About Jane
Jane is at the forefront of integrating the dynamic influence of public relations with mainstream advertising strategies to instigate marketing solutions that challenge orthodoxy and create new standards.
She is a supreme communicator and influencer with an incisive and informed understanding of the fashion, beauty and luxury lifestyle industries.
Jane is Chief Executive of Talk PR, part of M&C Saatchi plc on whose UK Group board she sits. She is chairman of personal branding company Private Office and international PR agency network SERMO. Jane has operated at board level for over 20 years for agencies such as Ketchum and Lynne Franks.
In 2001 she was asked to establish a PR offer for M&C Saatchi, an opportunity she grabbed with both hands. From a standing start, Talk PR was in Marketing’s top 10 consumer PR agencies within three years and achieved income of £3.2 million within five years. Talk started with six staff and now has 45. Jane takes immense pride in the achievements of her staff and colleagues, nurturing new and emerging talent and establishing the most productive circumstances in which that talent can grow and flourish. In 2011 she launched Talk Talent, Talk’s multi-dimensional legacy project designed to nurture new talent in both pr and the wider fashion, beauty and grooming industries setting new standards of excellence. Amongst them is the commitment to end the culture of the ‘workie’ by refusing the culture of taking on unpaid interns.
Her client roster, past and present, reads like a wish list for any global advertising and marketing agency: Procter and Gamble, Vertu, Reckitt and Coleman, American Express, Asprey & Garrard, Nestlé, Dunhill, Carlsberg, Dixons Stores Group International, Asda, Tesco, Pernod Ricard, Tanner Krolle, Laurent-Perrier, Bottega Veneta, Silverjet, O2.
Jane is strategic advisor to the British Fashion Council and founder and trustee of the BFC Bazaar Fashion Arts Foundation, an initiative that aims to inspire and support fashion and the arts through a series of collaborative projects.
On a more personal but equally committed level Jane is passionately involved in Dance Umbrella (trustee, main board member) and the London College of Fashion (external examiner and advisor to the MBA in Fashion). She is non-executive director of Me_tail, an exciting new technology start up offering a personal online fitting room service. She was a member of the British Creative exchange, an initiative aimed at driving collaboration in the creative industries and is a member of Arts Co networking group. She has also served as a judge for the British Society of Magazine Editors awards.
In May 2009 Jane spoke at the Oxford Union opposing the motion that ‘Fashion is an unnecessary luxury’. Her team won the motion 135-62.
Passionate, gregarious, exuberant, Jane combines business acumen with a keen eye for opportunity. For her, quality and substance are more important than passing fancy. She is supportive and encouraging of those with vision and purpose and is a firm believer in the value of personal relationships – ever rarer in an increasingly impersonal world.
