Being at the head of a successful integrated marketing and communications company isn’t an easy task. Peter Prodromou, CEO of Racepoint Global, talks to Communicate magazine about the challenges of his work, the process of creating a brand campaign, Racepoint’s relationship with technology and its new influencer-marketing tool, FieldFacts.

Racepoint Global is very technology-focused. What is Racepoint’s perspective on working with technology to deliver to its clients?

We chose technology as a key vertical for us to focus on in terms of publicity because it’s what we knew and because technology companies have tended to use public relations as the key driver for marketing over the years, much more than they use paid advertising. That’s been the root of our use of technology on a platform basis. The other part was my view that we need to better understand where people are engaging and also that there are these people who are conversation starters with huge influence. For that, we built a technology platform that analyses conversations, called FieldFacts. If I put a search on breaking news, such as ‘Trump and trade war,’ it will kick back to me the 10 most important conversations happening in social and traditional media on that topic and I can then decide, based on that feedback, who to contact, what story I should to be selling them and in what format they prefer it.

What is the process of coming up a campaign for a brand like?

Typically, I like to start by using our search tool FieldFacts to understand what the important conversations are and then we base everything on that. The second thing we do, is we have a partnership with a company called Reputation Institute. Reputation Institute goes out and does analysis on reputations. So, we take data from the Reputation Institute and we say, “Your reputation score is this, here are the most important conversations we see happening on FieldFacts, here’s the format and the platform that they’re happening on. Now, we’re going to build a custom design strategy to address each of those issues and to promote you through those specific channels.”

There is a major crisis in people’s trust of technology, for example the persuasive voting behaviour fake news has had on the US/UK electorate and recent data breaches by Facebook. How do you think the PR and communications industry can restore the public’s trust?

I think we need to challenge our clients to act better. I’ m at the process of developing a book concept about trust and technology. I’m old enough to remember when all technology was good. The problem now is that technology discoveries are happening so fast, they’re outpacing the ability of mankind to keep up. What we are challenging these companies to do is consider reorienting their entire business plans to include a corporate good as part of their core.

With AI becoming increasingly popular and technology taking over each industry, what do you do to ensure Racepoint Global puts out an approachable and humane image?

You must humanise the company. You must make management more accessible. I spoke on a panel recently about the notion of people admitting when mistakes occur and talking about what they would change the technology to better as a result of their own experience. You don’t get that often in technology, most of the time you have people talking about what it can do and how exiting it is, as opposed to the moral purpose and the risk associated with it. However, I have found that he more honest conversation you have, the more people appreciate it.

Do you think the new GDPR compliance can have a negative effect on businesses? If so what is the role of communications and PR in this situation?

I think inevitably that kind of regulation will slow things down, because it will make things more onerous in terms of financial reporting. However, a completely stripped-down, non-regulated environment is a very unsafe place for people to be right now. Then, there’s unintended consequences. Who knows what’s going to happen? PR and Communications have a social responsibility of ensuring the integrity of the data they are collecting from people.

What is the biggest challenge you face in your job?

Corporation will tell you they want to focus on brands, but all they want to focus on is sales. These two things are compatible, but not the same. If you only focus on the sales without establishing the brand, you won’t necessarily sale more. That makes everything hard.

What is the accomplishment you are most proud of?

What I’m most proud of, is that we run an incredibly humane organisation. I want to run a business where if we lose a big client, I don’t have to lay off people the next day. I think we are in a transformative moment in this industry where security is not as high as it was, it’s lower than it’s ever been, and it’s harder because it’s an industry in transformation. People are increasingly moving to lower-cost social media-driven campaigns. So, I’m proud that we are humane and provide a good place for people to work.

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