Connect Communications is a specialised PR agency in political communications. Learn the art here!

Andy is Managing Partner and co-owner of Connect, a leading UK public affairs and public relations agency headquartered in London. Andy provides strategic advice and senior counsel to Connect clients on media and political strategy, issues management and crisis communications. Andy has specialist knowledge and strong networks in local government.

Andy draws on his experiences as a former Member of Parliament, representing Corby and serving as a Shadow Minister, member of a Select Committee and various Bill Committees. Prior to this, Andy was Chief Executive of the LGIU, an award winning thinktank and membership body for UK local government. Andy’s other past roles include: Vice President of the Local Government Association, trustee of the Centre for Public Scrutiny and Board Chair of Local Energy Ltd, a social enterprise business. Andy has also served as a councillor and local authority Cabinet Member.

Andy is currently a member of the board of the Public Relations Consultants Association and is a school governor of the Kettering Buccleuch Academy. He features in the PR Week Powerbook of leading figures in public relations. He tweets at @andy_sawford

The podcast is in partnership with the BCMA. The BCMA is the global industry body for branded content practitioners, run by practitioners, promoting best practice, sharing knowledge and growing the branded content industry. To know more about the BCMA, go to www.thebcma.info

CoPartnered with Atharva Marcom, India's smartest PR firm. Karnvir Mundrey, the Chief Ideation Officer of Atharva Marcom, is also President of BCMA India. Reach out to them at www.atharvamarcom.com or [email protected].

The secrets of creating great content with storytelling! Revealed in this episode!

The Content Marketing Institute, an online resource for information on all things content marketing related, defines content marketing thusly:

Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.

The key word here is “valuable.” It’s what changes this definition from one that could describe almost any form of advertising or marketing. You can tell if a piece of content is the sort that could be part of a content marketing campaign if people seek it out, if people want to consume it, rather than avoiding it.

Stefano Marrone, has been pioneering the art of great content marketing. Hear his secrets and learn in this indepth episode.

The podcast is in partnership with the BCMA. The BCMA is the global industry body for branded content practitioners, run by practitioners, promoting best practice, sharing knowledge and growing the branded content industry. To know more about the BCMA, go to www.thebcma.info

CoPartnered with Atharva Marcom, India's smartest PR firm. Karnvir Mundrey, the Chief Ideation Officer of Atharva Marcom, is also President of BCMA India. Reach out to them at www.atharvamarcom.com or [email protected].

The building and the construction industry is one of the key sectors for any economy. Yet it is also the most distrusted.

From New York to London to New Delhi, every new construction project is looked at with suspicion. Because as a population we are generally negative towards change.

The average person still doesn’t understand, necessarily, what a huge impact, not just architecture, but the whole built environment has on their lives.

The average person still doesn’t understand, necessarily, what a huge impact, not just architecture, but the whole built environment has on their lives.

That was some of the conversation that I had with Leanne, the Managing Director and founder at ING Media.

The podcast is in partnership with the BCMA. The BCMA is the global industry body for branded content practitioners, run by practitioners, promoting best practice, sharing knowledge and growing the branded content industry. To know more about the BCMA, go to www.thebcma.info

CoPartnered with Atharva Marcom, India's smartest PR firm. Karnvir Mundrey, the Chief Ideation Officer of Atharva Marcom, is also President of BCMA India. Reach out to them at www.atharvamarcom.com or [email protected] out my latest episode!

Public Relations is an increasingly difficult subject in a fragile world.

Public relations has been no less affected by war, politics, technology and social change than any other industry. What makes it unique is that it’s the fine point where business, science, and raw human experience meet. This is most often seen in the acknowledgment of PR’s pull on customer engagement and public opinion, while also calling for more accurate scientific measurement of its effect on the bottom line.

In this discussion, Francis Ingham, Director General, PRCA talks about some of the toughest aspects of public relations: morality, ethics, technology and the future. And where we might find answers.

The podcast is in partnership with the BCMA. The BCMA is the global industry body for branded content practitioners, run by practitioners, promoting best practice, sharing knowledge and growing the branded content industry. To know more about the BCMA, go to www.thebcma.info

CoPartnered with Atharva Marcom, India's smartest PR firm. Karnvir Mundrey, the Chief Ideation Officer of Atharva Marcom, is also President of BCMA India. Reach out to them at www.atharvamarcom.com or [email protected].

As jobs become increasingly similar, there are two skills that everyone would need if they are to thrive. These are the ability to interrogate and make sense of data, and the ability to use insights extracted from data to pursuade others to act.

Essentially - Analytics + Storytelling = influence.

Humans are hardwired to respod to stories and story structure. Stories are how we make sense of and navigate the world. We respond best to stories based on evidence. But storytellers need to use data as the foundation of stories, not as actual stories themselves. To be truly impactful, rational facts need to be presented with a veneer of emotion.

Sam Knowles is a guru in synergising data with stories. With a unbeatable and unique background of data, statistics and public relations; he presents some simple and effective rules of data-driven storytelling that helps everyone tell more compelling, evidence based stories, whoever they may need to convince.

He discusses his book, Narrative by Numbers in this podcast.

The podcast is in partnership with the BCMA. The BCMA is the global industry body for branded content practitioners, run by practitioners, promoting best practice, sharing knowledge and growing the branded content industry. To know more about the BCMA, go to www.thebcma.info

CoPartnered with Atharva Marcom, India's smartest PR firm. Karnvir Mundrey, the Chief Ideation Officer of Atharva Marcom, is also President of BCMA India. Reach out to them at www.atharvamarcom.com or [email protected].

Out of Home (OOH) is defined as advertising that reaches people outside of their homes in public places. This fast-growing industry includes traditional media displayed on billboards and posters, typically in waiting areas (such as train stations or bus shelters), as well as roads, motorways and in-transit. The entire UK OOH industry is worth more than £1 billion.

Digital Out Of Home (DOOH) lets brands distribute creative, dynamic and (vitally) on-the-fly messaging into essentially any venue, including shopping centres, cinemas, restaurants, bars, gyms and petrol stations. DOOH ad spending is growing at a phenomenal rate and is expected to account for 47% of the total UK OOH market in 2018, reports eMarketer.

We speak to Kevin Henry, Head of Content & Sponsorship for Ocean Outdoor. Having created the Digital Out of Home (DOOH) category in 2005, Ocean has pioneered, driven and established DOOH to be the engaging media channel that it is today, accounting for circa 50% of all OOH spend.

Ocean delivers an advertising channel that exceeds the traditional OOH market through merging the inherent branding strengths of OOH and enhancing through location, audience, research, data and unique technology.

Ocean is the pioneer in DOOH advertising technology, leading a new wave of creative solutions through its Ocean Labs division including proprietary solutions such as Vehicle Detection Technology, SimplyFi (Wi-Fi Sponsorship), LookOut Facial Detection Technology and Augmented Reality 


Ocean sees digital marketing, in all its forms, as a companion, not a competitor. The most progressive of modern marketers is one that understands the combination of the accuracy and accountability of digital, and the impact, trust & fame building abilities delivered by the overtness of out-of-home, is a winning formula in today’s cluttered advertising market.

Hear the secrets of OOH advertising success.

The podcast is in partnership with the BCMA. The BCMA is the global industry body for branded content practitioners, run by practitioners, promoting best practice, sharing knowledge and growing the branded content industry. To know more about the BCMA, go to www.thebcma.info

CoPartnered with Atharva Marcom, India's smartest PR firm. Karnvir Mundrey, the Chief Ideation Officer of Atharva Marcom, is also President of BCMA India. Reach out to them at www.atharvamarcom.com or [email protected].