So it’s official! Diffusion has been named as PR Week’s New Consultancy of the Year 2009 and we’re absolutely ecstatic! After months of waiting the PR Week Awards finally took place on Tuesday night, at the suitably glamorous Grosvenor House with over 1,200 leading members of the PR industry in attendance. We were is a very tough category, with some amazing agencies we all admire short-listed, so the award judges must have had an agonising time choosing a winner. Perhaps wisely given the audience, we weren’t allowed to give acceptance speeches, so I hope you won’t mind if Ivan and I say a few thank yous now.

Quite a few people thought we were mad to launch a new agency in the middle of a recession, especially one pioneering a new model of PR with digital at its heart and operating on a 100% payment-by-results basis. They were probably right.  Ivan and I were confident though, that despite banks collapsing around our ears, the pace at which the media and online worlds were evolving was not going to slow, and PR as an industry could not afford to waste any more time or cede any more ground to other disciplines. So a big thank you goes to friends, family and colleagues who back in 2007 said ‘”Go for it!” and to our financial, legal and business advisers who helped make our launch on 4 April 2008 a reality.  Special thanks goes to Sukhi and John at 383 Project for designing the Diffusion brand and building this amazing website.

Our success has of course been most dependent on the trust that all of our amazing clients have placed in us. Whether you’ve been with us from day one or have only recently started working with us, we’d like to say a big and very heartfelt thank you. We’ve been very lucky to be given such intellectually challenging briefs to implement and to work with people who share our vision for pioneering new PR approaches and constantly pushing the boundaries of what communication means today.

Ivan and I have been especially touched by the faith shown by Barney, Tom, Alasdair and Claire in joining an agency which was then only a few months old. In the 18-months since, not a week has gone by when we’ve not been amazed in some way, by the results secured by what has now grown into a 12-strong team of some the brightest and nicest PR professionals in the UK.

Chapter 1 of the Diffusion story has come to a close, but we remain very excited by what is still to come.  Watch this space!