Elliot Moss
Good morning this is Jazz Shapers, I am Elliot Moss, bringing you the entrepreneurs shaping the world of business together with the musicians shaping the worlds of Jazz, Soul and Blues. My guess today I am extremely pleased to say is Andrew Bloch, Co-Founder and Non-Exec Director now of the multi-award winning, in fact so many awards you can’t count them, PR agency, Frank. Inspired by his A level art teacher to consider a career in advertising Andrew says he clung on to this idea. It was the first job he had been told he would be good at but unable to get a chance in the industry he was pointed instead towards PR and an unpaid work placement at Lynn Frank’s PR, he said he fell in love with it. Particularly the pace. “You can have an idea in the shower at 6.00am”, he says “and by 7.00am the idea has gone to a client and by 8.00am it has gone live.” When a colleague, Graham Goodkind asked Andrew to join him in setting up their own agency, Andrew turned him down three times – sounds almost biblical before finally in 2000 they launched Frank. We will find out what changed Andrew’s mind very shortly. Built on a foundation of talk ability, the buzz that takes over and does your best marketing for you, it says here, Frank is now one of the industries most decorated agencies and has represented some of the nation’s best known brands including 20th Century Fox, Aldi, Burger King, EA Games, Coca-Cola and so many more. We will be talking to Andrew in a few minutes about all of this, about life after Frank, he stood down earlier this year from his executive duties and about being the official spokesperson and PR advisor to none other than Lord Sugar for nearly 20 years. Brilliant to have you, thank you.
Andrew Bloch
Thank you for having me.
Elliot Moss
It’s been strange times recently and I am very happy that you have joined us in person. PR strikes me as a business where you literally reinvent yourself every day. You literally have to start again. Tell me what that’s felt like for the last 20 years?
Andrew Bloch
Well it’s a good question, the industry is almost unrecognisable from when I started, I make me sound extremely old but when I started there was no email, any sort of photography had to get couriered over to a journalist, the internet wasn’t really there so, but the principles of it have stayed the same, it’s just the technology and the way that we communicate has evolved, there is more ways to get messages out so the industry I fell in love with 25 odd years ago is still the industry I love today, that bit hasn’t changed at all.
Elliot Moss
And do you think, I mean people talk about the oldest professions in the world and I am sure that communication between humans is kind of up there, were you brilliant at PR before you went into the PR business? If you think back to when you were growing up, was it something that just came naturally to you, telling a story, knowing how to pitch it?
Andrew Bloch
One of the things about PR is actually very, very hard to define exactly what it is, I mean I had no clue what PR was actually until the day I stepped foot in a PR agency but the skills that you need to have in PR which are essentially the ability to tell a story, to spot what’s going to get talked about, to have an interest in the media. When I look back now, yes I had all those traits growing up but I wouldn’t have known that they were characteristics that were going to set me off on a good footing for a career in the PR industry.
Elliot Moss
And did you know anyone in the PR industry when you were…?
Andrew Bloch
No, no one, no one at all. I mean I always had my heart on going into advertising and it’s a tough, tough industry to get into with really arduous processes, application forms, interview after interview.
Elliot Moss
I remember.
Andrew Bloch
Yes well you have been there, done it, worn the t-shirt and I got bored of these applications, they were taking so long and it wasn’t that I wasn’t getting anywhere, I was just not getting anywhere quickly so someone who I can’t even remember who they were said “try PR, it’s a bit like advertising” and I did, so I looked up who the sort of top PR agencies were, wrote to them, got offered a work placement and that was how it all started off but it was never an intentional plan. It worked out okay.
Elliot Moss
And it sounds like when Graham asked you as I mentioned earlier to come and create this agency, you said no a number of times. Is it the same for you with regard to setting up your own business, was it something you hadn’t really thought about and was that the reason why you said no?
