November 2010 – March 2011

As Ark° was growing we set our sights on London. When it came to the big launch, there was only ever one agency I wanted to work with. Frank PR are one of the top players in the game, having won Marketing Week’s agency of the year three times, most recently in 2010.

It quickly became apparent that we couldn’t afford their fees but in recognition of my talents and work to date, I was offered a job personally by Graham Goodkind, Chairman of Frank.

This was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. Frank works with the biggest UK brands and their creative campaigns are renowned internationally. While I have a huge amount of love for Ark°, I felt I had taken it to a great place and was happy leaving the reins to Cameron who had plans to bring the movement to America.

The next six months were an exposure to the very best in corporate consultancy. I was brought in as one of the lead creatives in the development of national PR campaigns for household brands. This involved participating in design processes to unearth creative ideas for our clients, and respond to briefs for new business development. Frank is a hot bed of ideas and I immediately felt at home.

I also worked directly on CSR for the energy giant Npower and coordinated global PR for Grolsch in Russian and South African markets. The latter allowed for significant immersion in brand positioning, culminating in a research trip to Moscow to understand how local consumers responded to the re positioning of the brand.

My speciality at Frank (informed by my previous work at Ark°) was in the not for profit and charity sector. This involved the classic nuts and bolts of PR: Implementing campaigns, building relations with the media, writing press releases, and selling in campaigns. One of my most significant contributions during my time at Frank was for Global Cool, a green charity that promote sustainable lifestyles. As part of their thought leadership drive I aided in the drafting and editing of ‘Sustainability: Moving from the Nerd’s choice to the Herd’s choice’, a white paper on how brands can utilise behavioural economics to nudge consumers toward more sustainable consumption. I was also project lead on the follow up sustainability roundtable that brought together industry heads, including the Customer Sustainability Director for Coca Cola Europe and the Global External Affairs Director at Unilever, to map out the case for sustainability and what business needs to do to move from green to growth.

My contract ended in March, having given me the opportunity to gain rapid immersion in a whole new industry setting. I now move forward with fundamentals of PR, and enhanced understanding of the creative process, and best practise in high profile client relations.