Trailblazers and Leaders: Paul Joseph
Paul Joseph | Partner | Full Fat
How did you get into comms?
Music and journalism were a big passion of mine leaving university. I knew I wanted to work in the music industry, but as many will know it's a very closed industry and difficult to get into. Whilst plotting my way in, I started writing about music and culture for a number of magazines as well as starting my own blog as a way to keep up to date on what was happening. As a by product of this I developed relationships with PRs across music, fashion, lifestyle and quickly realised it was something that interested me and not wildly dissimilar from what I was already doing. Tired of working for little to no money I made the jump, luckily landing a job with Run Music where I got to work on PR campaigns for MF Doom, Chromeo, The Shins and Run The Jewels, which led to another role at Levels Entertainment doing digital marketing for some of their artists. In the end I managed to make my way into the industry through PR, but decided I wanted to work with a wider scope of campaigns across culture and that's how I ended up at Full Fat.
What does an average day look like?
As a Partner my role is split across the day to day running of the agency, overseeing the strategic delivery of our larger campaigns as well as securing new business. The variedness of the work has definitely helped me get through the monotony of lockdown. A normal day could include anything from developing campaign strategies and pitching to new clients to hiring staff and managing team capacity to forecasting revenue and business growth.
What advice would you give your 21 year old self?
Don't sweat the small stuff, don't care so much about what other people think and trust your intuition.
What is the one thing you wish you’d known when you started working?
You don't need to be extroverted to be successful in comms.
What’s your greatest achievement to date?
Making partner at Full Fat, being able to make decisions that shape the agency as well as have a say in how we do things next.
Is there a particular comms campaign that you’ve seen in your career that you didn’t work on but wish you had?
Probably has to be the Nike Nothing Beats a Londoner campaign. The film itself was amazing, championing diversity and capturing an authentic portrayal of the city. But I think it was how they then utilised the featured talent's influence by seeding out on their channels that really made it stand out for me.
What’s the key skill you think a successful business leader requires
Being able to adapt to changing situations and quickly. If the last year has shown us anything it's that you have to be able to be flexible if you want to succeed. As an agency that works heavily in the experience economy, we had a huge drop in clients in the first lockdown and were forced to rethink our strategy. As a result we've grown and diversified our client-base, changed how the team works together and made the agency more resilient for the future.