Tony fails to shy away from the some very tricky questions as he spends an intimate little session with the founder of Brazen PR.

You've been away from the engine room for a while. How will you go about regaining the reins?

Wheeler: Brazen to the core

Rick's recruited about a third new staff over the past 6 months, so my Number 1 job is to have one-to-ones with everyone to hear what they've been up to, get to know them etc. And of course to meet the new clients we've won and go and see all our existing clients to check how things have been going over my maternity.

This job is all about relationships so I want to get out there and see how everyone is.

As for having one to ones with the team - apparently 'the fear' is already spreading ha ha! Even though I've met them all they don’t know me - but my bark is worse than my bite!

How do you think Rick will feel after effectively running his show for all this time and building his own team? Surely this has breakaway written all over it!

I am happy for Rick to continue in his role as MD and I’m going to take the lofty position of CEO. He has done an absolutely brilliant job running the show while I've been off, in conjunction with my senior team.

You know we prepared for this with military precision, making sure everyone had the roles they wanted, especially as Emma Beck was off on maternity at the same time as me.

So no breakaway?

No, no breakaway. Unless you know something I don’t know?!

And where does Emma fit in now?

Emma is Co-Founder of Brazen and a Director - and will continue to be so. She's invaluable.
 
So how does she fit into the hierarchy?

We've run Brazen pretty much without a hierarchy - there are no ceilings here. I always said we could end up having an agency full of Account Directors if everyone was to reach their potential.

But if there was an order of maturity then I guess it's me, Emma, Rick and my FD - followed by the Account Directors who basically form the agency's management team.

Okay, let's go right back to the early days... where did the name Brazen come from?

Big, bold and Brazen brand

It's been the most brilliant branding vehicle.

Sticking with the early days, it was noticeable that Brazen's early client roster had more than a slight overlap with Cheetham Bell JWT. I was not the only one that did not see this as entirely co-incidental...

You've not lost it Tony! Yes we did share some clients, probably two or three at any one time when you look back and analyse it.

But we were bound to. CBJWT was the leading brand ad agency, and we were (and still are) the leading consumer brand PR agency. So when clients asked CBJWT for recommendations for the best PR agency (which they often do of their ad agency, not so the other way around) then we would be one of their top recommendations.

But every client we had was won fair and square in competitive pitches.

Would it be fair to say there was a degree of cross recommendation, especially as David Bell, at that time, was a major shareholder in Brazen..?

David Bell recommended business to us primarily because he believed in Brazen and that we would give his clients a brilliant service - and make his ad campaigns famous! He'd seen too many PR agencies do a botch job on his clients, so when I decided to set up Brazen he was all for it, as any partner should be.

That he was a shareholder in Brazen kept him particularly interested in our success of course.

Any new business JWT ever referred to us, we pitched for and won on our own merit. Clients aren’t stupid. In fact most of them didn’t realise we had a personal connection anyway, that's how non-incestuous it was.

Brazen's two biggest clients for a long time - UCI Cinemas and Hasbro - had absolutely no connection to Dave, they were mine and Emma's personal contacts.
 
So does Dave still refer clients to you?

Sorry everyone, yes we do refer business to each other still, although the contact is largely through my MD Rick Guttridge and JWT's MD Jane Clancy. It's more than amicable between our businesses, we still both work for Magnet so we have monthly strategy meetings together.
 
Your fairly public split with Dave and your joint ownership of the business must have ushered in a difficult period...

Undeniably it was an upsetting time, although he never had any involvement in running Brazen so at work it was business as usual. I was shocked but not surprised how the knives came out when we publicly split. Some of our industry press turned into tabloid journos and spun some nasty and over-personal reports.
 
How costly was it excising him from what is and was a very successful business?

Well put it this way, he was rich and is now richer.

Murray: subtle as ever

I can’t complain. But I'd give up money for love any day.

How would you describe your attitude to Mr Bell these days?

I honestly wish him well.
 
That sounds more like a PR answer, than a Nina Wheeler answer...

