PRmoment Podcast
The PRmoment Podcast is a series of life story style interviews with some of the leading lights of UK PR.
PRmoment Podcast
W Communication’s founder Warren Johnson on the PRmoment podcast
This week, on the PRmoment Podcast, I’m pleased to welcome founder and managing director of W Communications Warren Johnson.
Warren established W nine years ago and the business now has a fee income of circa £7.5m. W is the largest of a group of independent consumer agencies in London which are leading PR’s fight for creative work.
Here is a flavour of what Warren and I discussed:
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Why he once left a career in PR to be become a builder
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Why if you’ve worked for someone for 10 years – you don’t really know what you know.
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Why he didn’t want to start W Communications
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Why Warren fell out of love with PR – first-time round
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Why Warren is a better senior PR person than a junior PR person
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Why Warren is ultimately driven by commercial success, not the quality of work
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Why people who confuse PR as a form of art are misguided
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Why Warren decided to self-fund his business, rather than taking backing or getting a partner
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What the growth path was of W Communications, from year one to now
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Why you work harder if you don’t have a backer
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Why PR firms shouldn’t need investment
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Why a sole owner business is often more collaborative
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Why Warren is more proud about his business success, than PR success.
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How W has kept growing and broken the £7m fee income barrier
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Why Warren has never written a business plan for W
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Why Warren believes any proper entrepreneur has to blend their business and personal lives
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Why social energy creates opportunity
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Why W bought in Mark Perkins as executive creative director and Adam Mack as CEO about a year ago
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Why W has bought a number of smaller PR firms in recent years
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Why W has managed to win larger clients in the last 12 months
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How PR firms with circa £1m fee income often struggle to grow
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Warren’s regrets and learnings about the House PR integration with W Communications
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Why Warren doesn’t want to buy firms and merge them into W Communications
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Why Warren has not sold W Communications
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Why, if an independent business is growing, most deals mean that the buyer is paying the founder from his or her own profits
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Why Warren expects a new wave of buyers for PR firms in the next five years
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Why PR people are the most agile and entrepreneurial of all the marcoms disciplines
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Why Warren believes PR firms will be competing with ad agencies for the big creative budgets sooner than people think
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Why the PR industry needs more swagger