Former BBC journalist Rachel McBryde founded Newcastle based PR and content agency McBryde & Co in 2019. Having recently won Small PR Consultancy of the Year, Environmental Campaign of the Year and Silver for Best Health or Wellbeing Campaign in this year’s CIPR Awards. McBryde & Co works with ambitious companies in the public sector, renewable and professional service industries.
What was your first job (and how much did it pay)? I worked in a coffee shop in my home town of Morpeth called The Old Bakehouse as a waitress from aged 15. It paid £1.50 an hour plus a share of the tips. I continued waitressing throughout school and university. It’s a job that teaches you lots about customer service, dealing with tricky situations and different personalities. I loved – and still love – meeting new people so it fitted well with my personality. It is also one of the hardest jobs you’ll ever do, you need a great deal of stamina and resilience.
What is the best advice or support you’ve been given in business? One of the first things I learnt when I trained as a journalist was to keep a good contacts book. I had a black, A4 hardback notebook, covered in stickers, and I carted it everywhere with me. Everyone I ever met – interviewees, PRs, suppliers – I wrote their details in that book. It was the beginnings of a network I’ve continued to build ever since (now on LinkedIn and my phone!) You simply never know when your path may cross with someone from you network, so it’s important to build, grow and nurture it, from the start of your career. That network has played a huge role in where I am today.
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What are the main changes you’ve seen in your business/sector, and what are the challenges you’re facing? Public relations is at the heart of our business, but it’s often misunderstood, and is becoming an increasingly specialist skill. When you say you work in PR, often people jump to the stereotypical ‘Ab Fab’ comparisons, but in reality, it’s not all champagne and parties (far from it!) The function adds an incredible amount of value to organisations, and new technologies mean we are able to report that impact in real time, using tangible data.
We recently ran a campaign for Alnwick Garden around a rare new plant in the famous Poison Garden. The story was picked up by CBS in America, the BBC and other mainstream media outlets, which ultimately resulted in increased visitor numbers in real life. If the campaign had run via owned social channels only, the reach and impact would have been far less. Often, our clients tell us that our work supports profile raising and awareness, which in turn drives leads, or helps attracts talent or investment, and impacts their broader business objectives. That’s always our aim.
How has the pandemic changed the way you work? I started the business six months before lockdown, and the day it was announced I lost 80% of my clients overnight. I spent a couple of weeks freaking out about how I was going to pay the mortgage. At the time, I was part of a business accelerator programme. Chatting to other business owners on the programme, I quickly realised that everyone was in the same boat, and I had to pull myself up by my bootstraps and act.
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Very quickly I taught myself how to record and edit Zoom calls and began interviewing business and marketing leaders about how they were coping and started publishing the conversations on LinkedIn. They got lots of engagement and immediately the phone started ringing with work opportunities. Not long after, we picked up a contract to deliver PR for the seven North East local authorities, addressing many of the Covid issues. It was a huge profile-raiser for us – and the campaign won a ton of national awards – and from then on, the business has grown. Back then there were two of us delivering the Covid work, and now there are 10 in our team.
Who is your role model in business? I admire anyone with the bravery to give it a go. Whatever sector you work in, running a business is challenging, it’s not for the faint-hearted. You can spend a lot of time worrying about ‘what-if’, but I’ve learned to embrace the fear of failure. Starting and growing a business in Covid taught me that there is so much out of your control, so you’ve got to believe in yourself and plough your own furrow, come what may. Sure, there will be bumps in the road, but you only regret what you don’t try.
What would your dream job be? If I wasn’t doing what I’m doing, I’d love to be a sports journalist, covering cycling. I’m a tiny bit obsessed with the sport, especially when the three grand tours of Italy, Spain and France are taking place. I consume the highlights packages and daily podcasts and love watching the sport live too. I recently attended the UCI World Mountain Bike Cross Country Championships in Scotland and it was one of the best events I’ve been to. I watched the riders being interviewed after the race and though, wow, in another life, I’d love to travel the world following the Cycling World Tour series and interviewing the best athletes on the planet.
What advice would you give to someone starting out a career in your sector? I think to succeed in this field you have to love writing, have an innate curiosity and a lot of resilience. At its heart public relations is about storytelling – a lot of journalists end up hopping the fence into the PR world for that reason – so a love of words is vital.
Shy bairns get nowt as they say, so if you’re just starting out, knock on some agency doors, ask for work experience, and publish as much of your own content as you can – whether that’s a blog, a website, or social content. And take an interest in professional bodies like the Chartered Institute of Public Relations or the PRCA, and follow hashtags like #PR and #PublicRelations for industry insights.
What makes the North East a good place to do business? The business community here is compact and because of that it’s tight knit. In my experience people are very willing to help if you ask, and they’re open and honest with their advice, which are two things I value. Most of McBryde & Co’s clients are headquartered in the region but have a national presence and there are so many amazing businesses doing world-class work. It’s a privilege we get to tell their stories.
How important is it for business to play a role in society? One of our core values at McBryde & Co is ‘caring’ and that means for each other, for our clients and suppliers and for broader society. It’s important to me that as a business we give back, so everyone is given half a day per month to volunteer – one of our team recently signed up as a mentor for the Girls Network and another spent a year supporting a loneliness campaign with Age 海角视频. We’ve also just taken on our first content creator apprentice, and it feels good to be able to nurture the next generation of talent.
Outside of work, what are you really good at? I wouldn’t say I’m ‘really good’ at it, but for a long time, I was dedicated to triathlon, which culminated in competing at the Ironman European Championships in Denmark in the half-Iron distance. Now I run and cycle in my spare time, and it helps keep me sane.