James Staunton – Director

I develop, define, and deliver communications strategies, encouraging effective engagement with external audiences in an effort to manage organisations’ external reputation. I specialise in generating insight through research, creating creative and compelling content to raise the profile of businesses. I specialise in voice-of-authority campaigns and thought-leadership PR.

I started in audit with PwC before becoming an analyst at a financial PR agency (Tulchan, now part of Teneo) and went on to join Smithfield Financial (now part of Edelman). I also worked at ReputationInc, for Nigel “the Shadow” Whittaker and Jeremey Browne – who’d been the director of press and broadcasting under Paddy Ashdown and Charles Kennedy – doing reputation management for clients like the Ministry of Sound.  I volunteered for a think tank, too, the Bow Group – working alongside Chris Philp, now the Shadow Home Secretary; Sam Gyimah, who went on to be David Cameron’s Parliamentary Private Secretary; and Kwasi Kwarteng, who became Chancellor of the Exchequer.  I joined Wriglesworth, a Top 100 B2B PR agency specialising in personal finance and mortgage PR, in 2006.  By the time Wriglesworth was sold in 2015, I was one of three-owners. As such, I became an equity partner at acquirer Instinctif.  My second exit came in 2019, following Instinctif’s sale to LDC, the private equity arm of Lloyds Banking Group.

To plagiarise Raymond Rubicam, I like to know more than my competitors do about the market and overlay that knowledge with an imagination and a creative spin – then put that at the disposal of clients. The combination of the news agenda, salient management information, and third-party data is where the magic happens!

I like learning new things and challenging myself to find angles in the news agenda that could work for clients. I also like the promise of side-quests that the PR ideation stage offers – that keeps things fresh.

I go walking; I’ve crossed Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon off the list. I also like reading history, watching F1 (#hammertime), and holidaying in Cornwall. In March 2023, I was selected as a candidate to run in the local government elections in Surrey and won my seat on the local council in May — bucking the national trend on a day the Conservatives lost 1,100 seats. But in December 2024, it was announced smaller councils in Surrey were to be replaced with fewer local authorities under plans for a major redesign of local government.  That spelt the beginning of the end for the borough.

This was on a family holiday to France. There was a fairground ride near where we were staying, and my folks lets my sister and me go on the ride repeatedly – most unlike them. I remember thinking that life was almost unbelievably good.