It's been 10 years

Exactly 10 years ago, I left the BBC and journalism and "moved to the dark side". Or, as I always put it, I joined the lightest shade of grey. For 10 years to the day, I've now been working at Edelman. Call it PR, call it communications marketing, call it communications if you like - but it's been a hell of a ride.

Missing journalism. Not.

I've been asked quite often whether I miss journalism. My answer has always been a rather emphatic "no". I had worked as a journalist for more than 25 years before switching sides, so I'd "done" my time. I certainly haven't missed some of the turf wars happening inside the BBC back then, and neither have I been sorry that I wasn't at the Beeb during the false equivalency reporting of the Brexit debate and the political chaos of the past few years.

Yes, there were a couple of breaking news stories that I would have loved to cover - simply because I had more insight on them than most of my former colleagues (e.g. when Marissa Mayer left Google to run Yahoo, and I was probably the only person at the BBC who had already spoken to her several times before), but otherwise ... I'm good.

Journalism or PR: what gives?

What's the difference between working as a journalist and working as a PR? That's the other question I've been asked a lot during the past decade. I always respond with the same joke: As a journalist, I try to find a good story and then think: 'how can I tell it?', while as a PR I try to find a good story and then think: 'how can I tell it?'.

The intent, of course, is different, but all my life, in all my jobs, I have been and continue to be a storyteller.

And that's exactly what we - the team at Edelman Editorial - are doing: we take the outside-in approach and use our journalistic mindsets (nearly all of us are ex-journalists) to find good stories, and then tell them in a way that resonates, creates empathy, is authentic and earns trust for our clients.

I had never planned it like that, but with hindsight it was probably inevitable that I created and grew an editorial team at Edelman London. We started out as five people, soon we will be 18 or thereabouts, with most of the growth happening during the past two-and-a-half years, when demand for our work soared as the pandemic disrupted all the tired old ways of comms work.

Why Edelman?

There's a reason why I stayed for a whole decade with Edelman. This is a family firm, and it shows - in the passion, in the compassion, and in the agility of this business. I don't quite "bleed blue" (as some long-timers at Edelman joke), but from all my conversations I know: it's rare to find a company that is so packed with outstanding, clever and fun-to-work-with individuals as this company.

I'd like to thank David Brain, Rishi Bhattacharya and Richard Sambrook who persuaded me to join Edelman, and all the fantastic Edelman colleagues I had the pleasure to work with along the way - from across the company and around the world (I reckon that I've worked with people in most of our 65 offices), from the leadership team to every single Assistant Account Executive who made things happen. As the company's founder Dan Edelman used to say: "Everybody is an account executive at Edelman."

I would especially like to thank my team: what an outstanding collection of storytellers and creatives!