Ita Gibney - How I Made It - The Sunday Times
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Full Interview
If Ita Gibney has a watchword in business, it is probably “caution”.
I’ve definitely taken a “steady as she goes” approach,” she said.
This prudence has enabled her PR business, Gibney Communications, to weather the recession.
The agency, which will turn over €1.8m this year, has no debt and has never made a loss in 16 years of operation. It is also experiencing modest but steady growth of 3%-5%.
Gibney, who is 58 and from Dublin had three siblings, all of whom were educated thanks to the money their mother earned renting out rooms in investment properties.
“I definitely got my entrepreneurial spirit and drive from my mother,” said Gibney. “I also got her strong faith in the importance of education.”
Gibney studied English at University College Dublin before winning a scholarship to do a masters degree at McMaster University in Canada.
“My mother was a very dynamic woman with strong values. It was never about pursuit of wealth for her, but the pursuit of excellence in education”.
Two years in a Dublin school on her return put paid to any notion that Gibney wanted to be a teacher.
“It was not for me. I knew I wanted to go into business but I also knew I wasn’t good at the figures side of business. So I did my research and decided that communications would be a good fit for me, with my arts background and my interest in business.”
At the time, however, there wasn’t anywhere in Ireland she could study the subject. “There weren’t the PR or communications courses there are now, so I had to do more research to find a place to go.”
She ended up at Boston University, on another scholarship.
She came home and got a job with Murray Consultants. “It was only four years old at the time and already very strong as an agency for corporate and financial PR. It was the heyday of corporate battles and takeovers and I got to work closely with (PR guru) Jim Milton.”
She stayed for 13 years until 1992, when one of her clients, Greencore, offered her an in-house PR job.
“It meant I could leave Murray on good terms because I was going in-house and not setting up an agency. It also suited me from a personal point of view because I had young children and it was always going to be easier working with one client rather than 40,” she said.
Three years later, however, she was becoming restless.
“There was a lot of crisis management going on when I went in, which I love, so that made for very interesting times. But within a few years that all started to work through the system and things became more normalized. I started to get bored.”
She decided the time was right to go into business. “I was 42 and I felt that if I set up and failed I’d still be young enough for another move.”
So she went for it.
“The great strength of having worked with Murray was I could bring big firm standards to a small firm. From the off, all the systems and processes were done as if I was a big firm.”
She knew she would need help with the figures, so she sublet her first office from her accountant in order to have his expertise close to hand. In time, the accountant became finance director of the firm.
Greencore became her first client and paid the bills for year one, at which stage it was just Gibney and a secretary.
“Having a good blue-chip client like that was a huge help in attracting others,” she said.
The business began to grow, augmented by her first big win – a Bupa contract worth six figures to the firm.
“I had to go up against some of the biggest agencies in the country to get Bupa, which was just coming into the market.
“What won it for me was my size. I told them they needed a small, senior led agency run by someone who knew the market and to whom they would have access 24/7, which they did,” she said.
Her intention has always been to consolidate on contract wins, not to leverage off them. “This is very much a personal business, so it has always been important not to overstretch. What I wanted was steady, incremental growth year on year, selling our small size as a pro rather than a con.”
More recently, she has been able to trade on another big advantage: the firm’s independence.
“Over the years many rivals were selling out to multinationals and I did wonder if it was a model that would work for us, but it never happened.
“In the last four or five years, being a wholly owned, independent Irish firm has been a huge advantage to us. It means we don’t have overseas shareholders stripping out dividends and forcing margins to a level we cannot sustain.”
This has allowed her the flexibility to cope with the recession. “We have been able to genuinely partner with clients, to see what we can do to get through this together. We have nobody to account to other than our client,” she said.
Customers are at the core of her business philosophy. “My view has always been that if you look after the client properly, the business with look after itself.”
Her main investment is in staff. Gibney Communications has 15 employees and is recruiting a senior account executive.
There was one redundancy when the downturn hit, resulting in the loss of a receptionist. Now everyone mucks in and answers telephones.
“We pay well but there are no company cars here. And although for a while during the boom everybody was telling me I was mad not to buy offices, I felt strongly that I’m not in the property business and that I should just rent an office. That too has stood to me.”
Again, it goes back to her mother. “I come from a very prudent background, one where money didn’t come easily but was hard earned. It’s still how I am.”