Shownotes: 

We are on our 30th episode. Yayayay 💃🏽💃🏽💃🏽 

In this episode I speak with Laura Sutherland about PRFest 2021. PRFest 2021 is spread across 5 days, 15 sessions (across platforms) and has a brilliant line up of 29 speakers. The focus this year is on the sustainability of the PR industry and will include conversations on society, planet, future of work, corporate social innovation and next gen practitioners. 

Listen to Laura speak about what they have done in the last year to ensure that PRFest is more inclusive, how this year is different from last year and what attendees can expect on the five days. 

As a member of the steering committee I am really looking forward to moderating the session on Top challenges the PR industry faces and the session 'Is the future of work, working for yourself?' on day four focusing on the Future of work 

For further details and to book your ticket, £5 pounds from every ticket goes to the Taylor Bennet Foundation 👉🏾 https://www.prfest.co.uk/prfest2021/

Memorable passages from the conversation

👉🏾 So my name's Laura Sutherland. I am a chartered PR consultant. I have been in public relations now for 20 years, and I have literally just made the decision to move and specialise more in stakeholder engagement. And that's more around, thinking of purpose, thinking of audits or stakeholder mapping. Really getting to know them so that everything that an organisation does is in line with what the stakeholder needs because I really think that's where the most amount of value can come from a relationship, from reputation, but also where businesses have a massive opportunity to grow. Something interesting about myself well I volunteered for our industry, I say volunteered inverted comas, helped out the industry let's say, for around 12 years and in every position from committee members and the CIPR to board director of the CIPR. Most recently as Chair of PRCA in Scotland and Chair of the CIPR Fellows' Forum. But I'm now taking more time out and time to balance life and work, which I think is so important and we're so bad doing it. So I'm now taking some of my own advice and doing that 

👉🏾 So PRFest started as an idea in my head around 2013, 2014. And it was because I was getting so frustrated at the number of events that were 

being held in London with big-name speakers and basically the nations and regions weren't getting a look in anything. It was a real attitude towards the fact that everything had to be in London. And I knew that in Scotland, having worked in PR for, I don't know however long at that point, 10 plus years, that we had massive talent, we were amazing at what we did and that was for all the nations and regions. And so I thought, if you don't like something, help be the change. 

👉🏾 So I pulled up my sleeves, came up with a concept for an event. I'm particularly good at organising events, so I thought an event would be a great way to get people outside of London, up to Scotland, and to bring people together to break down these barriers that our industry was so known for. And there were so many industry firsts for the PRCA and the CIPR were both sponsors in the first year and they were both there at the same time. 

👉🏾 And it was just great to bring people together and bring a real different kind of energy to the industry about professional development. Not just leaving it up to other people, to help them, but help themselves at the same time. So PRFest has now turned into community and there's probably about 600 or so part of the database, but also part of different groups, listen to the podcasts, come to the event. They attend some of the webinars, but most importantly, there to help each other. And I think that's a real sense of community when people are there for each other. 

👉🏾 Okay so last year, everything moved online. And it got to this year and I did a poll and everyone pretty much said they prefer it to be online.

So again, it's a virtual event this year. But this year is more of a festival and it is more of you know, taking some of our own advice. So for example, rather than just everything being on an online platform and people clicking through here and go to an exhibition space and bells and whistles that, I don't necessarily think we need. We need to be taking PRFest to where people are. So this year we're across three different platforms. We're hosting some bigger conversations on zoom, but we're also doing tweet chat and we're also doing Instagram lives. So it makes it a bit more accessible for people, some of those obviously are free to attend and you don't have to even register Instagram live and Twitter, for example.

👉🏾 But this year's theme is a big it's looking at the sustainable future of our industry. And I don't mean sustainable purely in terms of sustainability, from an environmental perspective, all though that is one part of it. It's looking at how our industry can, not only remain relevant but it can actually help organisations and businesses and practitioners, grow and develop and help ourselves become more knowledgeable, and of value to society. And that is where PRFest really wants to be. It's about empowering and activating practitioners, to be the best they can be, so they can have the most positive impact on societies that they live and work in. 

