Changing on purpose

 Today marks a significant shift for Unity.

 From this point on, we will be a hybrid consultancy - a careful blend of consulting and creative communications expertise to help our clients create sustainable profits and strong brands, on purpose.

 I wanted to take a moment to share the journey I’ve been on in getting here as it’s been illuminating for me.

 When we set up Unity, our ambition was to simply do things differently. This gave us the freedom and ambition to take risks, experiment and try things that no one else was doing. It didn’t all come off, but what it created was a new and progressive model for communication, one we’ve harnessed to deliver some fantastic work for our clients.

 At the heart of this approach was a deep commitment to human beings, the “public” in public relations. We believed, and still believe that brands and businesses that focus on meeting people’s needs, not just the easy ones, but the higher ones as well, will build trust, rapport and value for the long term. In fact, one of our campaigns for M&S was recently recognised by PR Week as one of the campaigns of the decade, which was a truly proud moment.

 Despite this success an uneasy feeling began to creep in as I found that despite our best efforts, we couldn’t deal with some of the fundamental things that go beyond communication, e.g. a brand’s beliefs and purpose, the behaviours and commitments that guide it and most importantly the actions that make these promises reality. To really live up to our ambition to help brand’s meet people’s deeper needs, we needed to evolve beyond the conventional edicts of ‘communications’.

 As I began to consider this in more detail, a share buy-back process presented a bigger opportunity, enabling me to take control of the business and its future and thus confront the questions that had been haunting me head-on. Nothing focuses the mind like suddenly being the master of your own destiny especially as you face up to some hard truths about your limitations and weaknesses.

 Rather than doing anything rash, or rushing to judgement, I was wisely counselled to invest my time, energy and resources in the creation of a new fit for purpose business model. Well not entirely on my own, as I was even luckier to meet Samantha Losey, who helped shape our new offering and has just become our first Managing Partner.

 From the off, Samantha and I saw eye to eye on the opportunity, indeed the necessity of bringing these two very different disciplines together. We both believe that too much consulting in isolation is simply analysis, without synthesis the crucial human component is lacking, and little brand value is created. Equally, creative communication without business strategy or insights without science and rigour are a hit and miss affair.

 So, we agreed to build a new breed of consultancy. One that absolutely brings our clients the rigour and analytical skills of consulting, but one that also brings creativity and imagination and crucially, the skills of communication to engage and embed these ideas in culture and form something new.

 I am so proud of everything that Unity has achieved to date, and all our colleagues, clients and friends who believed in us along the way but I am even prouder of where we are going. Today marks the first step on this journey and I couldn’t be happier to be setting out on it with Samantha and the rest of the team.