Andrew Bloch
It was to do with the fact I just didn’t think I was ready. Graham was my first boss when I started out in PR and then we went our separate way so we hadn’t been working together for a couple of years but we are still in touch. I had only had 5 years’ experience and there is always that temptation to keep building your CV and keep bettering yourself and when he said to me, “I think we should set up a PR agency together”, I said to him, “you know I just don’t think I am ready, I love the idea, would love to work with you, maybe a couple of years you know, great idea.” And he said to me, “you will never be ready, you will never feel ready” and he was completely right and so that’s why it took me three attempts to sort of think okay what’s the worst that can happen, I’ll give it a go and you know, if it doesn’t work out I’ll go back cap in hand to my old employers or you know put my CV up on LinkedIn so, that was how it started and then fast forward 20 years of Frank’s now an established agency, doing well, in a good place, I still love it to pieces and I am still involved with the agency in a Non-Exec capacity but I wanted to keep challenging myself and it will be wrong to say it was easy, it will be wrong to say it was boring, because it was none of those but I just felt it was time to try something different and yeah, I guess equally hard, I mean the older you get, I think the more responsibilities you have financially, I think you lose a sense of your, I don’t know what the right adjective is…
Elliot Moss
Freedom Andrew.
Andrew Bloch
I wasn’t going to say that.
Elliot Moss
We’ve lost our freedom. He’s looking me in the eye going that’s absolutely right.
Andrew Bloch
And very, very true but that wasn’t the word I was going to use.
Elliot Moss
Of course it wasn’t.
Andrew Bloch
You kind of like that fearlessness when you are young and you’ve got nothing to lose, that goes.
Elliot Moss
You don’t know stuff right so you are just going to crack on.
Andrew Bloch
Yeah. Yeah so it wasn’t an easy decision, it took me actually 2 years to come to the decision. I didn’t jump out of bed one morning and just go and say you know, see ya. It was a long thought through process and actually when it got announced within 24 hours I knew it was 100% the right thing to do but I don’t think there was any way of me really knowing that before I actually sort of took the jump and did it and I haven’t looked back, I mean it’s early days to be fair but it’s been a good few months since I made the decision and so far, so good. Long may it continue.
Elliot Moss
Sometimes you have just got to jump because it’s experiential and you won’t know until you do. You talked then about making decisions and what you said was interesting to me anyway, you said you didn’t feel ready and then Graham said, “you never feel ready.” You also almost said the same thing again in the sense through the context of 20 years in and then you didn’t know if it was going to be the right, make the right decision and all that. PR is not often associated with humility or sort of self-awareness or maybe you will tell me otherwise. It strikes me that everything that your business has done is absolutely out there, hugely confident, infused with this is it, this is right and you would have made many decisions, probably more than you can remember about a client and their business and about a decision you are going to take and they would be brave things which is how the talk ability thing happens and yet when you talk about yourself it is quite different. Is it that you are more honest, I mean is there more introspection about your own abilities than you have let on over the years? Because again from the outside I just go Andrew Bloch, super successful, 20,000 plus followers on Twitter – I am not jealous at all – oh how many, 40? You outrageous man. 40,000 on Twitter, not that’s a measure of anything.
Andrew Bloch
Absolutely not.
Elliot Moss
Absolutely not but it’s quite nice, a bit of fun.
Andrew Bloch
Blue tick as well.
Elliot Moss
A big blue, oh he’s got the blue tick, you see now he’s showing off. But seriously that humility thing was that just insecurity or was it humility?
Andrew Bloch
I think, I mean as a person I am actually pretty shy, don’t like to be in the spotlight, I’d rather let other people take the limelight and I’ll just be there guiding them from behind. It is interesting you know, you talk about the stereotype of PR and it does exist, I don’t necessarily think it’s fair but certainly when we set up Frank we recognised that one of our characteristics, we were a little bit different as people, we weren’t that kind of pashmina wearing, champagne sipping, long lunch characters so that is why we called the Agency Frank, it was about open, honest, straight to the point and I have also sort of always been the kind of person that doesn’t necessarily like authority or respect authority, not in a disrespectful way but just because someone is in a position of power or running a big company, marketing director of a huge brand, doesn’t mean they are always right and I have never been a yes man in that I will always give them my open and honest opinion and I think that is what has stood Frank so well over time in that people want to be challenged and people want those opinions and that is something I have always set out to do but as a person I think I have always suffered a little bit from that sort of imposter syndrome. I remember when we started Frank and you know, one of the things I didn’t mention is I was only 26 when we set up the company. I still looked young.
Elliot Moss
You still look young.
Andrew Bloch
Ah thanks.
Elliot Moss
He’s younger than me so I am just annoyed.
