{"id":100694,"date":"2017-03-08T14:19:21","date_gmt":"2017-03-08T14:19:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/?p=100694"},"modified":"2017-03-09T10:12:24","modified_gmt":"2017-03-09T10:12:24","slug":"pr-spotlight-laura-sutherland-chief-of-aura-founder-of-prfest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/blog\/pr-spotlight-laura-sutherland-chief-of-aura-founder-of-prfest\/","title":{"rendered":"PR Spotlight: Laura Sutherland, chief of Aura & founder of #PRFest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Laura\u00a0Sutherland is the chief and founder of Aura<\/a>,\u00a0a Glasgow PR and digital marketing consultancy. With over fifteen years of experience in public relations, Laura is now a Chartered PR <\/strong>practitioner<\/strong> and a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR). Laura is also the founder of #PRFest<\/a>, the UK’s first festival for public relations and has co-written a best practice guide for the CIPR, which discusses ethical\u00a0paid and earned media. In this spotlight, Laura, who appears on our top ten UK PR blogs by women<\/a>, chats to us about how the industry has changed, why writing a press release and placing media stories does not guarantee success, the growing importance of analytics, demonstrating ROI, and how social media is opening up new opportunities for PRs. \u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"PRFest<\/a><\/p>\n

What do you most like about being the chief at Aura? And what are some of the challenges?\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>Well, I work for myself. I can be flexible with everything! My time, where I work, how I work, what I charge and I am fortunate enough to be able to pick and choose the best clients to work with; brands which I can relate to and where I can make a real difference.<\/p>\n

What I have found is a challenge is managing my time with Aura business and client work. I\u2019ve found that segmenting my week and dedicating time to everything at the most appropriate time is essential. The accounts get done once a month so I\u2019m always on top of them. I do my own invoicing and chasing for late payments. I have a new business funnel which I try to keep on top of and often involves a lot of chasing, for briefs to be completed, for dates to be set etc. Some people may say working on your own is hard to keep motivated, but because I work with such great clients, I don\u2019t find that an issue. In fact, I could work from home, but if I did, I\u2019d work longer hours!! I\u2019ve fallen into that trap before!<\/p>\n

I\u2019m also involved with independent practitioners communities and lead one in Scotland and I have built a great network of practitioners far and wide, so there\u2019s always someone to talk to.<\/p>\n

As someone with over 15\u00a0years\u2019 of experience in\u00a0public relations, events\u00a0and communications, how in your opinion has the industry changed?\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>The industry has changed massively. It\u2019s very exciting!<\/p>\n

When I first started in PR I didn\u2019t have a PC. I had a desk and paper. We used faxes to send out press releases (and resent them many times due to the amount of faxes news desks received), we used the post and couriers to send out images in 35mm format and design work.<\/p>\n

I suppose I was lucky in my first PR job. It was an integrated agency so I got to work across media relations, design, advertising, events and all the client relations side. I worked with big brands such as L.K. Bennett, Patek Phillipe, Bvlgari and also did what we\u2019d now call influencer relations, back then. It was a baptism of fire with little guidance and no training.<\/p>\n

In terms of the industry now, there are different elements I can break things down to:<\/p>\n