Jon Lonsdale on the PRmoment podcast

CEO and co-founder at Octopus Group, Jon Lonsdale, spoke to PRmoment for its latest podcast. The conversation swings from setting up an agency and company culture, to the Brand to Sales™ approach we coined, and what it’s like to work in B2B and technology.

[00:01:14] Why ‘running a business with your mates is about as good as it gets’

[00:02:44] How our founders have retained a good working relationship over a long period of time

[00:03:04] Why OG partners treat themselves as employees to avoid Octopus Group having a ‘cult of the owner’

[00:06:03 ] How we’ve codified and developed a methodology for our Brands to Sales approach

[00:06:13] Why we have specified hard sales metrics in many client contracts

[00:07:03] How PR firms are able to have radically different commercial conversations with clients when they’re willing to commit to hard sales metrics

[00:07:23] Our client scorecards approach to KPIs

[00:08:27] The interconnectivity of reputation and sales

[00:13:23] The structural changes made to OG as a result of the Brands to Sales approach: ‘ripping the business up’

[00:13:35] How it took four years to restructure the business to the new approach

[00:14:01] Why we had to re-skill the whole agency around digital techniques and digital marketing

[00:14:49] Why net client fees have gone up since taking a Brands to Sales approach

[00:16:02] Why Jon believes PR teams moving to an impact on sales approach increases budgets and means that, as an agency, you become a sales tool, not an overhead

[00:19:30] Our internal training programme: the Brand to Sales Academy

[00:24:43] Why modern agencies need to have the capacity to flex, and move skills and people around

[00:25:07] Why we had a tough year in 2017

[00:28:20] Why we abandoned a multi-brand approach 

[00:31:08] Why Jon loves running a business in the technology sector

[00:33:07] The theory that it’s easier for B2B PR firms to win larger parts of an integrated brief than their consumer peers

[00:35:10] Why Jon believes that the creativity in B2B campaigns is as good as the creativity in B2C – it’s just not as loud

[00:40:14] The type of PR buyer who wants to purchase all of their marketing services from one place