Andrew Bloch
You are going to have to believe him but you know, I was young and I used to wear a suit to meetings and it was like that sort of Doogie Howser, you just want to make yourself look a bit… and it took me quite a long time and even recently you know, sometimes I go in to boardrooms and everyone was 20 years older than me and you just think, are they going to look at me as… I still feel young, I know I am not really but I am still wearing trainers and jeans and all the types of things that my son tells me I am too old to wear but for a long time I felt I had to pretend to be older or dress in a different way and I don’t know, now I think I’ve got that confidence, I’ve been doing it for long enough that people respect my opinions, they listen.
Elliot Moss
And there’s proof points right, you’ve got 20 years of success, I mean that’s the truth of it.
Andrew Bloch
Yes.
Elliot Moss
Just on the challenging authority thing and the fact that you called it Frank, you have strong opinions, where did you learn that that was okay? Because again, some people don’t have that assertiveness. Where did you think you were told that, you know what Andrew, you have… it’s important to be honest, it’s important to back yourself?
Andrew Bloch
I guess I learnt from observing my peers and before Frank I was at a big global agency and I saw lots of people in meetings and they were, yes, yes, yes and then what would happen is, a campaign would run and it wouldn’t go exactly to plan and they’d say “Oh I always never thought it was going to work” and I was this young kid and I’m thinking well why didn’t you tell them then, it’s like no point once the horse has bolted and I just sort of observed that on numerous occasions and I would challenge my superiors in the company and say… I wouldn’t have the confidence to say it in a meeting because I’m the sort of little one in the corner taking notes but I’d say, I was listening to what they said and I just, in my opinion, that’s not going to work and they really listened, my bosses and stuff, and then, you know, through time I almost got the licence to be able to say that myself and I think it’s really important, you know, people are employing you as advisors, as specialists in your field and that’s why they are paying you money so they want to hear your opinion, you’re not just there to say yes sir, no sir, you know when do we start? That’s not what they want. I mean, obviously, not challenging things for the sake of it but I think some of the best campaigns that I have been a part of within my career are the ones where we have challenged briefs, where we’ve been disruptive, where we’ve challenged a client to think different, they don’t always know that they want so they’re always open to hearing different ideas and I think it’s also about not being scared to have an opinion that someone doesn’t agree with, you know, sometimes you can challenge something and they will say, “you know what? Get your point but we don’t want that, we want to do what we’re doing” and that’s okay too and I think what it’s actually done over the twenty or so years that Frank has been going, is you tend to attract likeminded clients so the ones that don’t value your opinion, don’t like being challenged, don’t like that sort of frank philosophy, they don’t really get through the door because they go with another agency that’s better suited to them and that’s okay as well but what it means is that the clients that do come through the door, do like what you say, they stick with you and, you know, I’ve got plenty of clients that have followed the agency as they’ve moved on from different jobs within their career because they like your approach and they just take you with them and that’s… that’s a great a thing.
Elliot Moss
Stay with me for more from my guest, that’s Andrew Bloch, talking frankly and honestly about the power and the value of being frank. He’s coming back in a couple of minutes so don’t go too far because right now you are also going to hear a taster from the Mishcon Academy Digital Sessions which we created during lockdown, they can be found on all of the major podcast platforms. In this one, Mishcon de Reya’s Joe Hancock and Katy Ling talk about current trends in cyber fraud and what companies need to do to protect themselves against that during the recovery period.
You can enjoy all our former Jazz Shapers and hear this very programme again with Andrew by popping Jazz Shapers into your podcast platform of choice or you can ask Alexa to play Jazz Shapers and many of our recent programmes await you there. But back to today, it’s Andrew Bloch, Co-Founder of consumer PR agency, Frank, now a Non-Exec Director, he’s taken a backseat, sort of, if ever a Co-Founder does that. We’ve been talking a lot about ideas and creativity and opinions as well. The ideas have come and come and come, again, again and again and the awards are, on one level superficial and one would always say well the awards, thank you very much but actually it’s the work that matters and the results. What does it take to create a group of people that are consistently delivering high quality ideas? Because everyone has a flash in the pan, don’t they? But the 20 years is what intrigues me, how have you managed to build a team and a culture that’s enabled that capability?
