About Paul Seaman
I have worked in environments from multinational boardrooms to Chernobyl’s disaster zones, and in countries as diverse as Switzerland and Nigeria.
In London, Donetsk and Lagos, I’ve managed corporate and product communication, dealt with every kind of media, counselled at the highest levels and sorted things at street level, often working with clients’ serious crises. I live and work near Zurich, Switzerland.
A little more detail of a campaign life
In the 1970s I campaigned for a socialist Britain (and for various health and transport causes later). In the 1980s I did PR for a union in the finance sector. I suppose that’s when I switched sides and started working on PR for the finance industry – just as it went into its late 80s meltdown. But Britain is a robust as well as an argumentative place, and it was surprisingly easy to make my case that mortgages had always been advertised as coming with risk.
Perhaps with a nose for the unpopular, I then went into PR for the nuclear industry – then a pariah. This culminated in 1996 with the life-changing experience of fronting the 10th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. I worked from the site itself, exploding media myths and lapping up close encounters with nuclear heroes.
For the next ten years I did PR for the IT sector, both product and corporate. So I was getting the media to flog our kit for us. And then getting them to buy into my bosses’ M&A strategy. There was much less blood on the carpet but I had fun and learned a lot.
Enthused by my IT experience, I started a trading firm a few years ago. I cashed-in quite profitably. And again, I’d learned a lot.
More recently, I have taken this varied experience to work for a Ukrainian “oligarch” who was flirting (quite well) with CSR and then for a burgeoning indigenous PR house in Nigeria as it helped a huge range of firms produce world-class messages. These were vivid experiences, to say the least, and not to be missed.
What does this tell you? I love the challenge of advocacy, whatever the case, product or place. I love a scrap. I am proud of my portfolio CV. It doesn’t begin to tell you how much I love team-work. It may be an age thing, but I’ve also loved mentoring youngsters.
Here’s a conclusion. I have learned to respect people who run things, invent things, make things happen – especially when the chips are down.
