Blog post by Russell Goldsmith, Founder, Audere Communications

 

Show 31 of the csuitepodcast, the second of three shows recorded at the Global ICCO PR Summit, saw me speak to my 100^th guest on the series and so it was perfect that such a milestone was shared with former CEO of Huntsworth plc, Lord Chadlington, who had just delivered the opening keynote for the second day of the conference on the topic of creating the consultancy of the future.

Naturally, I didn’t have too much time with Lord Chadlington, but we still managed to get through a lot of topics in our chat, not all covered in this post, so you’ll just have to listen to the interview to hear them all!  But what was evident in listening to his keynote, and spending 20mins chatting to him is that one simply can’t help but be inspired by a man who, at 74 years old, as Graham Goodkind, Chairman of Frank PR described when I was sat next to him listening to the keynote address, still has an infectious enthusiasm and passion for his industry.

With regards to his keynote, Lord Chadlington’s main message was that the PR industry is in a very difficult place because, increasingly, the traditional work is being taken over by software and so agencies have to decide what kind of business they are going to have as someone else is ‘eating their breakfast’!

We talked in particular about media influence and the impact social media is having, not just on business but on politics too and particularly on how politicians will need to communicate over the issue of Brexit.  This gave me the perfect opportunity to get Lord Chadlington’s views on the events of the last six months, which he summed up by saying that if had been a story line in a Jeffrey Archer or Michael Dobbs book, everyone would have said it would have been impossible.

On David Cameron, Chadlington believe’s he has behaved with great dignity and that he has accepted that the country didn’t want to do what he wanted to do, but that giving them the choice was the key thing.

As for Brexit, Lord Chadlington said he was a ‘remainer’ but now he is 9 million percent for Brexit and we all must be 9 million percent for Brexit as that is what’s going to happen! He said we therefore need to fight hard and make sure Brexit is an enormous success.

#ad – Many thanks to global media intelligence provider CARMA for supporting the series of shows I produced from ICCO.  Please do visit their website to find out more about how they can help you deliver actionable insights through media monitoring and PR measurement.

All previous shows of the csuitepodcast series are available on Soundcloud or itunes and please, if you subscribe, can you give the show a positive rating and review on itunes in particular.