👉🏾 So that's really great question. I think everyone knows that last year, PRFest had a major challenge at the start of June when it was pointed out that there was an all-white program and it really kind of hit home that part of the challenge with PRFest that was that everything was built on my network and my contacts. And it relied basically on me sending out tweets and emails to the PRFest community. So, last year the Driven framework was put together and discussed at PR fest, and then a big crowdsourcing project was put together to then launch the Driven pledge. Which then actually made everyone, look at what our challenges really were, why we weren't being diverse and why we weren't being inclusive in our industry and then we discussed how we could then overcome those challenges. And I did take the pledge because I recognise as somebody in a leadership role in our industry that I have a responsibility to make sure that what I do is more diverse and more inclusive. So I made the decision to pull together a steering group of what you are very kindly a part of, Thank you Sudha, and the steering group is made up of people from all different backgrounds and beliefs and skills and experiences and different countries as well.

👉🏾 And together as a steering group, you have brought such massive amount of thinking and just challenging me to become somebody different and to think in a different way. And this whole last year has been an absolute whirlwind of learning, educating myself, helping other people be educated and most importantly now setting that example to other people and raising awareness and the importance of it as well. And in terms of the inclusivity part of it, things like people's abilities, people's disabilities, people's financial positions, et cetera.

👉🏾 So this year I made 10 tickets available to PR graduates and students which have all been snapped up which is really great to see. There are 10 tickets still available for PRFesters who are financially challenged just now, but who otherwise would normally make it along to the event. 

👉🏾 So, you know, just a quick call to action if anybody wants to get in touch with me about those tickets please do because they are there waiting. We also have again, we talked about the platforms earlier and that means that two of the platforms, Twitter and Instagram live are free and accessible to anyone who uses those platforms. And also Zoom which is a platform I pay for. Zoom has also now integrated subtitles into the recordings and the live presentations which means that potentially people hard of hearing will be able to read the subtitles and it'll be available on the playbacks for later as well.

👉🏾 So quite a lot of work done and by no means, has it stopped there, just want people to know that I did take on board last year, what was said, what was discussed. I have committed to doing something and I have done my best so far with my ability and my time and everything else to do the best I can do to make those changes that I committed to.

👉🏾 So Future of Work I always think that when we talk quite often public relations, we quite often limit ourselves to the scope and the borders in which we work. So I like to think of it as no borders. And so the future work is a massive conversation because it's not just about the physical place of work as many people are still talking about, you know, do you go into the office or do you work from home? 

👉🏾 But it's also about what that future of working looks like. And that comes from, many different parts of the conversation to you know the culture to the physical place, to thinking all of things you've learned in the past year, what you might take, what you might like just leave behind, from sort of bad habits of working. So on Thursday, the 17th, just so everyone knows, they will really look at and talk about what the opportunities are for us, the positive things. Let's not focus on negativity. Let's think about what we've learned and how we can use that to move forward as an industry and really make our agencies, our teams, and our organisations work harmoniously with that 360-degree view, taking all of our stakeholders into consideration. And so it's a big conversation, but we need everyone to be part of it so that we can all learn from it, from our own experiences and from what we liked and what we didn't like in the last year to what we liked to what we didn't like from before COVID.

👉🏾 Corporate social innovation means I suppose, quite different things to different people. And so from the corporate social innovation day. Alex Malouf, who’s Head of Comms for MENA, for Schneider Electric, he's going to be talking about how large organisations like theirs, can put sustainability at the heart of the organisation and how that will impact much, much wider than just the organisation. And there's also Katie Buckett from we are 'One Fifty'. She's going to be doing a tweet chat with Jaitika who will be talking about behaviour change and digital transformation. Essentially, if you use the word transformation, you're going to have to have a whole change management program in there as well. And that's about behaviour change, about perceptions and reputation as well. So it's going to be a really interesting tweet chat and that day is going to be on Wednesday, so that's Wednesday, the 16th of June. I suppose it's worth pointing out actually that for the whole entire week, there's an all-access ticket, which is 50 pounds. 

And all these sessions I've just talked about are included within that. So 50 pounds for the entire week and actually five pounds of that is being donated to the Taylor Bennett foundation who PR fest has supported since I think it was 2017, we started working with them. So it's really good value for money, think of all these conversations you can be part of. You can also participate in as well.

👉🏾 So, yeah, it always has to be practical for me so that people can go and really implement what they've learned, but also so that they can then think more about what they've learned. Be more curious about things. So I would like people to leave and go away and write just like five things that they're going to do as a result. Even if it's one thing from each day, five things as a result, it might be to update your professional development plan, because you've been inspired to learn more about other areas. It might be that you have very specific actions that have come up while you've attended PR fest. It might be that you haven't looked at the Driven pledge before, and you may want to go and visit the PR fest website to go and download it and take action.

