We caught up with Mike Newby, our Client Services Director, for a candid chat about life in STEM PR. From his early days hustling in a credit crunch to his current role at Definition, Mike shares a bunch of insights, like why keeping tabs on global politics might be just as important as keeping up with the latest STEM PR news. Whether you’re a PR newbie or a seasoned pro, Mike’s got some valuable takeaways for anyone interested in the world of STEM comms.
Tell us a bit about you and what led you to a career in STEM PR?
“I studied journalism and public relations at the University of Greenwich, so I’m one of the rare few who’s working in a career that’s related to the degree that I did. I am currently studying for an MA in History at Oxford University, part time, but that’s just for fun.
“As an undergrad, I much preferred PR – and I graduated into the credit crunch, so there weren’t many journalism jobs going around.
“So I had to hustle a bit to get my first job, which was in PR. My proper career started in 2014 when I worked for a big Cheltenham agency, mostly in infrastructure communications.
“Then I went in-house at an investor-led startup, which was really interesting – and really hard work. It was a small team, working in lots of different markets, funded by a Silicon Valley billionaire who I regularly reported to, and that gave me a real insight into how that world works.
“And then for the last five years, I was working at a medium-sized agency in Cheltenham that’s very lean and well put together with lots of super clever people. I was doing lots of science, engineering and foundation industries PR and really enjoyed it.
“And then the opportunity at Definition came up. It’s a big step up career-wise for me, because it’s a vastly bigger London agency.”
How has your experience working in different-sized companies shaped your career in PR?
“The way my career went ended up being a really good way of doing it; I didn’t plan it, but it worked out well.
“I started at a big agency when I was quite junior and completely green. I was pleasantly surprised by the culture and standards there. But the thing with big agencies is that when you’re junior, sometimes you don’t get a broad range of experience and that can be boring and make your development slow. That’s not the case at Definition, but it was the case for me at my first job.
“So when I moved to a smaller agency later, I suddenly had so much more responsibility, and I was doing basically every job there is. It doesn’t matter what your job title is, you have to do everything. You learn a lot more and you have to hustle. It’s basically trial by fire.
“If I’d started at a smaller agency first, I think I would have been totally overwhelmed and maybe my standards wouldn’t have been as high. So, it was good to get that big agency experience, then go to a smaller one, and come back to a big agency later in a more senior position.
“I’ve also worked in-house as communications director, and appointed and managed some external PR agencies in that role. So, I got to experience the client-PR agency relationship from the other side and know what the clients expect.
“At Definition, we’ve got the best of both worlds because all the teams are quite self-contained, so you can be junior and still get a properly broad range of experience, but you have the benefit of it being a really big agency as well. It’s a nice mix.”
What led you to a career in STEM PR?
“Something that really motivates me is having a well-developed and well-defined model of the world in my own head. Understanding how things work is really important to me.
“We live in this incredibly complex series of systems-within-systems-within-systems that nobody really understands, and we try to shrink them down into manageable mental models to get our heads around it. But it’s never really accurate. So, I always want to add information and learn more about how things work so that my own mental model of the world is as high-fidelity as it can possibly be.
“I’ve found that working in PR, in science, engineering and foundation industries, you get real insights into how the world works, and I find that interesting and motivating. I enjoy doing the work. I enjoy writing features and interviewing board level execs about what they’re doing and helping them come up with plans for how they want to communicate ideas. I just love it.”
What part of STEM PR do you find exciting?
“Pretty much every engineering firm around the world does really interesting things that can be quite hard to articulate. If you work for this big engineering company that does this fascinating thing, but you’ve been doing it for 20 years, it’s not interesting to you anymore: it’s just your day-to-day. So, it’s always nice to go and have a look at what’s being done from the outside, with fresh eyes. You often find yourself telling them what’s exciting to talk about.
“We’re going to a chromium mine in Finland this year that’s owned by Outokumpu. It’s the only one in Europe, and it’s about a kilometre deep. I can’t wait to go. I just think it’s going to be awesome.
