challenge. “I thought it was a problem I could fix, but it wasn’t the only reason. It had a London office and it allowed me to be the MD of a company with offices in both Manchester and London. My kids were at a point where I didn’t want to move and this seemed an ideal solution. It was more money and it was part of TBWA group, so another big network.” Good reasons, but, Brown adds with a prosaic twist, “There also seemed to be something slightly romantic about going back as MD to a company where you started out.”

The last point was, perhaps the rose-tint in the spectacles of a decision that Brown feels with hindsight may not have been the right one. “I think I let all of those things slightly skew the fact that in everybody’s perception it was a regional PR company. I allowed myself to believe that because it had a London office and because it was part of TBWA it was more than perhaps it was.”

Despite good initial results in 2012, Staniforth posted a £40,000 loss. In November of that year and to the external observer, no notice, the trade press announced that, with immediate effect, Staniforth was to close. Internally, of course, things had been different. A tug of war had been taking place, with TBWA wanting to take the agency in a corporate communications direction and Brown wanting to make Staniforth more of a digital agency. There was also an understanding that Staniforth hadn’t been the right fit for TBWA and Brown had already held conversations on a management buy-out.

Time changes everything, and agency and clients’ understanding of digital opportunities are much now. “During that period, PR skills started changing. I always believed that irrespective of whether or not you saw social media or online as part of PR or part of digital or part of advertising, there was an innate skills set that PR people had, which was the same skill that you use to talk to journalists and to get their interest. That works irrespective of whether you were going through a different kind of intermediary or stakeholder or whether you were talking directly to groups of people online.

Staniforth’s closing, however, was the final catalyst to thoughts Brown had already been considering. “Ever since I left Pro-Action behind I had wanted to do it again. It’s funny how there never seems to be a right time. If you’re bringing up a family, the risks associated with setting up sometimes dissuade you compared with the security of a steady job. I was having a conversation with Julie Wilson [Brown’s partner in Rule 5], who headed up the consumer team at Staniforth. I was on a train to London and we were talking about something else and we both suddenly realised we had a desire to set up our own business. We met for coffee the following morning and said ‘Right, okay, let’s do it.’”

Brown and Wilson set up Rule 5 eighteen months ago. By the time he’ll assume the CIPR presidency the agency will have completed its first three years. Brown feels it will be the right time, for him and for Rule 5, to take up the role. “There’s obvious benefits, there’s profile and that comes with benefits to the business. I talked to all sorts of people about whether or not it was a good idea and on balance I was persuaded that it was. I’ve been very involved [with the CIPR] for much of my career and it feels like a natural culmination of that journey. I think it’s the best place from which to influence the direction of the industry and hopefully help the industry to evolve and take advantage of where communications is going. I feel really privileged to have been given the opportunity to do that. The CIPR is a well-run, well-resourced organisation with a strong secretariat, a very good CEO in place, and a good team. There will be an inevitable demand on my time but I’m at a point in my life where my kids are older and not such a demand on my time and by 2016 I can give proper attention to the day job and the CIPR. I’m really looking forward to it.”