“I was a door-to-door canvasser. You would meet people at three o’clock in the afternoon and drive out to a particular postcode where you’d been allocated streets, and you would have to knock on the door and persuade people to either make a donation or become a member. And you’d do that all year round. You would go out in the afternoon and evening unless it was minus 30 degrees. It was that challenge of trying to engage with someone on a topic at their front door and not get the door slammed in your face. It’s quite a good metaphor for a lot of what we do because you have very little time to get someone’s attention.”
That was Brendon’s experience at Greenpeace where he worked over two six-month periods as part of a gap year. More than twenty years have passed, he still carries this particular interest in engaging with people and persuading them about a specific topic.
Having been working in PR for more than 20 years, Brendon still enjoys the process of trying to change people’s minds, and having his mind changed about things. Currently the Chief Executive Officer of Tyto, he’s heavily involved in providing clients with counsel on strategic and creative matters. Prior to launching Tyto, Brendon was the global CEO of Hotwire. During his six years as CEO, he doubled the size of the company and repositioned it into a top 50 global challenger brand. Brendon Craigie is highly recognised.
I reached out to Brendon on a Tuesday after I’d decided to restart the engine for the next season of The Nomad. I always knew I wanted to invite him to be a guest for the series as the agency he founded -Tyto PR – offers a distinctive value proposition that speaks to what The Nomad is about. Tyto’s unique PRWithoutBordersTM delivers integrated pan-European campaigns across the UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain and Italy. With a multicultural team. Who could be a better fit?
We have our chat the next Tuesday. I’m sitting on the second floor of the office where it feels like minus 30 degrees (Somebody might probably have accidentally turned on the heating to “Cool” mode!!). Brendon turns up and quickly apologises for his dog in the background, and I apologise for all the background noises of an open office (especially when I forgot to bring my headphone). He exudes this calm energy and glow – probably because of the Tyto neon sign behind him.
We say hello to each other and start diving into our conversation.
You studied Politics. How did you get into PR and Comms?
From an early age, I like debating things with people. I was interested in the world and in what was going on in the news, so politics seemed like a good fit for me. Speaking of debates, I think we live in a world today where people become very entrenched in an opinion and they shut down any kind of debate or don’t want to discuss anything. At Uni, I enjoyed being part of things, organising events and writing for the student newspaper. In my final 12 to 18 months at University, I was thinking it was either going to be PR or advertising and I started applying for jobs. The rest is history.
You have been working in the industry for more than 20 years, working at some of the biggest agencies, on some of the biggest brands including Microsoft, Cisco and Google. You also founded Tyto, one of the fastest-growing agencies. How do you reflect on the journey so far?
I think probably like lots of human beings you end up being very guilty of always looking to the future, not necessarily appreciating the presence or reflecting too much on the past. I’ve been quite driven and motivated, and then I’ve just been able to find some good homes. My biggest stint was with my previous agency [Hotwire] where I was there for 17 years, and I worked with the founders of that agency for probably 11 of those years, and that was just a great home for me. It allowed me to learn so much. I made some pretty good choices – focusing on technology was a good choice to make. I’ve managed to work for some good firms, obviously one of them for 17 years and one of them I created so I can only really blame myself. There are two lessons really: one is if you want to work in PR, try to operate in a sector that you enjoy – and you’re like me, you’d want to work in a sector that’s quite dynamic; two is the people you work with – it’s about the people that you can work alongside in a team.
Has it always been technology?
I got a job as a PR assistant working for Weber Shandwick in Leeds straight out of university, and I did that for six months. I worked across a broad range of things – one of my clients was an organisation of the professional body of radiologists called the Royal College of Radiologists, and one of the things we did for them in those six months was actually to stage a classical concert at the Royal Albert Hall. Then I wanted to move to London because I saw that was where big agencies were at the time. I got transferred within Weber Shandwick. When presented with options, technology seemed like a good fit. It seemed interesting and dynamic. Actually, at the time, it also paid more, which was appealing for someone who had been earning £10,000 a year in the first job.
Let’s rewind. You stayed at Hotwire for 17 years and grew the business to a global challenger brand in tech. What were the challenges at the time when you set up Tyto, back to managing a small team after running a large agency?
I joined Hotwire at the very beginning. I joined it three months after it started so I was part of a fast-growing startup that had gone from scratch. When I was younger – when you get older, you kind of get obsessed with being older – I entered my career driven and keen to learn and prepared to put in the hard work to compensate for my lack of experience. When I get older and have some of that experience, it’s a bit like Neo in The Matrix – when the bullets fly towards him, he can dodge bullets. I think when you’re a bit older, and you’ve made loads of mistakes, you can dodge bullets and that’s a good place to be. It means you can be a bit more effective with your time and money. What I benefited from having done it all before was a lot of life experience, which is highly applicable to what I was looking to do.
On top of all of that what I’d seen was the market shift, from operating in one of the best international tech agencies in the world. What I’d been able to see was the points of friction in that model. I could then potentially disrupt, innovate upon and create something new, so that was a good position to come from. I was already operating at a really high level and was able to see an opportunity for improvement.
