Ruth Allchurch, MD of WE UK on the PRmoment Podcast

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.This week we’re chatting to Ruth Allchurch, UK MD WE. We’re going to talk about Ruth’s career to date including her time at Diageo, her experience at Cirkle and most recently at WE where she has took the UK income of the firm to close to £7m, from about £3m when she joined as the UK MD 4 years ago.Currently, 60 people work in London for WE and current clients include Capgemini, Intel, Abbott, Johnson & Johnson, Boehringer Ingelheim and Google Waves.Before we start - if you haven’t seen them already - take a look at the categories for The ESG Awards - the early entry deadline is 16th September.And do check out the home page of PRmoment for our latest webinars, including PR Analytics, LinkedIn as a B2B Marketing Channel, The Most Popular KPIs in PR and The intersection of Data, Insight and PR Planning.Finally, thanks to our PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.Here's a summary of what Ruth and PRmoment founder Ben Smith discussed:2 mins Ruth talks us through how a PR firm with a fee income of £3m turned itself into a PR firm with a fee income of over £6.5m inside 4 years. “There is no scope for ambiguity when you're looking to grow a business”“We were overservicing on low fee accounts…it's not about more clients its about having healthier partnerships with the ones we choose wot work with”9 mins Ruth was on Weber Shandwick’s first-ever graduate training programme. In PR it seems unfashionable to be a graduate at the moment - would Ruth go to Uni again?11 mins Are graduate PR schemes still a good idea?13  mins Ruth started her career agency side at Weber Shandwick and then went to Cohn & Wolfe before she went in-house at Diageo. How important was that period in-house in the story of her career?15 mins Why did Ruth leave a nice in-house role to go back agency side when she joined Cirkle?17 mins Ruth talks us through her time at Cirkle. “It was probably the steepest learning curve I’ve ever had in my career”19 mins Why did Ruth leave BCW to move to WE?22 mins How has the type of work changed that WE UK does in the last 4 years?“We do much more employee engagement work than we’ve ever done before”24 mins Has the culture of WE changed in the last 4 years?26 mins What do you need to do to change the culture of a PR firm?28 mins Ruth talks us through why she’s not a great fan of the pitching process, and how she’d change it.31 mins Why Ruth doesn’t believe PR prices itself correctly.32 mins As a female leader of perhaps the only female-founded international PR network - what mark out of 10 does  Ruth give PR on its gender equality progress?33.30 mins Ruth talks us through her experience of having a Ukrainian family stay for 4 months.