Like it says in the banner my name is Stuart Bruce and I’m the co-founder and managing director of Wolfstar, a specialist public relations, social media and word of mouth marketing and communications consultancy. I’m listed in PRWeek’s PowerBook, which they say only lists the UK’s top 1% of most influential public relations people. I’m currently working pro bono for Andy Burnham, the Shadow Health Secretary, as Deputy Director of Strategy and Communications, for his bid to become Labour Party Leader.
Wolfstar only started in May 2007, but we’ve already won the Chartered Institute of Public Relations’ award for the UK’s Outstanding Small Consultancy 2008, been highly commended in PRWeek’s Best New Consultancy award 2009 and won the CIPR award for Best Use of Social Media 2009.
As well as counselling clients I’m also frequently found to be commenting and contributing to news and features in the media and speaking at conferences in the UK and overseas. Media comments and interviews regularly include BBC Radio 5, The Guardian, PR Week, Communicate and CorpComms. I’ve also appeared in the Financial Times, Sky News and numerous other media outlets.
I’ve got more than 20 years’ experience of public relations, both consultancy and in-house, and was one of the first PR people to recognise how important online communications was going to become. I’ve been doing online PR since at least 1997 (and probably earlier, depending how you define it) and was one of the world’s first PR bloggers way back in 2003. In January 2007 I was also an early adopter on Twitter and a couple of months later was responsible for former Home Secretary Alan Johnson MP becoming the second senior politician in the world to use Twitter (Senator John Edwards was the first, in his failed bid to be the Democrat Presidential candidate).
Conferences that I’ve spoken at include ad:tech, Marketing Week, The Economist, PR Week, Communicate Magazine, Chartered Institute of Public Relations, Chartered Institute of Marketing, Communicate, Don’t Panic, Osney Media and the University of Sunderland’s Delivering the New PR series of conferences. I also speak at private corporate and government conferences and ‘gigs’ have included the Association of Business Schools, Central Office of Information (COI), Arts Council, British Library and the Ministry of Defence.
Today my company, Wolfstar, provides strategic counsel on public relations and social media to a wide range of clients including big consumer brands, government departments, trade associations, blue chip corporates, politicians, universities, local authorities as well as numerous smaller and start-up companies.
I’m a member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations and a founding member and former elected national council member of WOM UK, the industry association for word of mouth marketing and communications. I’ve got a postgraduate qualification in communications, advertising and marketing. In my 20+ year career I’ve won several top industry awards on behalf of my clients.
As well as being passionate about public relations and corporate communications I’m also dedicated to public service and politics. A life long member of the Labour Party I’ve worked for the party and as a consultant I’ve advised senior cabinet ministers on communications. From 1999 to 2006 I was also an elected member of Leeds City Council and responsibilities included Lead Member for Corporate Communications and Customer Services.
If you want to find out more or discuss how we might be able to work together then please give me a call on +44 (0)845 838 7282 or email stuartb AT wolfstarconsultancy.com.
SOCIAL STUART