I love Tyto’s proposition, especially the concept of PR Without Borders. Could you please tell us about it and what were the inspirations behind that proposition?
I’d spent a lot of my time trying to get people to think and operate as one team; on the flip side, I’d spent a lot of time selling to clients the virtues of my previous agency, saying you should work with us because we’ve got a presence in all of these markets, we’re a great solution for you. But what I saw underneath the surface were structural obstacles between that aspiration for the agency and that for the client. Now, the reality is most international agencies don’t operate as one team at work. As a consequence, the experience for the clients is quite siloed. There’s a lot of friction in there and also a lot of inefficiency, because there is duplication across different countries. That’s the core of the proposition – the commercial argument for clients in terms of wanting to get a more integrated, flexible model. But the thing that is most exciting for me is a team of just over 50 people spread across multiple countries in Europe. So every day when I work in my virtual office world, I’m working side by side with a group of people from different countries which feels richer because you’ve got people from different backgrounds. What I’d witnessed in the world of international comms was that most of the power and influence lay in London or New York – these big Anglo centres which managed a majority of international communication campaigns. If you were an incredibly bright person in Spain or Germany, your career was put into a little box, you were being excluded from doing certain roles within an agency environment, purely based upon where you were born. I just thought it seemed like a waste of talent.
It opens so many doors and opportunities for those who might not have had them previously. Some people might argue that – especially in the current climate where many companies urge/force people to go back to the office – having that physical presence will be better. What do you think of that?
I’m not dogmatic about remote work or office work. If people want to set up their businesses in an office, I completely understand. Our business couldn’t be what it is today if we were in an office. I believe in the remote model because it enables Tyto’s business model. We have lots of advantages because we can recruit the best people in Europe, irrespective of where they’re located. The footprint that we can recruit from is huge. We started with this model very intentionally in 2017 before COVID; anyone that’s chosen to work for Tyto has chosen to work in this model. And yes, face time together is important and our team comes together all the time. We have this scheme called the Tyto Passport Scheme (£500 a year) which you can spend to travel for collaboration or inspiration.
Tyto operates across the UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain and Italy. Whilst it’s a pan-European market, there must be some (subtle) cultural differences, regulations and policies, especially in the tech space. What is your advice for companies to maneuver those differences?
I’ve always worked in international companies. Over time, I think I’ve always just been a quite good listener – always trying to listen to people and hear different perspectives. I have a natural curiosity to get different opinions. When you can take on board perspectives and ideas from different people from different backgrounds, you can get to interesting places. I think the secret to working with people from different backgrounds is creating an environment where people are encouraged to listen to different perspectives and opinions.
We have seen recent layoffs across tech companies (Meta, Amazon, Google) and most recently LinkedIn. There are a lot of conversations around the role of communication in that situation – whether comms can help reduce the negative impact of these announcements. As a comms expert in the field, what are your thoughts on it?
What I’ve learned in life is that usually, you can’t dress these things up. As far as possible, the closer you can get to just explaining the truth is usually the right approach, not trying to be too clever or too creative. People understand it. There are a lot of companies in the technology space that hired more people than they needed or are overstretched. The climate for investment has changed and the economic environment has changed. You don’t need to try and dress that up too creatively.
What are your thoughts on the metaverse? Is it a fad or a future?
I have to say I don’t necessarily have a very well-rounded perspective on this as I’m not that drawn personally to the virtual world. The more and more you work with technology, the more and more you want to experience things a little bit away from it.
When you’re submerged in technology, every day, all day, you cherish more the moments when you step away, go for a walk in the countryside and hang out with friends. I think it’s probably the most important thing with all of these things.
What about AI, and how does it positively or negatively impact the PR industry?
When people fearmonger and people get kind of scared about these things, there’s a tendency to see these things as being otherworldly. But effectively, AI is a programme that someone’s programmed, but sometimes we lose this sense of human agency and the ability to shape these things, which is something that we need to be careful not to overlook.
I’m very positive about technology, I am very confident that AI will help people in careers like PR in terms of being able to take on board menial tasks that we hate. But I’m skeptical, and I’m unimpressed by someone creating fairly generic content, which is basically regurgitating content for something that someone has created before. It’s completely unoriginal. We need to be a little bit careful not to downplay our own, again, agency, just because of a little magic trick, which is actually not that magical. It’s a bit like people get impressed by their dogs because they go and get the newspaper or something like that. My dog is clever. In our industry people are quick to downplay human agency and overlook the incredible creativity, when it is the thing that people buy and that’s what people are excited about.
We come to the end of our conversation. We talk about food and Succession. I mean who wouldn’t? He enjoys the artistry – the entrepreneurialism – of creating innovative food from scratch. Probably because if he weren’t working in comms, he’d be a chef. The way he talks about food reminds me of “The Menu” to which Brendon gives a solid 6.5. Fair! “One of the things for me makes a good movie or TV series is you need to either love a character or really hate them. You’ve got to have a very strong emotional feeling towards some of them.”
We say goodbye with some recommendations for Vietnamese restaurants in Shoreditch. I hope he has a strong connection with Pho.
