Because I am a small, growing business and I also work with quite a few others of the same ilk, and indeed have helped to raise the profile of our own entrepreneurial communities in Scotland, I thought it would be worth scratching the surface a bit more on the subject. Well over 90 per cent of Scotland plc is made up by small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The youngest, fastest-growing of our SMEs, so-called ‘gazelles’ represent less than 10 per cent of economic output but are crucially important for several reasons, not least because they make up almost half of new jobs created in Scotland. And, as we all know, today’s small businesses are the big businesses of tomorrow.

It’s no surprise that many of these ‘gazelles’ have a strong tech or e-commerce makeup. Could any business really thrive in today’s commercial world without a web-first philosophy (a phrase coined by another government adviser, a certain Martha Lane Fox)? Scotland’s report card for fostering this type of enterprise is encouraging: a leading London-based national newspaper has just identified Edinburgh as the UK’s most important start-up community outside London and its world-renowned and much written about Tech City. Meanwhile, Glasgow has won central government funding to help it become one of the UK’s first ‘smart cities’, alongside Birmingham and London; an important step in becoming a tech cluster or hub in its own right.

While economic experts unanimously agree that successful technology clusters are required for the successful modern economies of the future, there is a notion around the edges of Scotland’s start-up communities that a lot more could be done to support young, fast-growing companies away from investor-friendly London and the South-East. And multiple commentators have suggested that access to start-up money remains a major stumbling block for fledgling Scotland-based enterprises.

David Cameron’s recently-departed senior policy adviser, entrepreneurship guru and self-styled architect of Tech City, Rohan Silva (remember I said I’d come back to him), said last month that press coverage is a central plank for businesses trying to get on to the radar of investors. The perceived challenge for Scotland’s ‘gazelles’: the press can be a thicket to navigate and is largely based in London. If you can’t get into the press, how do you get to investors who are located in London or the States in the main? Out of sight, out of mind?

Fortunately, Scotland’s most exciting young companies have got a couple of major ‘pros’ to even out the ‘cons’ when it comes to the press (and hence getting onto the radar of investors and other important audiences). Firstly, with the right approach London-based journalists will entertain stories about Scotland’s smaller companies. As one senior London-based business editor said to me recently, “we’re always looking for the next big thing, whether it’s a company based in Shoreditch or Leith.”

Secondly, as importantly, Scotland has a highly rated stable of press titles and outlets that are read and respected throughout the UK, including in London, and further afield. An example: we recently put out a press release for a leading Scotland-based technology company. While the press release didn’t get picked up at first by a leading international tech news outlet (and a primary target for the release), that changed when one of its US-based editors picked up on the story from one of Scotland’s daily online editions and went on to write about the announcement.

Having said that, I know for a fact that there are still plenty of young, fast-growing companies out there, ‘micro-multinationals’ as one CEO of a Scottish ‘gazelle’ I know terms this class of enterprise, competing on a global basis yet frustrated by the lack of opportunity for press coverage to support their businesses and help connect with investors and other key audiences.

Academic research published this month suggests that while the press remains an important route to capturing investor attention, Twitter use by smaller companies is increasingly opening doors to investor communities; and an added advantage of using new technologies to connect with investors is the instant and direct qualities inherent to platforms like Twitter. But for every fan of Twitter, there is a detractor who says that the platform has become too crowded a space; this latter category frequently prefers the digital platform provided by Linkedin. Then again, a third category would suggest that Twitter and Linkedin work best in tandem rather than independent of each other.

Overall, we like to think that the use of traditional media combined with a digital strategy that includes Twitter, Linkedin and search engine optimisation (SEO), is often the best way to proceed for Scotland’s small but fast-growing companies. Get these disciplines right from the start and they become embedded in the company’s external communications function, ready to support the next growth phase in the business.

