Cordelia Meacher, the Managing Director at FieldHouse Associates, shares her industry insights and career journey.  Cordelia is focused on high growth technology, mobile, digital and the eco-systems that surround them.

She and her firm work with a melting pot of clients from start-ups and scale-ups to investors working in the tech and innovation sector. Yet Cordelia’s career journey didn’t follow an obvious path to this point. She started off in public affairs fighting a general election campaign, then moved into PR, working both agency and client side, before breaking away to set up on her own in 2012.

In our quick fire industry insights series, Madeleine Weightman, the co-founder of The Work Crowd, asked Cordelia to share her insights and the secret to her success. 

For Cordelia, becoming an entrepreneur and starting her own PR firm wasn’t something she had initially considered.

‘I’d never thought of myself as an entrepreneur, I held out as I rather liked the monthly pay check.’

However, things changed in 2012, when the agency she was working for and loved was sold to a larger firm. With change afoot and the positive persistence of clients and colleagues, Cordelia decided to create FieldHouse Associates. Thanks to a wealth of agency and in-house experience behind her, Cordelia knew that there was a better way to connect with clients, and that was by focusing on an industry sector and ‘owning it’.

‘I realised that lots and lots of agencies are generalists, but if you specialise in one space and really understand it, then you own it. It’s your network.’

Technology is such a fast changing and high-growth area. This change is inevitably impacting on the PR and communications industry. Talking about adapting to this Cordelia, believes:

‘PR needs to embrace change and understand that technology can actually make life easier, so it’s important not to be scared of it.’

FieldHouse has adopted technology to improve efficiency, for example, they now connect, communicate and report to clients using myriad technology platforms to improve efficiency and transparency in their work. Despite this, Cordelia places the utmost importance on ‘old-fashioned values’, such as relationships and face time with clients.

‘The interesting thing is that it isn’t all about tech, it’s about the people... In the end, it’s about being out there and meeting people and no technology will ever change that.’

As far as the future and the key challenges for the PR & communications industry looking ahead to the end of 2017 and 2018, Cordelia stresses the importance of providing value to clients, particularly given Brexit, rising inflation and the decreased growth forecasts for the UK which can translate to PR budget cuts.

‘PR agencies today need to be proving their worth to clients and potential clients within the industry. Here at FieldHouse, we are very much about what is your ROI for PR, so we can have an actual impact on the businesses we’re working with.’

Fieldhouse tackles this by staying relevant and helping businesses make an impact, enabling their next stage of growth.

For our next series, we will be interviewing Matt Cross MD of Hotwire UK. If you are looking for cost-effective expert freelance solutions in marketing, PR and communications, we invite you to get in touch with us. There is no cost to join, simply create a project and get connected!

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