Muckle Media targets family businesses with new PR venture

Left to right: Annie Diamond (director), Nathalie Agnew (managing director), Rosemary Gallagher (director) at Relative PR. Picture: Contributed

Muckle Media, the Edinburgh-based PR agency, is claiming a first for Scotland after pushing the button on a new venture aimed at family-owned businesses.

Relative PR is thought to be the first specialist focused on family-owned brands. The new agency will share offices with, and run alongside, Muckle Media and Muckle-owned Platform PR, which supports brands with “community engagement”.

Nathalie Agnew, founder and managing director of Relative PR, and Muckle Media, said: “We’re launching Relative PR to provide a whole range of communications advice and support to family owned businesses.

“These businesses are the lifeblood of the UK economy, with two-thirds of firms in the UK family owned, generating more than a quarter of UK gross domestic product.”

She added: “Many family-owned firms that have passed through the generations are embracing change and understand the need to compete with emerging brands.

“We aim to help businesses write their story of the future, building upon the past and securing business growth for generations to come.”

The firm said it aimed to work with businesses across a range of industry sectors. It will provide a combination of “strategic communications advice” to family boards and management teams, alongside “practical and tactical support to help deliver effective PR programmes”.

Agnew founded Muckle Media in 2012 to work with a range of clients across the public and private sectors, including whisky firms Benromach and Gordon & MacPhail, Crowne Plaza Hotels and The Hunter Foundation.

Since then, she has grown the business to have offices in Edinburgh and Inverness and a presence in Glasgow.