Meet the Team: 5 questions for Bill Bruce

Continuing with our ‘Meet the team’ series, here we meet Senior Consultant Bill Bruce who has been part of the SHC team since 2019.

What’s your background?

I started out as a freelance illustrator and graphic designer, and by 1977 I had created Bill Bruce Studios, based in a tiny top-floor office in Great Portland Street, London. I began writing copy when clients asked for designs but didn’t have any words to go with them – nothing ever looked good with Lorem Ipsum!

In 1982, we moved to Saffron Walden, Essex and The Creative House was born – as a graphic design studio and below-the-line marketing agency, specialising in brand development. The business grew rapidly and over fifteen years, the main studio went from rows of drawing boards to neat lines of desks with Apple Macs.

In 1997, I co-founded specialist food and beverage industry publisher Zenith International Publishing (ZIP). Based first in Cambridge, then in Bath, the company published a range of international business to business magazines and launched various successful international industry awards schemes which are still running today. In 2009, ZIP morphed into FoodBev Media, which rapidly added digital output to traditional print.

Bill Bruce Communications was established in 2016, and in 2019 I had the good fortune to be introduced to Suzanne Howe…

Why PR?

I like the positivity around PR and the measurable impact that telling a compelling story can make. I love the brand-building aspect and helping clients to get the best from their services, products, investments and people. I really enjoy the problem-solving aspect and it is a field in which I can use much of my unusually broad skill set.

What have been your PR career highlights so far?

Early on, I was heavily involved with the NSPCC’s Centenary fund-raising campaign, and helped the Scout Association cook the world’s longest sausage in Hyde Park as part of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee! Both attracted huge PR and all long before mobile phones and email.

In more recent times, I’ve had the opportunity to work with some great businesses and some amazing people, particularly on the sustainability side which is a real passion of mine.

A recent highlight was being a very small part of P-Wave’s work with NHS England’s awareness campaign to encourage men to consult their GPs if they saw blood in their urine. The message was delivered directly to those at risk on P-Wave’s Slant6 urinal screens. Sometimes the simplest, small things can make the biggest difference.

What have been the biggest changes during your 50 year career?

As a freelance entrepreneur, I don’t feel that it has been a career as such, as I’ve had the good fortune to do so many widely different things and each opportunity has somehow led to the next. I’ve worked on my own, run businesses where I’ve been the employer and now enjoy my fully ‘consultant’ role, with a chunk of content creation at the core. It is rewarding to be part of the SHC team.

I often feel I have an advantage, having started doing everything I do today when it was totally ‘hands on’. Literally cutting and pasting copy (yes, I’m talking scissors and Pritt Stick or Sellotape) because my career pre-dates word-processing, or using scapels and dyes to change physical photographs, and ‘marking up’ artboards for colour separation because Photoshop didn’t exist.

Being an early adopter of much of what we now take for granted came at a cost. In 1985, my first Apple Mac cost well over £2,500 inc VAT and import duty – and that’s over £7,500 in today’s money! And then, we had to wait five years for Photoshop to come along – and a further four or five years for email! People used to visit to look at the shiny new machines and wonder quite what they were for. And so did I, but you couldn’t claim to be a graphic designer without a Mac, so that was that. Investing in a brick plus a radio phone for the car felt the same. Now we take instant access to everyone for granted. The world of business and communications is perhaps too fast these days. When I installed our first fax machine in 1983, I had a sign put on it which said: “Does it really have to do today?” I think about that often when I race to respond to emails without perhaps giving them enough thought!

And what next? Will AI mean that we don’t need PR professionals at some point in the future? At 70 years old, maybe I don’t need to care, but I firmly believe that the originality that experienced humans can bring to creativity will always have major value, supported by AI as a time-saving tool.

What about you?

Proud father of three ‘boys’ if you can call grown men in their 40s that?! I’m and equally proud ‘dad’ to a beautiful rescue labrador called Louis, who is now working as a therapy dog.

Love brought me to Dorset over ten years ago, and I feel very much at home here. It’s a beautiful county and a great place to be creative. Writing original copy on any and every subject seems so much easier after a decent walk with the dog!

Suzanne keeps me busy, but when I’m not wearing my PR hat, I’m a gigging guitarist, currently in a rock covers band called ONYX, and I accompany a local singer. I’ve sent myself ‘back to school’ this year to re-learn classical guitar (I was self-taught and now’s my time to lose five decades of sloppy playing and bad muscle memory!). No pressure, but I already have venues booked for two recitals during the Shaftesbury Fringe!