Rachel Pendered, managing director of Media Zoo, on The PRmoment podcast

PRmoment Podcast

This week on the PRmoment podcast, I’m interviewing Rachel Pendered, managing director of Media Zoo.

Media Zoo has a fee income of circa £13m and approximately 130 employees. It’s an independent PR firm in London. It was co-founded by Rachel and Mark Killick in 2003.

Before she co-founded Media Zoo, Rachel worked for the BBC and Channel 4 as a TV producer.

Here’s a summary of what Rachel and I discuss:

[00:01:30] Why have we seen so many women leave their agency CEO jobs in the last 12 months.

[00:06:51] Why Rachel believes it's much harder to become a successful female entrepreneur than a male entrepreneur.

[00:07:22] How just 8% of start-up funding goes to women.

[00:10:08] How can we encourage more female entrepreneurs?

[00:12:21] Why entrepreneurship is all about imagination.

[00:13:28] Rachel talks to us through some stats from The Rose Review, a piece of research looking at why there are fewer female entrepreneurs in the UK.

[00:13:34] How, if we were to close the entrepreneurial gender gap, we would potentially add £250 billion to the UK economy in the next 10 years.

[00:16:27] Where women can find out more information about becoming entrepreneurs.

[00:19:03] Why Rachel set up Media Zoo in 2003.

[00:20:23] Why Rachel didn't enjoy being employed.

[00:21:08] How, originally, the plan for Media Zoo was for it to be a network of production freelancers – but things soon changed…

[00:25:16] How Rachel has built the Media Zoo to become a £13m firm alongside Mark Killick.

[00:26:50] How did Rachel create a culture of entrepreneurship at Media Zoo?

[00:27:27] How has Media Zoo grown to a £13m fee income when lots of its independent agency peers have not?

[00:29:11] Why Media Zoo has brought all its production services in-house.

[00:29:35] Why Media Zoo has never made any acquisitions.

[00:32:20] Rachel talks about her working relationship with Mark Killick.

[00:37:27] How Media Zoo has diversified through its content engine proposition.

[00:38:46] Rachel talks about Media Zoo’s embedded client team strategy of six to 12-person teams typically on one- to three-year contracts.

[00:40:12] Rachel talks about Media Zoo’s expansion plans into Scotland, Switzerland and the US next year.

[00:43:54] With many economic forecasters predicting a recession is on the way – Rachel recalls what she did after the 2008 financial crash that helped her business to survive.