“ABB’s got an incredible R&D facility where they test their products to failure. It’s basically just a lab where they’re beating their really high-tech equipment with hammers and radiation, freezing them and burning them and working out what was the first component to go wrong when their products were exposed to this abuse. I’d love to see that with my own eyes. So that’s definitely the most exciting thing.
“And also, I’m a real people person. I just like meeting clients, meeting technical experts, meeting journalists and spending time with them, and getting to know them.”
What traits should a STEM PR have?
“If you want to be good with STEM PR you have to be curious and you have to be motivated by communicating ideas clearly. I think one of the problems with science and engineering communications is that it can be more complicated than is necessary. Sometimes you have to dumb things down. Well, it feels like you’re dumbing things down, but actually you’re just communicating ideas simply and more clearly, and that takes real effort.
“Also: don’t be afraid to ask stupid questions because a lot of the time you’re communicating with people who are world-class experts in their field. So, it’s really not embarrassing that you don’t know all the stuff that they know. That’s the point of having a conversation: you’re trying to find out what they know and share it with the world.
“So yeah, a lack of embarrassment, a sense of curiosity and a passion for communicating clearly, I think they are the three big things.”
What are some of your career highlights?
“I went to Strömsund in Sweden with a company called Engcon. We went in the dead of winter and it’s about 50 miles South of the Circle Arctic, so it’s really cold, really dark, daylight never happened. We went out on Ski-Doos on a frozen lake, and we went to a little traditional Swedish hut on the edge of the lake and hung out with this family who hosted us. That was lovely. It was the best client trip I’ve ever been on.
“Another time, I got a client on Countryfile on a Sunday and in The Times, The Telegraph and The Guardian the next day. I know that doesn’t sound like a big deal, but organising that so it all comes off without a hitch was quite complicated.
“And then I went to a trade show about a year later and I asked people if they’d seen that Countryfile episode, and everyone I spoke to had seen it. So it was nice direct validation of the value of the coverage. Then selling to them was like pushing on an open door, because they’d seen the coverage that I’d secured. You can be sometimes a little bit distant from that in a PR role. In PR, you could get a good piece of coverage, but you don’t necessarily know what the impact is, because it’s not a direct sales generator. You’re managing people’s reputation. So seeing the impact that coverage had was quite satisfying.”
What’s your favourite project you’ve worked on?
“My favourite project that I’ve ever worked on was the Geospatial Online Pavilion at COP 26 with Innovate UK, in collaboration with the UK Space Agency and Al Gore. That was a really cool project to work on.”
How do you stay up to date with the STEM landscape and the latest PR trends?
“I read The Engineer and The Manufacturer. And also, I’m just interested. That’s it. I don’t really have a method, but I just keep up to date by osmosis because I’m just always curious about what’s going on.”
What resources would you recommend to aspiring STEM PRs?
“I would say a good approach in general is trying to fill your brain with as much interesting stuff as possible. The podcasts I listen to are mostly political. I think global politics are incredibly important for STEM PR.
“I do check out the Engineering Magazine and The Manufacturer, Process and Control Today and World Oil news regularly just to see what’s going on. But,
I think the political landscape has such an impact on science and engineering that it’s more important to keep up to date with that. So check out the Today Show on BBC Radio 4, and if you want extra points from me, I recommend the Political Philosophy Podcast and Origin Story podcast.”
If you could work with any STEM company, past or present, who would it be and why?
“I think it would be cool to work with Siemens. They’re a really big company that do everything. My dad worked there in the 70s and I did my year 11 work experience at Siemens, so it’d be nice to have that full-circle moment.”
What advice would you give to companies looking to enhance their visibility and reputation in the STEM sector?
“The big thing is to not try to sound like an expert. Instead, focus on communicating ideas clearly. For STEM thought leaders, the goal shouldn’t be to try to sound smart. In my experience that impulse leads to excessive use of jargon, or overemphasis on detail, which gives STEM copy its reputation as boring. If you focus on making ideas as clear and as easy to digest as possible, you’ll automatically be more compelling in your storytelling. And that makes you sound smarter anyway.”
Need a PR expert fluent in STEM? Chat to Mike and the team