Andrew Bloch
You have to push yourself and ideas is your currency and that is the thing that would always keep me awake at night and the simple formula is, you do good work, you attract good clients, you attract good people, you keep on growing and the money and the sort of financial side of it follows. I mean, it sounds very easy but an obsession with creativity, I think is almost what I would call it and actually what’s quite interesting in the ad, PR, marketing services landscape but particularly in PR, is up until recently, PR agencies didn’t really have a creative director because they never wanted to divest responsibility to one person and it had to be part of your culture and it’s only really been in the last three or four years that we’ve had a creative director but the way that we use that creative director, I guess, is like, I don’t know, a cheerleader for creativity but they’re not having the sole responsibility, it comes from a group of people. Everyone has their own techniques. When we started out, we had this philosophy and this ethos around talk ability which we define as the buzz that takes over and does your best marketing view and we developed a methodology for coming up with the triggers that could lead to talk ability so it could be about disruption, breaking conventions, it could be looking at the zeitgeist and what’s going on at the moment and how you can sort of stay one step ahead of the trend and by playing around with these triggers, when it was Graham and I that were sitting there, we almost did this automatically, we didn’t sit there sort of with a tick box that we’d go through, and the more time you spend with other people, they start to learn by osmosis and pick up from it but I think because we put creativity at the fore of what we did, that’s why it has become such an important part of our success story, important part of the organisation and you can never get complacent about it but wouldn’t necessarily say I am a creative or the most creative person in the world but I soak up media, whether that’s social media, whether it’s reading articles, blogs, forums, listening to podcasts and that gives you triggers and you work with people who can sort of take something or you listen to someone else and you can help, it’s definitely a team thing.
Elliot Moss
But there’s no… you describe it, not quite a formula but you are saying that these triggers, are they emotional triggers, behavioural triggers, because there’s one thing kind of knowing in theory what’ going to work, you know, Tinie Tempah music, a big brand or the opposite where you invoke something really highly incredible or highly contentious, you’ll know you are going to get something. Is it that or is it just the fusion of all these different things that then come to bear on the brief?
Andrew Bloch
A bit of everything is the easy answer. You start with an idea and that idea should be completely media neutral because a great idea could manifest itself as a product, as a sponsorship, as an ad campaign, as a PR campaign, as digital marketing, social media, you know, all sorts of routes to get it out so you never constrain yourself by the medium, if you like, and you just think of the idea and then what you have to do is marry that up with make ability, is this something that the media, that the public, that whoever it’s intended for, are going to be interested in because there is no point having a great idea that no one cares about so it’s kind of fusing those two things and no it’s not a formula but it’s triggers to help get your brain working in a way that is likely to lead you to something interesting and something that will provoke talk ability but now that, you know, the whole world’s changed and the way that consumers interact with brands, brands interact with consumers, is completely different to how it was five years ago, ten years ago, so the techniques, the ways of thinking have changed and you can’t just use a formula because a formula will go out of date and you have to constantly evolve but, yeah, so I mean it’s an excellent question and an almost impossible question to answer because I think if you can build a culture where creativity is at the core, it kind of happens without you knowing how it happened, to me it’s probably about just prioritising it and making people recognise that is the most thing within our business.
Elliot Moss
Your leadership style in this and you’ve been running the shop with other people for a number of years, we talked a little bit about the fact that you put creativity at the centre. We talked about the fact that you attract great clients, the wrong ones, you know you want to be confident you need to let them go and not worry that you are not attracting them but what about making sure those people that you’ve got are the right people and have the right environment. How have you done that as a leader if you step back a little bit from it happens to be PR because you said something very interesting earlier about you know, you are paid for specialist advice. At the end of the day your craft skill is PR Andrew but in reality the CEO or the CMO is buying you for the advice you give him or her and it happens to be communications. Tell me a little bit about you as a leader and that group of people.
Andrew Bloch
Well look, people are your currency so being able to attract the best people in the business is critical. Having a strong brand helps and you know going back to when I was saying about great campaigns, everything else follows. One of the benefits of doing great work, people want to work for that sort of company. I think if I am being honest the people skills is perhaps not my greatest attribute and I work alongside a guy called Alex Grier who is phenomenal, a hundred times more patient and better with people than I am. My approach is very fair. I always believe in running the agency as a unclear 22.15 and maybe based on my own experiences I have always felt if you are young enough and you can do it, age should never be a barrier, you don’t have to wait for someone to die, retire, reach a certain age, do a certain number of years at a certain level, if you show the ability and the hunger, personally I would always do whatever I could to reward those people. You have to be tough if you run a 22.32 because that means certain people aren’t going to be up to scratch and they are not hitting those milestones or getting as quick.
