Nicola Nel is the first woman appointed as the global managing director (GMD) of PROI Worldwide (PRIO). She is also the first person from the African continent appointed to this position.

Nel, who founded Atmosphere Communications 22 years ago, took up the position in July, this month, after selling Atmosphere Communications to Accenture Song in 2021 and meeting her commitments earlier this year,

PROI is a partnership of independent agencies that collectively is a communications powerhouse that encompasses 90 partners with 8,800+ employees in more than 165 cities and 65 countries, with a combined 2022 revenue of more than $1.128bn.

It is ranked fifth among consolidated communications groups and is the only one in the top five based on a unique partnership of independent agency owners.

The perfect person

Jeff Lambert, PROI global chairman and CEO of Lambert by LLYC who headed the GMD search committee, says, “As a Board member and long-time partner of the organisation, and with her own proven success as a communications agency entrepreneur, Nicola is the perfect person to help take the network into a bright future.”

She explains that Atmosphere Communications was a PROI member for about 14 years and she and her senior team regularly attended their summits and conferences.

“I found it extremely valuable as you get diverse thinking from agency leaders all over the world. I loved the individual thinking as it is all entrepreneurial communications owners.”

Her work for PROI Worldwide started on a volunteer basis as a board member for the EMEA region and then they asked if she would be interested in applying for the global managing director position.

“I applied but did not think much about it as I knew I was up against some really tough competition from other candidates. Imagine my surprise - and delight - when they let me know I had been successful.”

A new challenge and direction

She says she is really enjoying it. “After Atmosphere was sold to Accenture, I briefly considered if I wanted to start a new communications company.”

But then, she says, this opportunity came along.

“I am loving this new challenge and the direction that I have taken, and I am so excited by it. I am enjoying being part of a non-profit organisation that is very much partner-led and driven.”

An aspect that she particularly enjoys is that while PROI Worldwide is global, its partner agencies are best-in-country in their respective local markets.

Nel is based in Cape Town, but the Board chair she reports to sits in Melbourne, Australia while the rest of the team that she manages are scattered all over the world, from Vancouver, Canada to Brussels in Europe to Chicago in the US.

“Meetings are scheduled across several time zones. Time- and-date is my best new app! It can be challenging, but it shows that you can work from anywhere in the world.”

The power of Creativity

Nel has always been a firm believer in creativity and her previous agency’s track record with awards demonstrated that. “Creativity extends beyond campaign work for clients, it also comes into play in running your business.”

It is this creativity that she hopes to bring to the PROI table. “The organisation has been around for more than 50 years, so its foundations are firm. I would like to sprinkle some creativity on top of this.”

Trends impacting the PR industry

She was a judge on the 2024 global PR Week Awards and also tracked the recent Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, in particular the PR Awards, with a keen interest.

In May she went through a handover period and travelled to Rio, Brazil where about 80 PROI partners gathered for a global summit.

Based on these insights, she shares the trends that are globally impacting the PR industry.


- AI

The first she says is artificial intelligence (AI).

“It's pervasive in everything, not only in campaigns but even in agency operations, whether it's a small agency in Ghana that adopted AI quickly, to one of the big agencies in Germany that upskill its clients in AI, everyone has embraced AI with vigour.”

What she found particularly interesting is that AI is not only used for campaign work but also utilised for agency operations, like onboarding of clients and staff.

“As a result, agencies are leapfrogging their competitors, even the bigger ones in their own markets by embracing AI dramatically.”

Something else that stood out was that the agencies that are using AI effectively, have AI champions.

“This person is either and expert and as embraced AI fully or it is a senior person who is the flag bearer for AI.”

She adds that transparency is very important. “Agencies are putting guardrails in place and are transparent with clients, particularly when it comes to copywriting, idea generation and image generation.”

And copyright is an issue, for example you come up with a creative idea using AI, it could be an idea that AI has picked up from someone else in the world.

“So you have to double-check, and then double-check everything you source via AI,” she says. But for her there is no doubt that AI is influencing the creative process.

“We saw this in some of the work at Cannes with more than 10% of this year’s award entries utilising AI in some capacity.”


- Infinite media

Another trend she has noticed that that while, all over the world, there are infinite media opportunities, media are quite fragmented and traditional media, as we saw recently in South Africa with the closure of several newspapers, is continuing its downward spiral.

“Reaching larger audiences has become more difficult and it’s no longer about a landmark piece in credible publications.

“A few years ago, PR agencies were all about placement, now PR practitioners are becoming a bit like media planners, looking for multiple opportunities, using SEO and having a strategic approach.

She adds that audiences are so fragmented.

“Then they're on TikTok and then they're over here and then they're on Threads, etc., therefore using a media planning approach to PR campaigns makes sense.”

Despite these challenges, she adds that this infinite media landscape creates opportunities for astute PR agencies.


- A world without truths

Her third trend is that we are living in a world without truths filled with misinformation, political campaigning and coordinated misinformation campaigns, with even corporations putting out misleading information.

“The lesson for me from our PROI Worldwide agencies is consistency and transparency.

“Continuously we've got to be the fact finders and be the source of facts because of all the misinformation out there. Our role in being ethical, factual, consistent and transparent is becoming more important.”


- Act global, think local

  1. The last trend she says is agencies that succeed, both independent ones and the ones owned by global networks, think local but act global when rolling out campaigns.
     

    At the same time as PROI announced Nel’s appointment, it announced Angela Scaffidi, founder and managing partner of Australian consultancy, SenateSHJ, as the partnership’s new global chair for the next two years.

     

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