I'm a consummate PR professional remember? I've not spoken to him in almost 18 months and don’t suppose I ever will do again.
 
You're sole proprietor now. What about the rumours you are selling up/out?

That's just wishful thinking on our competitor's side! You can only sell if there's a fantastic deal on the table and you feel you've had your time. Neither of these is true of me just yet.

Every agency owner should have an exit strategy, and that usually means being bought out by a network for a magnificent sum of money so you never have to work again or you can dabble in a bit of consultancy.
 
I heard a rumour too that I'm going to have another baby and never come back to Brazen. Now what planet are these people on? For the record, I start back to work next Monday and my legs are firmly crossed (metaphorically) for the time being.

There are too many PR operators in the NW now and they can't all survive. Discuss.

There are degrees of 'PR operators' (lots of freelancers and two man bands sprouting up pretending to be agencies and operating from their kitchen table) and as long as everyone doesn't aspire to be an agency of 40 with a turnover of £5million, then we'll all do well.
 
You say all these NW PR players could survive, but should they?

Look I don't ever want to see anyone do badly, life is too fragile and it could happen to anyone. Most are shit anyway, so let them do their thing.

Media independents, design companies, ad agencies - all largely bird free in the board room. PR is different. Why is that?

Not sure if that's completely true, there are lots of board members of other media related agencies up here I can think of. And there are a fair few blokes in PR, think PC, Brian Beech, Rob Brown, my own Rick.

Undeniably women are great at PR though and there are more of us. Probably because it's one of the most creative of the industries, and also the most subtle/relationship oriented - think journalists, clients, suppliers etc.

Women are great at handling all of that while still being business professionals.
 
True, there are blokes in PR, but women in design, advertising, media buying - at the highest level? Yet there's you, Sandy, Jo Leah, Rita Row etc in PR. There's not a comparable roster in any other NW (or beyond) non-PR marketing discipline.

Granted. Not sure if there's a glass ceiling for women in those other industries, as I've never worked in them. I don’t know what the score is on sexism versus lack of talent. PR is a female dominated business - for the reasons I've said.
 
You worked with many well known figures on the NW PR scene - John Williams, Nigel Sarbutts and the one time great hope, Caroline Ball. What did you learn from each of them and who impressed you the most?

Rowe: a role model

Brazen's image is sometimes a bit lightweight and occasionally your peers don't seem to take you too seriously. Have you over-played the big-chested. short-skirted card a little too strenuously?

Again, I think that's just mean mindedness, people wanting to knock us. You can’t be a lightweight and run the fastest £0-1M company in PR history can you? Our staff are largely female and extremely attractive - get over it. They're also brilliant at their jobs and their clients rate them highly.

Other agencies are always looking for reasons to explain our rapid success - I regularly hear we are either a/ sleeping with our clients, b/ sleeping with our contacts, c/ sleeping with award judges or d/ all 3 of the above. Doesn’t that smack to you of jealously?

The fastest ₤0-1m in history is that legit?

I think you'll find it is - look back at Insider league tables and PR Week league tables; we were the fastest growing consumer agency in the UK as well by only our 3rd year.
 
We get knocked because we're female and young and work with sexy consumer brands. But there's a lot more we give to our clients - strategic advice, brand direction, planning.

But those areas don’t make the sexy headlines and get people gossiping on How Do, do they?

But that's not our issue - our clients know what we deliver, and that's the best ROI in the industry. Our more 'heavyweight' peers should be mindful of that.

Gordo: not shaggable (apparently)

Like Gordo, I’m not one for regrets. But the most naive thing I ever did was to give Dave Bell 50% in Brazen - that's what you get for only being 27 when you set up your business. My number one tip for any budding entrepreneurs out there - never give your shares away.
 
I have not seen you for a long time - maybe 7-8 years, do you think you have changed?

No I'm still absolutely gorgeous and you wont be disappointed when you see me at the How Do awards. And of course I'm older and wiser and less hot headed - but still good fun...and I'm now good at making money, not just headlines.

Plus I’m a mum which is the best job in the world.

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