Elliot Moss
So you have always been straight.
Andrew Bloch
Always.
Elliot Moss
And that means there are some people who are going to go he is just too honest for me and other people are going to go, I really like his honesty?
Andrew Bloch
Yeah actually a girl left us, who shall remain nameless, a few weeks ago and she sort of wrote a little bit about each of the Directors when she was leaving and she wrote against me – I don’t really remember this story but - “you gave me the most brutal but brilliant evaluation of a pitch I have ever had” and I vaguely remember what pitch it was but I believe they are never going to learn if you just tell them what they want to hear and sometimes people can find that, I mean I don’t do it in a horrible way, I am not a shouty or nasty person, but if there is something that is not right, I tell them and I tell them why. Some people have never experienced that because they are just used to dealing with people that, I don’t know, skirt around the edges, nice, nice, softly, softly, yeah that’s really, really good, well done and I will say “look this bit is brilliant but you are way off the mark here or I don’t agree with this.” Sometimes people can find that a bit painful because you always want to show your boss something that he is just going to go yep fine, they don’t really want to hear, yep but…
Elliot Moss
So number one attribute is honesty…
Andrew Bloch
I think so.
Elliot Moss
…you would say?
Andrew Bloch
I think so.
Elliot Moss
And you are comfortable being brutal in your analysis?
Andrew Bloch
It’s not brutal.
Elliot Moss
It’s just the truth?
Andrew Bloch
It’s fair and it’s not delivered in a brutal way. I will maybe kind of, I don’t know, package brutal feedback in soft tissue and ribbons but I would never destroy someone’s confidence, rip them apart – I am not a shouty person. I don’t think I have ever had an argument with anyone in a work capacity ever but yeah, direct feedback that is constructive and helping people improve. I am a great believer you have got to pull people up and I don’t think there is any such thing as the perfect PR person or probably the perfect person in any working environment so rather than find their faults and what they can’t do, you look at what they are great at and actually when I look at a big reason for the success in Frank, certainly in the early days, not anymore because there is amazing leadership team that is in place now, but when I look at Graham and I, the two Founders, we had you know, different skill sets that one of us complimented the other and the combination of the two of us was an excellent combination. Now we are fortunate there is, I don’t know, half a dozen at least exceptional people within that business so you kind of… but again probably if I broke it down and analysed them, if I was a Psychologist, I’d look at the six of them and look at their different character traits, personality, no one of them is perfect but you put the right combo of two or three of them together and you have got an exceptional individual.
Elliot Moss
Final chat with Andrew Bloch coming up shortly, don’t go anywhere.
Just before he leaves the building, I’ve got a few more minutes with Andrew Bloch, he’s been my Business Shaper today; very honest, on brief, Andrew, thank you very much for that, and fair too. The future. So, here we are now, you’ve made a bold move, though as you say kind of the gut caught up with it once you’d made the decision, it felt like it was the right one which I think is a good way round, sometimes we can all overthink things can’t we? What excites you about where you are at now? You are still young, relatively, and you’ve got an incredible track record so what happens next, ideally?
Andrew Bloch
When I stepped back and announced I was stepping back, I didn’t have a plan, as stupid as that sounds, but I kind of… I knew what I didn’t want to do but I didn’t know what I did want to do and just let the phone ring and I thought I’d see what happens and so where I am at sort of now is, I have taken on a few non-exec positions, advisory positions, one for a mergers and acquisitions firm helping them find marketing services companies to buy, two in the technology space, one sort of quite close to home in the sort of PR, CRM space and another in the recruitment and assessment space. I wanted to do more work for charitable organisations and good causes so I joined the Prince’s Trust and I sit on their business leadership group and help find young entrepreneurs, get them funding and set their businesses up, and also just joined, as an advisor, to Big Community Records which is set up by Craig Fenton, the CRO of Google and that is all about helping young people from poor backgrounds get a break in the record industry and use his genius in technology and combine that with great musical talent. And then the final bit has been consulting and essentially just helping brands or agencies out, you know, what I’ve learned over the last twenty odd years is how to build and grow and develop an agency, whether that’s through new business, whether it’s through mergers and acquisitions, whether it’s just through helping them get their brand and their tonality right, so I’ve been doing that as well and so, and then I’ve carried on working with Lord Sugar, who has been a client of mine for pretty much the first few days, few months should I say, of Frank.
