Real Career Stories: Head of Sustainability Communications

real-career-stories-head-of-sustainability-communications

[[p]]What does it take to build a career in sustainability communications?[[/p]]

[[p]][[a href="https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/resources/podcasts/sustainability-in-retail" target="_blank"]]On the DMI podcast[[/a]], we speak to professionals with inspiring career journeys and the experiences that shaped them.[[/p]]

[[p]][[a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-whittaker-59516a2b/" target="_blank"]]Sarah Whittaker[[/a]], Head of Sustainability Communications at Primark, shares how her career evolved from international development and global health into purpose-led communications.[[/p]]

[[p]]She also discusses the transition from agency to in-house, highlighting why stakeholder management, collaboration, and developing deep knowledge of a brand are essential skills for communications professionals.[[/p]]

[[p]]Will Francis (00:00)[[br /]]
I would love to ask you a bit about how you got here personally, about your journey. So how did you get into communications?[[/p]]

[[p]]Sarah (00:09)[[br /]]
it&#39;s kind of funny because I started my career in more purpose-led areas. So I started in development and I studied development in uni and international development and kind of ended up going over to Brussels and working in global health at the European Commission. And after that, I kind of ended up wanting to stay in Brussels.[[/p]]

[[p]]and I ended up staying there for another year, but I worked in a consultancy. And now it was a communications consultancy, but it was more political as well. And I suppose I kind of found a bit of interest in terms of kind of taking really technical messages and communicating them back to audiences. And then I moved to London, I started working in a...[[/p]]

[[p]]marketing communications agency called Engine &#8275; and then I moved to Ogilvy &#8275; in London as well. So I was doing a lot of the purpose comms there and we had a lot of UN clients at the time. So I managed to kind of find a niche for myself in that space and of course there was other work that you had to do on kind of more corporate communications but if a purpose-led brief came in &#8275;[[/p]]

[[p]]I would kind of jump at it and that was an area of expertise I was able to build up. So I think I got quite lucky in the sense that quite early on I was able to define a way that I could do a job that I kind of had maybe thought I was going to do but in a big network agency which was great and I think it&#39;s always really useful if you&#39;re working in a...[[/p]]

[[p]]in an agency to have a specialism as well because people will go to you then and clients will really respect you as well. &#8275; And then I moved back to Ireland &#8275; and this job came up so it kind of just all landed at the right time because I moved back and I was on maternity leave and I was thinking, God, I don&#39;t know what I&#39;m going to do and then this job came up &#8275; and I always wanted to go in-house as well because I think you can do a[[/p]]

[[p]]you know, a long stint in-agency and it&#39;s good to get in-house and really understand a brand and really understand what makes a brand tick. &#8275;[[/p]]

[[p]]Will Francis (02:30)[[br /]]
Well, I was going to ask[[/p]]

[[p]]you that. What do you think are the big differences between working in an agency and working in-house?[[/p]]

[[p]]Sarah (02:36)[[br /]]
The stakeholder management, the internal stakeholder management. It is hugely time consuming and I never thought I would develop such a high level of diplomacy skills and trying to broker decision making and convince people. No, in house, in house. Cause you do it in agency obviously when you&#39;re pitching and you&#39;re upselling to a client and stuff.[[/p]]

[[p]]Will Francis (02:37)[[br /]]
No.[[/p]]

[[p]]You mean in agencies? In-house, yeah, right.[[/p]]

[[p]]but someone else deals with that[[/p]]

[[p]]mostly.[[/p]]

[[p]]Sarah (03:01)[[br /]]
Yeah, and you would sell it to the client and then the client would sell it internally. yeah, the internal stakeholder management is something, like, I think it probably differs from company to company, but it&#39;s a very important part of being in-house. And if you&#39;re not up for it, then I&#39;d say stay in-agency[[/p]]

[[p]]Will Francis (03:22)[[br /]]
Yeah, no, it&#39;s true. Agency&#39;s more compartmentalized, you know, people have their roles, you&#39;ve got account managers, account directors, and more project managers and you know, to sort of act as a buffer really. That&#39;s what I found in my agency days anyway.[[/p]]

[[p]]Sarah (03:36)[[br /]]
Yeah, exactly.[[/p]]

[[p]]I used to just not like an agency the way things would just disappear. You know, the client would take something and then you&#39;d never see the output again and you&#39;d never know like what happened with those slides that you developed. Yeah. And now I know when I&#39;m on the other side that actually, you know, the slides might have changed 100 times and they might still be going through 100 rounds of approval and[[/p]]

[[p]]Will Francis (03:51)[[br /]]
Continuity, isn&#39;t it? There&#39;s a lack of continuity in general.[[/p]]

[[p]]Sarah (04:06)[[br /]]
you&#39;ve probably forgotten about the agency and the agency&#39;s part so it&#39;s never a personal thing it&#39;s just like people are moving at very fast pace.[[/p]]

Real Career Stories: Head of Sustainability Communications

Related Free Video Lessons

Recomended For You