Underpinning all of the above, a foundation of belief and confidence is a must for Scotland’s burgeoning start-up communities. London’s Tech City was only launched at the end of 2010 and look how it’s come on since. While geographical location can play a big part in the success of a start-up community or technology cluster, maybe we should be repeating a new mantra in Scotland: Communicate, Communicate, Communicate!

Nick Freer is the founder of the public relations company, Freer Consultancy. He is a former corporate affairs adviser to the BBC, Deloitte and Guardian Media Group. His clients include Skyscanner and Blackcircles.com

When did working in the media first start becoming an ambition?
I enjoyed reading newspapers from my early teens and toyed with the idea of becoming a professional journalist for quite a long time. At the age of 16, The Glasgow Herald’s sports reporter Doug Gillon interviewed me after I won the Scottish Schools Cross Country Championships in Irvine and I remember thinking how cool he seemed with his press pass, tape recorder and photographer on hand. I remember waiting with great excitement for the article going into the paper a couple of days later. It’s funny because, moving twenty plus years ahead to today, I still go through that nervous wait for articles appearing – only these days it’s articles about my clients rather than my fleeting running career.
While studying law in the early Nineties, I soon realised I didn’t really fancy being a lawyer and I came upon the idea of journalism again. But alas, the scores of letters I sent off to various newspapers about reporter jobs never got me very far. Thankfully, one very kind newspaper editor suggested by reply that the burgeoning public relations industry in London might be a good compromise for me – and if I wasn’t going to find a position as a journalist, at least I would spend a lot of time dealing with them!

What was your first ‘media job’?
I joined Maitland, one of London’s top public relations agencies, as its first graduate trainee at the end of 1995. They had then, and still have, a great client list with a load of FTSE-100 clients, other global corporates, large financial institutions and professional services firms. Reflecting the client list, the consultants at Maitland were out of the very top drawer: former directors of corporate communications from the top table of UK plc, ex-senior journalists from the likes of the Financial Times and The Economist, and City analysts who had moved into public relations.
In my very first few weeks, I had seen the sharp end of the press world in one episode which still sticks in my mind. In early 1996, I was at the QE2 conference centre in London for a client’s AGM when all hell broke loose; shareholder discontent and a rabid press gang baying for the blood of a so-called ‘fat cat’ CEO. Leaving the conference room, the flashbulbs started going off, a din rose from the collected press corps and the CEO looked at me with fear in his eyes and said “this is the moment when we run for our lives.” At that moment, I wasn’t entirely sure what he meant. But it soon clicked.
With a surprisingly tall Peter Snow leading the press pack in pursuit of its quarry, the CEO and I made a leap over a cordon rope and slipped out a back door into a sleek, black Jaguar saloon with the motor already running. “Tell me you’ve still got my briefcase”, said the Chief Executive as he turned to me and the car pulled off into the Westminster traffic. I sat clutching the briefcase as if it was my last possession on Earth. “Good job Nick”, he said with a relieved expression on his face, “you’ll go far in PR.”
It was a while before I moved on from bag carrier to advising clients on press and investor relations, but I still remember watching the footage on the evening news that night and starting to appreciate how the press affected profile and reputation in the corporate world. And in a funny way, that briefcase was a metaphor for the client-adviser relationship; clients put their reputation under your watch and they trust you to do your upmost to look after it, sometimes in very trying circumstances.

