Anita Champaneri
In one sentence, what does your role involve?
Delivering communications plans, PR strategies and events for hospitality, leisure and retail businesses.
How long have you been in your current job? 15 years.
How does your role compare now to what it was five years ago? I work more on business development and strategy than before.
Has the fallout from the pandemic presented any opportunities? Well, quarter one in 2022 was the busiest and most profitable we have been for the whole 15 years we have been operating.
But for obvious reasons that has come at a high price, having over half our clients not able to trade during lockdown. Now, we can see so many companies embracing marketing and PR strategies. They realise they can’t wing it or hope for the best when launching a brand.
We also had phenomenal success getting clients on television in the past year; almost 30 pieces of coverage across the year.
Can online meetings successfully take the place of face-to-face contact? They can and have on many occasions. It saves so much time on travel. Also, people seem to be more on time for Zoom meetings. Nothing pains me more than having to run to a venue and waiting half an hour because of transport delays or plain tardiness.
How do you get the best out of your staff? Constant communication and constant list building. I always want them to take ownership of different projects to create a sense of achievement in the workplace. I want to make sure they feel they are constantly learning to be better PR professionals and better people in general. Bonus incentives work too!
How many emails do you tend to get in a day, and how much time do you have to read them? I get more than 100, but I always make sure the clients and the press are top priority. I am afraid to say we are inundated with new job enquiries, but I do try to reply to as many as possible because I know how hard it is to get noticed in the marketplace.
How do you hope your colleagues would describe you? Fun, creative, diligent. They always say Anita knows everything and knows everyone. I like that! I am a bit of a grammar geek – calling you out on a typo makes my day.
Highlights of your career so far?
One major highlight is that I used to be in the TV industry and a couple of my ideas got commissioned for ITV – I got the opportunity to produce and direct one too. I also directed a documentary for the British Short Film festival.
Highlights in PR would be delivering an amazing launch for Manahatta (the biggest event we have done to date) and the launch of Air India for Birmingham Airport.
Any particular faux pas or embarrassing moments in your career you would prefer to forget? Working with Qatar airlines, I organised a dinner for them and gushed about how much fun we had on social media. I thought I had really bonded with them, but they didn’t appreciate their personalities being outed in public.
Pet hates? Mansplaining! And I really dislike it when people start a sentence “to be honest with you” because those are the people who rarely are.
If you could go back and give your younger self some wise advice, what would it be? I would probably tell myself to not be afraid to take a leap of faith. Also, to spend more time/money on looking the part. I never really bothered, but in hindsight people really did judge a book by its cover. And as an Asian woman, people already had fixed assumptions and stereotypes in mind of what Asian women are like and what they do before they even got to know you.
How do you relax away from work? I relax by spending time with my kids, Netflix and vino with my husband, or phoning my sister.
What do you believe is special about the Birmingham business community?
Birmingham businesses are good because everyone knows everyone and wants to get involved in everything, but at the same time that can be a bad thing too. It can get pretty incestuous and cliquey.
Tell us something about you that most people probably wouldn’t know.
My university bestie Rebecca and I got picked to go on the ITV show Blind Date with Cilla Black, but we chickened out. I have interviewed pop royalty Mariah Carey and James Brown, and former PM Tony Blair. When I was 22 I had my own music TV show called Jam on a really rubbish Asian TV channel.
You can take one book, one film and one CD onto a desert island – what would they be?
The movie would be Thor Ragnarok, the book ‘Becoming’ by Michelle Obama and the CD would be a UK garage compilation.
Your five dream dinner party guests, dead or alive?
Brad Pitt, Chris Hemsworth, Jennifer Aniston, Princess Diana and Will Ferrell.
What would you choose to eat for your last supper?
Too obvious. I am a right greedy guts! For my last supper I would start with a Pornstar Martini or glass of Veuve Clicquot, then move onto some tandoori prawns followed by a lamb rogan josh, chicken biryani, poppadoms, salad and a bottle of Malbec.
