Member Article

London festive focus: Tatiana Withanage, City Road Communications

With the end of a topsy-turvy year in sight and this year’s festivities about to begin, we’ve asked some of London’s business leaders to reflect on the year gone by and give us an insight into their festive traditions.

In the spotlight today is Tatiana Withanage, Managing Director of City Road Communications, to share her thoughts on the year gone by, the year ahead and what’s most likely to get her boogying at this year’s Christmas shindig.

What have been the most notable highlights for your business this year?

Expanding our service offer into the startup market – specifically within our locality literally overlooking the Silicon Roundabout and the surrounding tech hotspots of Shoreditch. Our service proposition has increased from purely driving investor relations in the high-net-worth space for alternative finance products, to now working on some of the best tech innovation in the app and sharing economy arenas. In turn, securing investor-focused communications now includes a very consumer-focused brief, with customer acquisition forming a key part of our delivery.

The work is therefore a lot more diverse, and the press sell-ins are becoming increasingly colourful… to say the least. With launches ranging from a mobile game that reward players with gold bars and doggie borrowing communities, through to revolutionary cancer treatment solutions and a supermarket app that directs you to goods on the shelf in the order of your shopping list. It’s been a year of firsts for the agency, so I’m keen to encourage the diversity in our work, and in turn, the number of accounts in 2017.

It’s been a year of highs and lows, can you tell us some of the biggest challenges your business has faced?

Learning when and how to acknowledge the growth of the agency – our own transition from a fledgling start-up to now a growing scale-up. Both stages have very different boundaries in terms of how much the company can take on before limits are asserted. This year has been a definitive one for us; whereas before we were keen to take on any and every brief to build the bottom line, now, aligning the briefs we service with our our skill-set, realistic resource, proven success stories and of course our growth plan is key.

If there’s one lesson you’re going to take away from 2016, what is it and why?

Don’t marry a Kardashian.

But seriously, from a PR and comms perspective, the big take away from the year is that you have to be prepared for everything. This may be seen as a given, but Brexit was a great example of how this can never be taken for granted. We certainly didn’t see it coming, but with quick reactions and agility in our response, we were able to secure fantastic coverage for a number of our clients in the aftermath of the EU referendum, something that every PR across the nation was trying to do.

Which London business do you most admire right now?

Knight Frank – ace content marketing strategy that delivers human interest pieces, neatly aligned with a corporate brief effectively.

Despite the Brexit vote, we’ve still plenty of businesses setting up shop in the capital. What do you think makes the city so special?

We’re nestled in amongst one of the highest business growth hot-spots across the country, so for us, we’re very much riding the wave of the “startup revolution” coupled with the flurry of alternative finance solutions propelling it forward. For us, the challenge is executing our new business strategy in a precise, strategic manner that capitalises on what we perceive to be one of the most exciting and healthy times for private sector business. This is a good problem/challenge to have.

Besides the clean air, the quiet Tube commutes and the reasonable property prices, there are countless reasons that London is a great place to start or grow a business. Joking aside, the city’s greatest strength is the sheer volume and concentration of business talent; from the banking heavyweights in the city through to the tech start-ups of East London, the capital’s business ecosystem boasts a diversity and vibrancy that you just can’t find elsewhere.

Who’s your business idol, the person you find most inspiring and look up to?

Beyoncé. #Obvs

Everyone has their Christmas day routine, what’s yours?

Wake up, walk out onto a beach on the south coast of Sri Lanka and chill the … out.

And most importantly of all, what’s the cheesy Christmas single that’s most likely to get you on the dancefloor?

Further to the above, Destiny’s Child – 8 Days of Christmas.