This morning we spoke to Nick Clark, managing director of independent PR agency, Consolidated. 21 years young next year, the agency works like a cooperative with its employees taking ownership of the company, alongside investment partner Albion.

Clark says this allows the firm to be master of its own destiny, and probably had a lot to do with it being named as one on the best small companies to work for by the Sunday Times for the past seven or eight years. “I love the idea of Consolidated. My agency background has been with big international firms, but here, if you think something about the culture isn’t quite right – you can change it virtually overnight,” Clark commented.

Clark told us about the agency’s integrated view of the digital space, saying that though Consolidated has some strong sector specialities (consumer PR, personal finance and B2B especially), digital is just another channel. Though an important one for sure, this can’t mean overlooking traditional media or experiential marketing. “PR is broader than blogger or media relations, it’s about finding the best route to getting a message across. Our USP is that we’re planning-centric. For us, it’s all about audience, not the channel. If you’re trying to reach the youth market, focusing on media relations to the Daily Mail is no use at all.”

Clark spoke of inspiring an audience, finding out about what will encourage them to change their behaviour (as the agency does a lot of work in the public sector). One such campaign meant working with law firm Mischon de Reya, which was attempting to change the change the perception of custody within divorce cases, pushing for mediation instead of court and a change to the Children’s Act. One key activity saw the agency working with The Children’s Society to launch an online guide to help children of all ages cope with the separation of their parents, which was a much more direct way to encourage change. The same goes for the work Consolidated carried out with the Department of Health surrounding the HPV vaccine for young girls, which was extremely non-traditional and centered around event-led activity, taking nurses to talk directly to the 11-12 year olds.

“Communications right now is very interesting. There have been two camps in terms of how people look at the impact of the digital world – those predicting that it’s the ‘end’ and those embracing it. For all of the chances that the Internet provides, there’s still a big group of people that are entrenched in traditional media. Digital is not the only game in town,” Clark added.

There has been a lot of noise and excitement about the exploitation of the online space in the press of late, particularly around Facebook. For Clark, this raises questions about who should be responsible for messaging and coordination of this; “I can’t get past the fact that it needs to be PR people. I don’t see a future for digital shops existing on their own without also handling traditional PR briefs. PR agencies will always be the experts in how to influence a person, that’s what we’ve always been. It’s the same for the Internet, but just with a different kind of person.”

Clark also weighed into Reputation Online’s ongoing debate surrounding what makes a good PR, saying that it’s an extraordinary job on agency side, which asks a lot of people. “We expect people to do a fantastic amount of things simultaneously; knowledge of different channels and media, the ability to negotiate, handle clients, be entrepreneurial – it’s a huge list that goes on and on.”

His main priorities though were the ability to listen, adaptation to new forms of communication while still maintaining the ones people are already familiar with – and a hatred of waste. “This isn’t about not about using paper, but making sure that every communication is absolutely worth sending. So many PR people get a really bad reputation sending out emails or phoning journalists or bloggers about something wholly irrelevant. The best people in this business know that a pitch has to be really well packaged up and presented. Otherwise, what are clients paying for? A waste of effort.”