From zero to £1m revenue in its first year during a tough trading environment, Earnies founder Nikki Collins on the PRmoment podcast

PRmoment Podcast

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.
Today we’re chatting to Nikki Collins. Nikki launched Earnies 1 year ago. She previously worked at W Communications for 9 years and before that at Frank.
Earnies has a fee income of £1m and clients include Taco Bell, Moet Hennessy, ASOS, Typhoo and Meatliquor.
The big news is: The PRmoment Awards are now open. You can download the entry from and take a look at this year's updated categories on the pr awards micro site.
Also,thanks so much to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors the PRCA.
Here’s a summary of what Nikki and PRmoment founder spoke about:
3 mins Consumer PR is doing OK. But it's not an easy market. Most consumer PR firms are either flat or circa 5-8% up year on year. Earnies has put on £1m revenue in 12 months from a standing start and won the likes of Taco Bell, Moet Hennessy, ASOS, Typhoo and Meatliquor. It seems to be outperforming the market when it comes to client acquisition. How come?
“Be it with the media, be it with clients, we’re constantly trying to meet people face to face.”

“We hired a creative director from day one. Which is quite a buck power move from day one. That’s given us creative firepower.”

“It (taking investment) allowed us to turbo charge our growth from day one. It allowed us to make investment hires. Do high profile pro bono work.”

8 mins How many leads has Earnies had from The Romans?
“The bigger agencies and the legacy agencies, want to diversify a lot of what they do…to incorporate different services. For us we’re focussed on earned media and coverage.”

“I believe in the art of PR and what that means.”
13 mins How is the consumer PR market at the moment?
“To have gone from zero to over £1 m in a year, it feels like it’s in a really positive place.”

14 mins Nikki talks about how she’s done an average of 2 pitches or tissues sessions a week for the last 12 months.
“I’ve tried to re-callibrate what a pitch looks like for us.”
“Our role is to look at the stories our clients want to tell.”
“We always do a tissue session, that is mandatory.”

19 mins In a pitch process how deep do Earnies go in the scope of creative ideas and articulation of those ideas?
“It’s a numbers game…We have so many pitches going on. Pitching is not a stressful process for us. We’ll do everything we can in the time that we have, we’re not up until midnight…if we lose something don’t get grumpy about it, we move on. We've probably got another pitch tomorrow.”

21 mins Who’s got equity in Earnies, Joe Sinclair or The Romans?
“We don’t share any of their resources, we don't use any of their creative or their account team.”

23 mins Have Earnies ever pitched against The Romans?
24 mins Nikki talks about Earnies work with Killed Women, which recently won an ESG Award.
28 mins Why did Nikki decide to launch her own biz when she came back from mat leave?