Elliot Moss
Do you call him Lord?
Andrew Bloch
When I’m with other people…
Elliot Moss
Yes.
Andrew Bloch
…I’d always address him as Lord Sugar and then, I don’t know, our emails are very short so it’s…
Elliot Moss
Dear Uncle Al. Not that.
Andrew Bloch
No, I would never call him that. It’s normally just, no dear or anything it’s…
Elliot Moss
Just Alan or…
Andrew Bloch
Not even Alan. I mean, the emails are short. I would say we probably bat backwards and forwards a couple of dozen a day and the average length of the email is maybe three or four words and that’s what…
Elliot Moss
It’s a deep and emotional relationship.
Andrew Bloch
Absolutely.
Elliot Moss
I can see the glint in your eye.
Andrew Bloch
Just getting stuff done quickly and effectively.
Elliot Moss
But that’s very similar to… I had on the programme, as we were talking about earlier, Sir Martin Sorrell, very similar email patter, it’s quick, very fast response but very short.
Andrew Bloch
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I’ve learned a hell of a lot from Lord Sugar over the years, you know, and actually one of the ways that I think I have adapted my communication style a bit is just getting to the point and so I try not to sort of waffle in emails, get to the point straight away, I mean he takes it to another level but that’s because we know each other but…
Elliot Moss
But that’s quite a range, what you’ve just described is very interesting because there’s the social piece, the community piece and you’ve thought obviously that’s become more important over the years to you, you’ve got then the agency kind of direct consultancy and then you’ve got the opportunity to go, actually, I can spot them and I can help them and that’s the board advisory, you know, spotting new companies over there. That sounds like a lot of fun, I mean…
Andrew Bloch
It is.
Elliot Moss
…aren’t you just, you’re appealing to all the different parts of your…
Andrew Bloch
It’s a lot of fun. I mean the bit I haven’t quite got right yet, is the work/life balance so the idea was, I mean it obviously wasn’t retirement, but it was a bit to have a change of pace, running an agency is completely relentless and I did want to be a bit more in control of my time, have a bit more spare time…
Elliot Moss
With about seven things that you are doing now and… I could have told you that. That wasn’t going to work out.
Andrew Bloch
I’m not very good at saying no. Everything that I have got involved with, I totally… I mean I have said no to quite a lot of things but the stuff that I am involved with, I really love and I put everything into what I do. I think what will happen over time is some of those will grow in significance, in terms of my involvement, and other stuff will either become easier to manage or will require less time commitment or just fade away and then it will sort of evolve naturally but I have… it’s quite nice to sort of, I don’t know, see how rapidly things have changed in the space of a really short period of time and I am enjoying it.
Elliot Moss
But I imagine it’s a bit like, you know, Prime Minister leaving the office, that the adrenalin is still high from running an agency and being full on, you’ve not quite replaced that but you’ve put in a lot of pieces which will ensure that you’re super busy and that your brain is still moving fast.
Andrew Bloch
Absolutely. I cannot be bored, I am not that sort of person, it’s, you know, it’s really not in my nature to allow myself to be bored.
Elliot Moss
Really good to talk. Just before I say ta-ra until the next time, what’s your song choice and why have you chosen it?
Andrew Bloch
My song choice is probably the most obvious song choice in the history of your podcast guests; I have chosen a Frank Sinatra song, who else? The original Frank and I Did It My Way. I mean, probably, if you really listened to the lyrics, they don’t tell my story but the headline, I Did It My Way, I think hopefully is true to me as a person as I have always tried to be true to myself, have a good ethical compass, make decisions that I believe are correct and just see them through with conviction so I think I have always done it my way.
Elliot Moss
The song choice of my Business Shaper today, Andrew Bloch. An honest person, someone who believed in telling the truth without dressing it up and he thought that was really important and stood him in good stead. Somebody who is fair, somebody who believes that there is the right way of doing things and someone who believed in high standards, twenty years at the top in his industry, no mean feat. That’s it from Jazz Shapers and me, have a lovely weekend.