Alchemy Dinner – PR and Digital Round Table

Ambitious Director and Board Director of Bristol Media Lis Anderson recently co-hosted a dinner with agency heads from digital and PR consultancies across the city. Here’s a summary of the evening’s discussions:

The marketing communications sector has never been a stranger to diversity and with services across agency sectors increasingly overlapping – advertising, PR, experiential and digital – it seemed more than timely for us to launch a new initiative.

In the first of Bristol Media’s aptly titled Alchemy Dinners, twelve agency heads from PR & digital sectors descended on Goldbrick House for dinner, drinks, and three hours of deliberation.

Our invited keynote for the evening was Drew Benvie, founder and MD of Battenhall. He kicked off the discussions with an overview on trends, the online space, content generation, client briefs and an overview of his agency, a new breed of agency model created for the social media economy.

With digital, often the preserve of technical specialists, and story-telling the staple of PR, the evening’s debate covered extensive ground. Building the right skill-sets, the benefits and pitfalls of collaborating, responding to client pressures and breaking the stereotypical mould of what digital or PR agencies actually deliver for their clients were the hot topics of discussion.

What was central to the conversation and notably the point on which everyone agreed, was the importance and power of relationships.  Whilst we may all be looking to deliver different results for clients and along the way use different tools to get there, agencies are fundamentally people businesses. And with clients looking to their agencies to deliver increasingly more integrated solutions maybe more can be done to collaborate – enabling agencies to offer more client-led solution. Alchemy around the dinner table, business cards were exchanged and we hope future collaboration between guests.

Guests included PR consultancies: Pam Lloyd, PLPR, Kellie Hasbury, Plaster, Tierney Fox, Octane, Caroline Harris, Spirt PR, Chris Lawrence, JBP PR, Joanna Randall, Purple Fish PR.

Digital agencies: Jason Bye, More Soda, Remco Merbis, Pixillion, Adam Millington, Modular, Ben Heald, Sift, Neil Collard, E3, Mark Terry-Lush, Renegade Media

Bristol Media Board Directors Lis Anderson and Chris Thurling hosted the evening.

If you’d like to get involved in our next Alchemy Dinner, or have other suggestions for events, please contact Chris Thurling e: [email protected] (Digital) or Lis Anderson (PR) e: [email protected]