This week on the PRmoment podcast, in the latest of our life stories series, I'm pleased to welcome executive director of Premier, Lawrence Francis.

Lawrence has an interesting personal career story because he has successfully made the journey from being a business development director at Premier to working client side.

Premier is one of UK PR’s best kept secrets; it's a big firm. It has a turnover of nearly 20 million pounds and employs 170 people. It specialises in entertainment, art and cultural PR. 

Here is the flavour of what Lawrence and I discuss

[00:01:07] How Lawrence made the transition from a business development role to a client-side PR role.

[00:06:09] Why Lawrence was a late starter in PR and how he has managed to catch up.

[00:07:11] How Lawrence changed his job role within the business.

[00:09:08] Why working in businesses that have a certain scale and across multiple markets makes a new business role more sustainable.

[00:11:18] How Premier, originally a film PR firm, has built itself into a £20m PR firm by having multiple, niche specialist teams.

[00:14:53] Why Premier hasn't tried to launch a technology or healthcare division.

[00:17:31] Lawrence discusses the growth of Premier's brand partnerships scheme.

[00:18:10] Lawrence talks about the growth of the personal publicist market in the last few years.

[00:18:58] Lawrence discusses to what extent a job in sales prepares you for job in PR – and to what extent is PR a sales job?

[00:27:06] Why Premier tends to work for smaller organisations, rather than blue-chip firms.

[00:30:22] How his previous career in sales meant Lawrence developed a robustness that has benefited his career in public relations.

[00:31:58] Lawrence talks us through how London and the UK lead the world in the entertainment PR market.

[00:35:53] Why experiential marketing has become more ambitious in recent years.

[00:38:31] Lawrence talks us through an experiential case study of Premier’s work on Friends Fest