Describe, briefly, how your career unfolded between your first media job and where you are now.
I spent almost a decade in London with the same firm, Maitland. I had several offers to move to other City agencies, but I was working with so many great organisations – the BBC, Unilever, J Sainsbury, Deloitte, amongst others – that I always chose to stay. And, at Maitland there were some brilliant consultants who I was still learning a considerable amount from on a daily basis. So, for example, the former director of corporate affairs for the BBC and BT joined Maitland during may last few years there, and we worked as a team on quite a few Media sector clients like United News & Media (now UBM) and Guardian Media Group.
I think it’s easy to second guess the career moves you’ve made in later years and after the event, but looking back I’ve always been pretty comfortable with the decisions I made. That doesn’t mean it’s always a comfortable ride though. One of the big decisions I did have to make was whether or not to stay on in London or make the move back up to Scotland, something I had always said I would think about when I got into my thirties. When I chose to relocate back to Scotland, it was hard to give up the work and the clients I had but it was also about leaving a social scene that I had built up over so many years. I think I also had that realisation that if I left London, it would probably be for good. That was hard because you’re leaving one of the world’s capitals, and all that goes with it.
During my first few years back in Scotland, I had a couple of agency and in house positions working with professional services firms on the back of my experience with the likes of Deloitte and Lovells in London. I’m not going to pretend it wasn’t a massive culture shock to be working back in Scotland after my time in London, because it was. And in a way, you’re starting from scratch all over again. On my first working day back in Scotland, on the train from Glasgow to Edinburgh, I felt like a London leopard that was going to have to change its spots in a different environment altogether, and I think looking back I was still grieving in a way at having left the jungle that was the Big Smoke.
I have to say at this stage, that I am now fantastically happy in Scotland. Besides the lifestyle choice (that oft-used, probably overused term in spite of it having a lot of truth to it), the wonderful scenery and being back with kinfolk (I consider this to be by far the most important factor in my decision to relocate), I’ve come to discover what a vibrant business scene we have across our country. I had dinner with an old mucker from The Financial Times during a recent trip he made up from London to research Scotland’s burgeoning start-up communities, and it’s encouraging to know that that revered financial publication sees Edinburgh as one of the UK’s most vibrant technology hubs, if not the most vibrant hub, outside London. We need hubs like this to be the successful modern economies of the future; to create and draw in the best companies and the best people.
I consider myself fortunate to have advised some of the leading lights of Scotland’s tech start-up scene as well as a number of other fast-growing Scottish companies since I started my own consultancy. Last year, I was on the phone to a good friend and business journalist I know at The Scotsman as she wrote up an article about the growing importance of Edinburgh as a technology hub, a subject matter that I had suggested she write about and helped build up as a story. I remember feeling a certain pride when she asked me what name I thought this new technology scene should be christened as – ‘Silicon Mound’, ‘Silicon Bridges’ or ‘Silicon Seat’. It didn’t matter that The Scotsman didn’t use my choice, I was simply very happy to have been a big part of the conversation.

In recent times, we’ve added investor relations and public affairs briefs to the consultancy work we do at Freer Consultancy. While I think we’ve got the best PR offering around, particularly in terms of the results we get for the fast-growing segment of Scotland’s SME sector, I think it’s also important that we do more in investor and governmental circles. That’s a step we’re concentrating on this year as we grow the consultancy to the next level. And continuing to collaborate with other agencies and freelancers that can help us give an even better service to clients remains central to the DNA of the consultancy.

Any particularly big breaks along the way?
If there was a game-changer for me in my public relations career, I’d say it was becoming lead press adviser to the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) in liquidation, the largest corporate insolvency ever at the time. I say game-changer because at a relatively young age (I was in my mid-twenties), I was suddenly briefing editors of national and international press publications on what had become a regular front page story. It was a scary ride to begin with, but looking back I’m impressed that my younger self had the confidence to deal with such a big task. I’m also quite thankful that my clients and, indeed, the press that I was briefing on an almost daily basis for several years had the confidence in me to corral a complex process that was taking place in multiple territories, boardrooms and courts around the world. It was a mentally and physically draining job (I spent many a late night on the phone to colleagues and press in the US), but it’s the thing that, possibly apart from starting up my own agency, that I’m most proud of in my career to date.

Who would you like to thank more than most?
Angus Maitland (founder and chairman of Maitland) for giving me my first job, and for taking a genuine interest in my career to this day.

What do you know now that you wished you had known when you started?
Like a lot of entrepreneurs, I sometimes wish I had started my business a few years before I did – but I’m quite a philosophical kind of guy and I don’t think the stars really lined up for me in terms of starting up on my own until the time that it ended up happening.