Nik Govier, founder and CEO of Blurred, on the PRmoment podcast

PRmoment Podcast

This week, on the PRmoment podcast, as part of our life stories series, I’m interviewing Nik Govier, founder and CEO of agency Blurred.

Previously, Nik was the co-founder of consumer PR shop Unity. At its peak, Unity had a turnover of circa £4m.

Nik has recently founded and self backed her new venture Blurred, which launched last month.

Here is a flavour of what we discussed:

• How a job as a tour guide at at Madame Tussauds led to a career in PR 1 min
• How Nik’s early career was in corporate PR, but despite this she then moved to consumer PR when she started Unity 2.30 mins
• How a random account win set the tone for Unity’s consumer specialist success story 4.45 mins
• How awards built the momentum for the growth of Unity 6.50 mins
• What the creative process looked like for Gerry and Nik at Unity 8.50 mins
• Why the combination of being able to be a planner and a creative is such a rare skill set 10.15 mins
• What the link between creativity and planning looks like in practice 11.40 mins
• Is it possible to be creative everyday? 14.40 mins
• Whether people have a creative life cycle 15.50 mins
• Understanding creative fatigue 16.10 mins
• Why the rise of the freelance creative may lead to the ‘vanilla-isation’ of creativity 18.30 mins
• How PR is doing in the race for integrated communications 20.10 mins
• Why some big famous PR firms have ‘let the sector down’ 20.30 mins
• Why doing ambitious, integrated work is vital to increasing budgets 22.10 mins
• Why the budgets are often smaller in PR, but the margins are better 24.34 mins
• Why ad agencies may have a great idea, but they don’t know how to make it "run across earned media" 25.05 mins
• Why the market is there for PR to thrive as integrated communications firms, they just need to confidence to pitch for larger budgets with bigger ideas 25.20 mins
• Why Nik has a chip on her shoulder 25.50 mins
• Nik says agencies of Ogilvy’s size have no choice but to restructure; they will have to break something before they will be able to rebuild it 29.30 mins
• Where Nik sees the marketing communications agency market in 10 years’ time 32.00 mins
• Why PR people’s uncertainty about their role in the world is so frustrating 33.35 mins
• Why the PR measurement debate is over and needs to move on quickly 35.10 mins
• Why advertising people are not smarter that PR people 37 mins
• How the advertising and media agencies are dealing with the seismic changes impacting their sectors 37.40 mins
• How Nik has structured Blurred and what does the skill make-up of the team look like? 42.20 mins
• Why the era of one-size-fits-all creative is over 45.45 mins
• Why naivety can bring creative advantages 47.30 mins
• Why Nik wants to scale Blurred ‘very quickly’ and is a ‘lady in a rush’ 48.45 mins