Reflections on the Changing Face of Communications

This week’s podcast introduces us to the world of railways and transport engineering in the form of Susanna White - Marketing and Communications officer at Knorr Bremse.  Knorr Bremse is an international leader in the manufacture of braking systems for rail and road transport.  In this episode, Susanna tells us of the challenges she faces, particularly with the growing importance of internal communications and employee engagement

Veteran broadcaster and now head of programmes at BBC Radio Gloucestershire, Lee Stone has experienced a lot of change and development in the world of broadcast communications.  In this frank interview he talks to Dave about the challenges facing broadcasters in the face of increasing on-line competition and audience fragmentation.  Despite the challenges Lee is optimistic that the value of good stories and honest journalism combined with the BBC’s hard-earned reputation for integrity and truth, will continue to cut through the social media morass in the era of fake news.

Today we are joined by Nick Wright a senior communications professional with expertise in reputation management, employee engagement and marketing. Nick has worked with corporate, private and professional services organisations and run successful integrated campaigns enhancing both reputation and sales. His specialities are corporate communication, internal communication, employee engagement, brand engagement, change management, behaviour change, corporate affairs, communication research and evaluation, mergers & acquisitions, communication channels & tools.  Today he chats to Dave about the challenges of internal communications and the dangers of treating your staff differently from your customers.

In this podcast Dave Harries travels to Bristol, to the offices of award winning PR and Communications company JBP Associates, to meet managing director Chris Lawrance.  In this fascinating interview, Chris tells us of the many new challenges that modern organisations must face in order to create an effective communications strategy in the digital age.  But it’s an older, pre-digital notion, that needs to guide our communications approach in the modern era. Building and developing trust, says Chris, is more important than ever before, and the origanisations that understand and do this are the ones that will flourish in the on-line world.

In this edition of our podcast series we meet solicitor and owner of Oxfordshire based Everyman Legal.  James Hunt started practicing law 35 years ago in the city of London.  He now runs his own law firm specialising in helping businesses and entrepreneurs grow and adapt to the modern busines environment. Communications are vital to understand and help his clients and issues such as security and the use of email and social media require constant vigilance so as not to compromise the integrity of the firm or its clients.

In this podcast Nancy Chambers talks to Dave Harries about the crucial role of communications in modern fundraising.  Whether by internet and social media or more traditional methods, effective fundraising requires a deep understanding of what motivates a potential donor.  At the heart of that understanding is effective communications, an absolute cornerstone of any fund-raising campaign.

In this episode we meet Steve Bewick, Senior Vice President UK, Ireland & BeNeLux, Access Solutions EMEA, for Dormakaba.  Steve started his career in sales and marketing and has worked his way up to run an international security solutions company producing everything from hi-tech airport scanners to humble padlocks.  In this interview Steve talks about his belief in the value of trust in an organisation both internally and externally, and how this governs all his decisions and the resulting communications at Dormakaba.

Teresa Harris has worked as a marketing professional for over 30 years and has witnessed some extraordinary changes and opportunities brought about by the development of modern digital communications. Teresa owns and runs Second Opinion Marketing, an independent communications consultancy and in this podcast, offers her insight into the fast evolving business communications world.

In this episode Dave Harries meets David Babington, a fully qualified veterinary surgeon who stepped aside from his animal practice to create an international training company providing CPD for vets and veterinary nurses. Wiltshire based Improve International was established by David in 1998, so has witnessed huge technological change in how training can be delivered. We hear from David how effective communications are at the very heart of training and that adapting to changing technologies is essential to survive and flourish in the modern training world.

Faye Hatcher is a BBC broadcast journalist, presenter and producer.  Her career at the BBC spans many of the most important developments in modern digital communications.  In this podcast she talks to Dave Harries about how broadcasters have managed to embrace the internet and social media despite its potentially disruptive influence on the hegemony of the big broadcasting companies. 

Website designer and builder Paula Dagnall, is the co-director and founder of Swindon Design and Development Ltd.  She’s been in the website business for 15 years and has seen a great deal of change in that time, not only in the design of websites but more fundamentally their purpose and their functionality.  She joins Dave Harries for this podcast episode to share some insight into the ever changing world of the web. 

Our guest in this edition is Martin Davies the co-founder of NRG Networks, a professional business networking organisation dedicated to building relationships between it’s members, based on trust.  We learn from Martin that whilst communication is clearly at the heart of all networking, old-fashoned face to face contact is still the most effective way of building a relationship, even in our always-connected, on-line, social media era.