{"id":89205,"date":"2016-06-07T09:57:19","date_gmt":"2016-06-07T09:57:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/?p=89205"},"modified":"2016-06-07T10:04:45","modified_gmt":"2016-06-07T10:04:45","slug":"spotlight-sarah-hall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/blog\/spotlight-sarah-hall\/","title":{"rendered":"PR Spotlight: Sarah Hall"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sarah Hall is an award-winning pioneer of best practice in the PR industry.\u00a0Sarah was the first North East practitioner to become Chartered, a status that recognizes the highest standard of knowledge, expertise and ethical practice within the PR industry and in 2014 was awarded CIPR\u2019s Sir Stephen Tallents medal for exceptional achievement in public relations practice. Having established a hugely successful career in PR, Sarah now runs her own consultancy and is the author of last year’s ground-breaking book\u00a0#FuturePRoof<\/a>. In this Spotlight Sarah chats to us about why she decided to set up her own consultancy, being an advocate for gender equality, and what she think the\u00a0<\/strong>future holds for public relations.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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

How did you get into PR?<\/span>\u00a0<\/strong>I graduated in French and Media from Leeds University and landed a job in the Regional Affairs department at Tyne Tees Television back in the days when it was still producing Catherine Cookson programmes. It was fun but it wasn\u2019t long before I moved to a public relations and since then I\u2019ve remained consultancy-side.<\/p>\n

Why did you decide to set up Sarah Hall Consulting?<\/span>\u00a0<\/strong>When the recession hit in 2009 I was running the North East and Yorkshire operations of what was at the time the UK\u2019s largest independent marketing group. I was doing more management than client facing work and it soon became clear there was an opportunity to go it alone, offering strategic PR consultancy without the agency overheads. Equally, I was frustrated with the way my career was going compared to my male counterparts. I\u2019ve never looked back.<\/p>\n

You are considered a pioneer of best practice in the public relations industry? How do you feel about this?<\/span>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is never room for complacency and I don\u2019t always get it right.\u00a0The trick is to learn from your mistakes.\u00a0I gained a great deal of rigor as chair of the CIPR\u2019s Professional Practices Committee and in my daily work apply both the CIPR and PRCA\u2019s code of conduct to PR practice as much as possible.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In terms of ethics, Dr Johanna Fawkes speaks a lot of sense. She talks about trusting your instincts when faced with a situation you\u2019re unsure of. What she means is our inner response usually helps us find the right way forward and to do the right thing. She\u2019s not wrong.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve established yourself as an ethics tsar and gender and equality <\/span>advocate through your work. Why is this important to you?<\/span>\u00a0<\/strong>I\u2019m a big believer in social mobility and equality for all. A grant from my local Council helped me get to university where I secured an internship and my first foot on the career ladder.<\/p>\n

Public relations teams needs to represent the wider public and we can\u2019t do that if we don\u2019t employ people of both genders, from different socio-economic and BAME backgrounds.<\/p>\n

Gender wise I was frustrated in my last role by being seen as a \u201cticking time bomb\u201d because I was married and wanted children. I knew it was hampering my prospects and ended up setting up my own business to deal with this. It shouldn\u2019t have to be this way.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For the #FuturePRoof project you brought together over thirty thinkers and doers in a study about the future of public relations, what was the impetus behind this?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

#FuturePRoof started as a dream of mine to create an agency handbook that defined all the issues facing PR practitioners today. As I met with people the remit widened and it was over a coffee with Dr Jon White that I realised what the purpose of the book had to be. #FuturePRoof needed to reassert PR\u2019s role as a management discipline.<\/p>\n

\"#FuturePRoof\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The project is billed as the biggest ever conversation about the future of the public relations, was this intentional?<\/span>\u00a0<\/strong>This was absolutely intentional. The phrase was coined by Stephen Waddington who wrote the foreword to the book, as well as a chapter on competency frameworks.\u00a0By the time we\u2019d finalized the spec and received all the contributions, we knew #FuturePRoof offered a clear indication of where the PR industry is now, but signposted strongly the direction it is taking. The book offers much more than just a snapshot in time.<\/p>\n

What were the key insights?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

From the feedback received, people take all sorts of different things away but these are mine:<\/p>\n