Gerry Hopkinson, owner and CEO of Unity, on The PRmoment podcast


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Jan 20 2020 46 mins   4
This week on the PRmoment podcast, I’m interviewing Gerry Hopkinson, owner and CEO of Unity. Unity is a £2.7m fee income consumer PR consultancy based in London. Clients include the likes of Axa, Vue, Freesat and AEG. Unity’s fee income has grown by 30% in the last 12 months. Gerry is a Canadian who came to the UK aged 24. His early career was spent at PR agencies QBO and Band and Brown. He also had a stint in-house at Mastercard. Gerry co-launched Unity with Nik Govier in 2005. As many of our listeners will know Nik Govier left Unity in 2018. [00:01:43 ] Gerry tells us about Unity's hectic couple of years [00:04:59 ] What do brands want from their public relations? What is its function? What needs does public relations answer for clients and for wider society? [00:06:55 ] Why truth is, by its very nature, subjective. [00:07:23 ] How do you bring emotion to ideas and facts so that people really feel them and act upon them? [00:08:07 ] Why most politicians are either engineers or magicians. [00:10:42 ] Why modern public relations needs to be about psychology, social science and behavioural science. [00:13:15 ] Gerry talks about the concept of social proof and its relevance in communications – how we as humans tend to believe and want to do what others are doing. [00:16:03 ] Gerry describes the break up of his and Nik Govier’s partnership as "like a divorce" and how he still has still has "huge affection and admiration and respect for her." [00:16:20 ] How for many "relationships, there is a natural course. All things come to an end." [00:17:26 ] How Gerry went through a pretty formal process of self-criticism when Nik Govier left the business. Where he asked himself "What am I good at?” and "What am I not good at?" [00:24:12 ] Gerry explains what he means by the statement "Unity is my life". [00:25:06 ] Gerry identifies three things "that had come unstuck" at Unity version one. [00:28:31 ] Why learning is what gives Gerry the most enjoyment at work. [00:28:53 ] Why Gerry believes "for capitalism to survive, it must evolve." [00:30:01 ] How a lack of trust is eroding a lot of what we take for granted in civil society. [00:30:50 ] Why the way we create wealth and create jobs is starting to have a pretty serious and unsustainable impact on the world. [00:33:35 ] What does purpose mean to the SMEs of this world? [00:35:57 ] Over the course of his career, who have Gerry's mentors been and what has he learnt from them? [00:38:40 ] Why Gerry has built Unity's employer brand on "hustlers and dreamers." [00:40:22 ] Gerry talks us through the lessons he's learnt during Unity's tough times and the good times. [00:41:11 ] Why agencies must decide if they are consultants or outsourcers. [00:44:01 ] Unity as a business has often hovered just below the £3 million pound fee income level – Gerry talks about how he wants to break through that. [00:46:07 ] Why Gerry hopes Unity will make an acquisition or two...