What does innovation look like for PR firms in 2022?

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.This week we’re chatting to Emily Morgan, managing director, operations and innovation at The Red Consultancy.Emily has worked at Red for over 22 years and she’s recently evolved her role too, as the job title suggests, prioritise innovation within the firm.The Red Consultancy has a fee income of about £13m and is part of the Accordience, which was previously known as the Huntsworth Group. Red has a fee income of circa £14 m.The nature of a consultancy business is that to continue to add value to clients, you must innovate and as has been widely discussed the last 5 years have seen huge changes to the PR business and therefore the PR consultancy business - so I thought it would be interesting to get Emily on the show to talk about the innovation predictions and priorities in 2022 and beyond.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, The Most Popular KPIs in PR and The intersection of Data, Insight and PR Planning.Indeed Emily is a speaker at our free-to-attend Most Popular KPIs in PR webinar - so if you like the sound of what she talks about today - do register for that one.Finally, thanks to our PRmoment Podcast sponsor, The PRCA.Here’s a summary of what Emily and PRmoment founder Ben Smith discussed: 2.30 mins Why does Emily believe the pace of innovation in PR firms has increased?3 mins Emily talks us through the different types of innovation within a PR firm - from client innovation, to service innovation, to employee-related innovations and innovation of the PR tech stack.6.30 mins The raison d'etre of an agency is pretty much about being able to innovate - isn't that why clients have always hired agencies?8 mins Emily talks us through the intersection of innovation and operations within a PR firm.10 mins Innovation is such a broad word - it can encapsulate tiny process changes through to business-critical changes - how does Emily search for innovation within Red?14 mins How does a modern PR firm's offer need to adapt to updated client needs? Beyond ideas and activation - what else do clients want?17 mins Culture and sharing knowledge are pretty key to innovation, Emily explains how Red has balanced the desire for employees not to want to be in the office 5 days a week with the need to retain collegiate working practices.25.30 mins Emily talks us through what the intersection of people and technology looks like at Red.28 mins What innovations in the PR agency market over the last few years have stood out for Emily?