12 Jun Meet the team – Henry Wilkins: When you have a great story, the words write themselves
Our business is about forming genuine, long term bonds between our clients and the executives they want to to do businesses with. For us, that starts at home. We couldn’t build connections between execs without the bonds we’ve built amongst our in-house team.
Where most companies just pay lip service to a culture of conscientiousness and personal development, we believe we’ve genuinely achieved it. From the top, all the way through to our c-suite, IT department, sales development reps, copywriters and ultimately, the clients we select, we live and breathe our mission of making the world a better place.
We’re extremely proud of the elite team of ‘conscientious overachievers’ we’ve assembled, so, over the next couple of weeks we’re showcasing them. We also asked them what makes the business unique, to give you a sense of who we are and how we’re able to deliver high quality meetings with executives.
Henry Wilkins is one of our copywriters. He writes our daily blogs and turns the essence of our clients’ businesses into stories and ultimately, emails that help them connect to other c-suite execs.
When he’s not doing that, he works as a journalist covering conflict and humanitarian crises. Based in West Africa, he writes for publications like The Economist, Reuters, The Washington Post and The Atlantic.
“What I love about working for Linked Strategies is it allows me to exercise the same muscles as my journalism work. Obviously the subject matter is different, but the aim is basically the same. You want to write something that captures people’s hearts and imaginations, but gives them what they need to be informed.”
Executives are always going to need the cold hard facts to make a business decision, but they aren’t immune to a compelling story, Henry believes.
“It’s fun turning what our clients do into metaphors. I worked with a company helping small businesses get approval for credit card payments recently. Comparing them to sherpas hauling climbers up Everest sounds strange, but it works. I wrote something comparing a corporate culture consultancy to the work of JS Bach, which is something I never thought I’d say”
Linked Strategies’ ethos of conscientiousness is a big part of its uniqueness too, he says.
“They’re really selective about working with ethical businesses. It would be hard to do what I do in my other line of work, then turn around and start writing copy for arms manufacturers or big tobacco.”
Covering crises is sometimes a cynical business, he reckons, so working with the team at Linked Strategies, who’re relentlessly positive, is a breath of fresh air.
“Everyone on the team is a caring individual and writing these stories is always a team effort. Debbie [our COO] helps me a lot. She’s great at drawing out peoples’ best selves and the inspirational side of businesses, probably because she’s such an inspirational character herself.”
“Nate [our founder and CEO] and Hallmark [our global head of strategic relationships] help massively with the blogs. Their insights on what makes good businesses work and their integrity breathe life into the writing.”
But, it’s the effort that goes into every client relationship that really makes Linked Strategies unique, he says.
“The amount of thought and care put into presenting what our clients do is huge, not just in the messaging, but in the tech side of things too. We always seem to find a great story somehow. I suppose when you have that, the words pretty much write themselves.”