My career in hindsight: Kindred’s Sharon Bange on the PRmoment Podcast

PRmoment Podcast

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.
On the show today, I’m chatting with Sharon Bange, joint managing director at Kindred.
Sharon has been at Kindred for an extraordinary 20 years. In that time, the business has seen huge change, including nearly going out of business when the then-new Conservative government came into power in 2010.
It’s one of those firms that has consistently punched above its weight when it comes to creative, award-winning work.

Kindred is a consumer PR firm that has a fee income of £3 million and 35 employees.
Before we start, we’ve got some huge news - you need to enter The PRmoment Awards 2024 quickly.
There are some exciting changes this year; we’ve tweaked the categories, refined the entry form and with no additional entry fee, we’ve launched a regional champions scheme so we can reach the work right across the UK. The final entry deadline is 26th January.
Thanks so much to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors the PRCA.

2 mins Sharon talks about why she originally wanted to be a social worker, rather than work in PR?
4 mins Sharon talks about why she’s currently undertaking a Psychology Master's.
7.30 mins Has an increased knowledge of psychology made Sharon view PR campaigns differently?
8.30 mins Sharon has spent 20 years at Kindred. How come?
“It’s not been one job. There have been many different guises over the years.”
“When you’ve been somewhere that long, you help shape the values of the place.”
“It’s not that I’ve never had a reason to leave…it’s that there’s always been lots of reasons to stay.”
13 mins. We covered it in 2019 when Sharon previously came on the show, but briefly, she talks us through how and why Kindred, with a fee income of approximately £8/9 million at the time, lost 90% of its clients in a couple of months back in 2010.
“90% of the clients were in the public sector…by the summer, the business had been completely decimated.”
18 mins Sharon reveals her in hindsight lessons of her career
1. Don’t be a clone
“20 years ago, I felt the pressure to conform to how I thought PR people should be…it was still trouser suits back then.”
2. Question everything
“At Kindred, we want and expect people to have more of a voice; it’s their agency, too.”
3. Know your role as an employer “We’re a business, an employer. Not a family.”
4. People are specialists, not generalists, and that’s fine
“We don’t have generalists any more. We have multi-specialists.”
29 mins How has PR changed?
“There are more people with deep expertise that make PR more sophisticated.”
31 mins Does Sharon worry about the current state of the media?
33 mins How has Kindred kept its creative edge after all these years?
34 mins. How tough was the process of becoming a B Corp for Kindred?