‘This year marked 10 years since I first started on this journey, and I haven’t really looked back.’
Content is often at the heart of every campaign. At Napier, we often present our campaigns as ‘content-driven’, whether that be in a traditional PR format like articles, or a digital marketing format through LinkedIn or Google ads.
I recently chatted with Napier’s Head of Content, Phil Gibson, who shared his journey into the industry and how our content creation capabilities support our clients.
Could you begin by telling me a bit about your time at Napier?
No good story would be complete without some sort of love interest, and mine is no exception.
It’s 2014, and I’m eking out a (very) modest living doing freelance copywriting by day, and pulling pints by night. Then I met a girl. The problem was that I lived in Guildford, and she lived in London. So on a Friday night, I would finish my shift at the pub and charge up the A3 in my tiny Peugeot 106 to spend the weekend with her, before coming back on Monday morning for my next shift at the pub. I kept this up for nearly a year, but also knew I had to find something more permanent (and better paid) to allow me to move in with my then-girlfriend.
Enter Armitage Communications, which in 2015 offered me a job right at the bottom of the ladder as a Junior Account Executive. Crucially, it enabled me to move up to London and start building a proper career for myself. A year later, my girlfriend became my fiancée, and in 2017, she became my wife (which bizarrely made headlines around the world).
In 2019, Armitage Communications was bought by Napier, which makes me (along with Ed, Helen and others) part of the Armitage alumni. By this time, I had progressed up the ladder from Junior Account Exec to Account Exec, and then onto Account Manager. But I was still known as a specialist copywriter, and it was only after Napier took us over that I was allowed to really spread my wings and focus on what I was best at – content.
Upon starting your agency career, what is the one piece of advice that stuck with you?
That there’s no such thing as a stupid question. It’s natural to feel scared of getting things wrong and receiving a telling off from the higher-ups. But it’s always better to check first and do something right than to get it wrong and have to do it again.
In relation to content specifically, a big part of my job is interviewing client personnel to either get a handle on the technical nuances of a story, or to add some personality and flavour, or both. I find that even in this environment, there are still no stupid questions. These people simply love talking about what they do, particularly when it’s to someone who’s genuinely interested, like I am – and so it’s incredibly rare that anyone is rude or impatient with me. I’d like to think that they also find it rewarding when that lightbulb moment occurs, and I suddenly get it.
What was your journey to head of content like?
So, about a year after Armitage became Napier, I was given a choice of what sort of specialism I wanted to pursue, between account management and content. Naturally, I chose content. With that said, because I can do both, I still manage some accounts of my own. And I’d like to think that because I’ve got a foot in both camps, I can bring a unique perspective when it comes to advising or suggesting ideas to colleagues and clients alike.
Today, I’m Head of Content Development, and I essentially run the content department at Napier. As well as making sure we’re always delivering content of the highest quality, I also manage both our in-house and freelance resources to make sure that we always have capable writers for every sector we operate in.
Have you always wanted to be a technical writer? How did you fall down this path?
I always knew I was good at writing and the English language, and so I hoped that I would end up using those skills somehow. But this agency (and its previous incarnations) found me, rather than me actively seeking out a role in B2B technical writing from the outset.
With that said, this year marked 10 years since I first started on this journey, and I haven’t really looked back.
What is a regular day like for the Head of Content Development?
A typical day for me will often have fewer meetings compared to others, but that’s because I need time to actually write content for clients. We’ve built a content team here that can handle pretty much anything, but I’ll often take on some of the complex and high-value projects myself to ensure they’re delivered to the highest quality.
When I’m not writing, I’ll often be in sourcing calls to interview client personnel, or discussing content resource planning with colleagues, or catching up with freelancers to brief them, provide feedback, and make sure that projects are staying on track.
Any writer will tell you that reading the work of others is vital to improving your own writing. Luckily for me, the content pipeline at Napier is so voluminous and formidable that there are always opportunities for me to look at what others are doing and try and find ways to incorporate the best ideas and approaches into my own work.
How can content creation support our clients?
I may be biased, but in my view, content is EVERYTHING. You can’t have a marketing campaign without content to underpin it. To speak to customers effectively, you first need a message worth listening to. At Napier, we have a vast range of marketing tactics that we implement, and the majority of them rely on having compelling content that engages your audience.
At the same time, I don’t believe in content for content’s sake – it needs to be outcome-driven. That’s where Napier’s 4-step process comes in useful to make sure that content generation is not just for the sake of it, but created to complement and drive the broader marketing strategy.
What is one piece of advice you give to new starters at Napier?
Probably the same advice that I received myself: There’s no such thing as a stupid question. That’s one of the cool things about Napier, that everyone is always willing to help each other out.
What is a project you’re most proud of and why?
With 10 years under my belt, there’s quite a lot to choose from. The most memorable was probably when I got sent to Zurich at short notice to do some on-camera interviewing. Even though I spend most of my days interviewing people for articles and white papers, I’m more of a writer than a broadcaster by trade, and so this was somewhat out of my comfort zone. It’s one thing reading your questions off the page or screen, but having to completely freestyle it on camera, and look the part while you’re doing it, was a different beast altogether.
The videos that came out of that shoot were extremely high quality, which made it a rewarding project to be part of. And the whole experience of going out there, managing the client and the film crew, not to mention having to deliver on-camera, was something I found very exhilarating.
What do you feel your strongest quality is?
When you do what I do, you have to be a good listener, and you have to be able to get on with people. Sometimes when you’re interviewing people, it’s clear that they just don’t want to talk to you. Perhaps they’re busy, or they’re having a bad day, or they just don’t understand why they’re there. Sometimes, just asking the right question in the right way, or knowing when to let the conversation meander and when to bring it back, can help to open the floodgates and turn what might have started out as a difficult interview into a genuinely fun one.
What was your dream job growing up, and why?
When I was a kid, I wanted to be something different every day of the week. And I mean that quite literally: I wanted seven different jobs that I’d do for one day each week, so on Monday I’d be a train driver, Tuesday a footballer, Wednesday a bricklayer (don’t ask), and so on. Even from a young age, I always loved being creative and telling stories, and so one of those jobs, believe it or not, was “Writer”.
I may not have managed to achieve all seven in my life (although there’s still time), but to get to do one is definitely a win.