I think five things because that's you committing to taking one thing away from each day to do, and I don't think that's too much to ask. Do you Sudha. 

👉🏾 So, let's rewind back to COP, which is the huge big climate change conference where all the global leaders come and discuss and agree on what they're going to do and commit to in terms of the climate change. But climate change is an ongoing thing, so it's more about the climate crisis. Because scientists have confirmed that we are in a crisis situation. So I've been involved with environmental sustainability and climate change since 2014 when I handled the PR and communication for Scotlands 2020 climate group. And we set figures in Scotland for a 42% reduction in carbon footprint by 2020. And Scotland smashed those targets, Scotland exceeded with something like 46% or something like that.

👉🏾 And I learned a lot when I was working for them. I learned so much about collaboration, about mentality, about bringing different sections of society together. So whether it's businesses and organisations or actually the public and how that all works. It was fascinating from a PR perspective because it was just a sort of eye-opening experience.

👉🏾 When I was chair of PRCA Scotland, that was until last week and how we as an industry should be doing more to push forward on leading the conversation around people, practitioners and reinforcing within both as an organisation the part that they should be playing on reducing carbon footprints, on considering the environment and the impact that their businesses are having on it. And so when I had this conversation last summer it then transpired that John Brown from Don't Cry Wolf had also spoken to the PRCA about something very similar.

And so this group was then formed, which John now chairs. And basically, we decided that this group would specialise in misinformation and climate change because so many of the problems around climate change are around misinformation.

👉🏾 So we decided that the public relations and communication and industry that we should be the ones who are leading on the story of misinformation on the climate crisis because it's something that we can as an industry raise awareness about and put right. That could be global, that doesn't have to 

just be something in the UK, but we're doing it in the UK just snow to prove that we can actually do something to actually effect change. We didn't make it to COP sadly, but we do still have plans in place for a fringe event. We are collaborating more widely and we're having really great conversations with the industry, on a much wider scale, big businesses and organisations who we can work with on this huge project and initiative, but it certainly feels good to be involved in something that can actually have such a massive impact on society? 

👉🏾 That's like the typical interview question isn't it? You know what PRFest isn't about me PR Fest is about the people that come to it, the people that speak at it, the people that come to it and then speak about it. It's come from being a face-to-face event, a virtual event now to a week-long virtual event with different platforms.

👉🏾 I think every year it's just going to keep evolving and it needs to be for the practitioners who are there. I'll still commit to continuing, being more diverse, being more inclusive, having other people input. I always welcome and I want to reinforce that I always welcome people to challenge me, people to have a conversation with me about changing something about an idea, about collaborating. That is how I reckon we as an industry can best move forward. So PRFest who knows where it will be in five years time. But it would be where it's made to be because practitioners have put it there and I'm just the, the pilot who can fly there.

👉🏾Absolutely. Well, first of all, thanks for having me to be able to talk a bit PRFest. I've been an industry cheerleader for so long, and I absolutely believe that we as practitioners have to commit to our own professional development, take matters into our own hands and we have to help steer where we're going because it's for our future. But it's not just our future as individual people, if you think about every individual joining together, it's a whole community, it's a whole industry. PR fest is there not as a big forum, it's there because there are so many people that have different thoughts and opinions.

 👉🏾 That PR fest is the place where you can do that in a safe way. And I think that important to stress that these conversations are in a safe environment. And PR Fest is growing and it's a happy, positive place to be.

And I think it inspires people to do different things, to be different people and to go on and develop further. So my call to action is, book visit PR fest.co.uk. Have a look at the lineup, have a look at the speakers. Buy your tickets on the website, have a look at all the other stuff that goes on with PR Fest. And just become part of it because everybody's welcome. Absolutely everybody's welcome. And if you have any challenges or you have any suggestions for me, then do get in touch with me, I'm always happy to listen and to chat. 

👉🏾 Thanks Sudha. I think there's maybe just one other thing I would say and that this year as well I've tried to make sure that the people that are helping put it together, also have that platform to be able to try things and experiment, with some other events, it's always like the big-name speakers and, you know so-and-so will host it, you know a TV presenter or somebody fabulous. But actually, the practitioners we have in our industry are equally as fabulous and they need that experience and they deserve that platform for having put the time and effort into thinking and helping and putting things together. So I'm really pleased that the steering group is able to host the steering group is there and it's actually a big part of the actual day or the, the week, as it is this year. And so a huge thank you to everybody in the steering group for the amazing work that they've done, and that includes you Sudha for all your fantastic work. It's been an absolute pleasure, and I