creativebrief: As Managing Director of Bottle what is your primary focus?

Natasha Hill: Aligning the stars so that we can be true lightning catchers for our clients. Focusing on the right blend of talent, pushing for originality in our work, developing our proposition so that we’re leading the change in PR for our clients.

creativebrief: Please share a para on your career to date – specifically talking us through the high points.

Natasha Hill: Bottle is my 3rd job (watch the Millennials gasp). It’s something I’m proud of. I started at Rapp (then WWAV Rapp Collins) on a 6 week work experience gig, and forgot to leave. I was lucky enough to be in a vibrant, creative agency in the ‘fun’ agency days with lots of champagne, long lunches and bonkers parties. But of course, midnight finishes were very commonplace too – working until you’re too tired (or drunk) to continue.

I believe that you learn quicker by making mistakes. My first print mistake was on Porsche (if you’re going to do it, do it well). It was some kind of origami format and I persuaded the client that the flat proofs were right…he praised me for my influencing skills at such a junior level. We picked up the reprinting costs. I got my knuckles rapped. My highlight was working on a naked shoot with Rankin for Crisis – although The Times wouldn’t run it without some clever retouching (hair by pubic hair) which wasn’t an easy conversation with the artist.

After 12 years, I was enticed by my client, Cancer Research UK. During the 8 years there I was Director of a range of functions – Supporter Marketing, Brand, Digital, Innovation and latterly Comms. I can’t split my two highlights – both very different. 1) Leading the brand refresh in 2012 will be my proudest moment. A year of blood, sweat and tears, working to the Board and Trustees as well as across the 4,000 staffed organisation.  We succeeded in a shifting the clinical, cold organisation that believed it did research, to one that is far more emotional, human and thinks of itself as a life-saving organisation, taking on the biggest enemy. The internal culture change was phenomenal considering the size of the organisation. The 2nd highlight - #nomakeupselfie. Say no more. The most exciting week of my working life.

creativebrief: What's unique about your agency / business? Why did you join Bottle?

Natasha Hill: Our mission: we build momentum and advocacy for clients by blending our quick reflexes to reactive opportunities, with planned editorial ideas and big hero campaigns. We believe this delivers ‘always on’ as well as the signature moments.

Our process: we start at 7am with our newsroom gathering the relevant stories for our clients. By 8:30, we’re in a creative scrum. By 9:30 we’re selling reactive ideas to clients and by 10 we are on the phone / making content to get the ideas executed.

Our culture: a creative, contagious bunch of lightning catchers who love working out of town (most of the week) or at the beach (we go to work in Bournemouth in the summer) and treatstory telling like an Olympic sport.

Our people: we got rid of the usual account exec / senior account exec etc bandings as we felt this was overly hierarchical and wanted to define roles by their purpose within the agency. So we have publishers, editors, content designers, intelligence managers…

I joined Bottle for the chance to work in an independent agency that was doing great work (e.g. trailing newsroom with clients at the time) and where I knew I could help improve and make a difference to the agency’s success.

creativebrief: Who are the people new to you (either within your business or externally) who have particularly impressed you in the last twelve months?

Natasha Hill: The Founders of Oliver Marketing (who work in-house at one of my clients’) have got a unique and very impressive business model. They are growing exponentially and acquiring very cool businesses like Dare, who I worked with at CRUK.

creativebrief: What has been your agency's best work in the last year?

Natasha Hill: Tough to choose just one…but arguably our Anti-Ageing Gin for Warner Leisure Hotels smashed even our wildest hopes. It was a strong idea and executed brilliantly. We got complaints by the industry bodies (ASA, Portman Group etc), which has got to be a sign of success, right? (All resolved comfortably by the way).

creativebrief: Industry wide, what work has excited you most this year?

Natasha Hill: The Missing Letter campaign by NHS Blood & Transplant was fabulous – a really great example of an integrated campaign where the single, simple idea executed in paid media was dramatically catapulted through the power of earned and shared media.

creativebrief: Who or what inspires you?

Natasha Hill: Original ideas where something ‘normal’ is flipped or combined with something, to create a brand new concept.

creativebrief: How do you stay in-touch with the industry's best work and culturally relevant news?

Natasha Hill: The usual trade rags & blogs, Vice, Twitter, LinkedIn, creativebrief’s showcase (obvs) and our internal Slack channel which the team are constantly using to share cool stuff. My husband also runs an ad agency, so we talk (maybe too much) at home.

creativebrief: What work or agency from outside the UK do you think is particularly influential?

Natasha Hill: Gini Dietrich has got some great thoughts and observations on the PR industry on her blog ‘Spin Sucks’. Her following is vast, so I am assuming she’s influencing lots of people, not just me. Her PESO model thinking has definitely helped Bottle’s thinking about how you plan and measure, in this digital, post AVE world.

creativebrief: What do you think are going to be the main challenges for agencies in the next two years?

Natasha Hill: Brexit (yawn) will mean that clients are more reluctant to commit to budgets / campaigns / contracts (in my experience PR is often an ‘easier’ line in the budget to cut).

Continuing to adapt to the changing digital landscape and how this impacts earned, owned and shared channels.

Delivering value to clients and agency profit in an ever demanding cost-efficiency culture.

creativebrief: How do you see the media landscape unfolding in the next five years?

Natasha Hill: The power and control through the likes of Google, Facebook, Buzzfeed etc will increase. Earned media through traditional media relations with ‘journalists’ will be a much smaller part of the day job for PRs.  

creativebrief: What's your attitude to the 'traditional' pitch? Do you think there is a better/more modern way?

Natasha Hill: We were involved in Creative Shootout this year, which was great fun. Whilst I don’t think a four hour race to a strategy & concept is sufficient on its own for judging the right agency, it could be a great addition to a process – assuming it wasn’t simply layered on top of the ‘traditional’ process.

We’re currently involved in a process which is really refreshing. The client has asked its incumbent ATL and Media agencies for recommendations for a PR agency that they think are brilliant, but more importantly, that they work well with. A short-list was drawn up, chemistry meetings are being held, and then the client will choose the right agency based on the chemistry. Given that integration between agencies is increasingly important (and notoriously challenging), we have found this a motivating, efficient and (hopefully!) effective approach.

creativebrief: What's the best pitch you've been involved in?

Natasha Hill: We did one recently where the client cried. Not usually a barometer of success (especially as I’m no longer at Cancer Research UK), but it showed the power of our Creative Director’s manifesto.

creativebrief: In what ways do you think the industry can change for the better?

Natasha Hill: Cleaning up the awards – it is a pretty demotivating process for most, with no real clear rationale for what gets a gold versus not even being shortlisted. It feels subjective, commercial, clique-y and there’s a massive lack of transparency. A clearer, more consistent criteria, more varied and independent judging panels, ‘blind’ entries and filmed panel discussions would all help improve trust and thus start to build value in them again.

creativebrief: What's the next big thing for Bottle?

Natasha Hill: 2015 we rebranded and set up our content, newsroom model, and restructure (& renamed) roles. 2016 is a year focusing on our people, purpose and product. 2017 will see the next stage of growth…but it would be foolish for me to share at this stage. Sorry.