cover of episode Jo Carr, co-founder, and chief client officer at Hope&Glory, on the PRmoment podcast

Jo Carr, co-founder, and chief client officer at Hope&Glory, on the PRmoment podcast

2020/3/10
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PRmoment Podcast

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This week on the PRmoment podcast, we've got Jo Carr, co-founder, and chief client officer at Hope&Glory.   

Hope&Glory was co-founded by Jo Carr and James Gordon-MacIntosh in 2011. It now has a fee income of circa £8.5 million, employs about 80 people and grew by 25% in 2019.   

**[00:01:26] **How Jo originally wanted to be a journalist or work in advertising.   

[00:03:33] How Jo was originally a corpsumer PR person and made the switch to consumer relatively late in her career.   

**[00:08:15] **Jo talks about the importance of being able to be yourself at work: “I'm a big believer that you should be the same person at work as you are at home".   

**[00:09:30] **Why Jo's time at QBO Bell Pottinger was such an important time of her career.  

**[00:11:43] **Whether the relatively painful merger of QBO and Bell Pottinger Consumer has had an influence on Jo not wanting to sell Hope&Glory so far?

**[00:14:57] **How Jo meeting James Gordon-MacIntosh was a career-defining bit of luck.   

[00:17:11] Jo tells us how it felt being the new kid at 77PR – joining an established management team of Alan Twigg and James Gordon-MacIntosh.   

**[00:18:32] **How James, Alan and Jo approached Omnicom to try and do an MBO of 77PR, but got knocked back.   

[00:20:33] Why once you've thought about creating your own agency, it's very hard to put the "genie back into the bottle".   

**[00:21:18] **Why James and Jo decided to get backing from Lansons Communications when they launched Hope&Glory.   

[00:22:37] What it was like starting Hope&Glory with literally no clients!   

**[00:25:50] **How Hope&Glory won 02 just a couple of months after starting.   

**[00:27:08] **Why James’s and Jo's skills complement each other.   

[00:30:24] What advice does Jo have for any budding PR entrepreneurs out there?   

**[00:36:53] **How has Hope&Glory managed to hold on to so many large consumer accounts for such a prolonged period?   

[00:39:39] Why agencies don't want to "be a leaky bucket".   

[00:40:22] How Hope&Glory has improved its margins in recent years.   

**[00:45:00] **What's the plan for the next stage of Hope&Glory? Why James and Jo can't make all the decisions anymore.   

[00:46:34] Are independent agencies currently more fun, more flexible, and perhaps a bit easier to lead than their group-owned peers?