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Neil Mackinnon - Edinburgh Fringe PR

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is approaching once more, and esPResso’s sister publication ThreeWeeks will be covering it all. So we thought that, once again, it would be nice to put a little spotlight of our own on the PR side of the the world’s largest arts festival. Last year we spoke to one of the publicists whose job it is to promote specific shows, so this year we thought we’d speak to a communications person involved in the organisation behind the Fringe festival.

The Edinburgh Fringe is, and always has been, an open-access festival. Any performer, producer or entrepreneur can stage a show at the festival providing they can find the money and a room – there are no artistic criteria. That’s why the festival is so big and so eclectic. There is, however, a Fringe Society, which exists to support the community of independent people who stage shows and run venues. They recently introduced a new management structure after a difficult 2008 that was dogged by problems with a new box office system, and Neil Mackinnon has taken on one of those new management roles as Head Of External Affairs.

Previously he worked in political communications, PRing for the Scottish Liberal Democrats, so a move into the arts world is an interesting career progression – though with a festival involving so many stakeholders, all with their own agendas, those political skills will definitely come in handy. We spoke to Neil about his career to date and his new role communicating on behalf of the world’s biggest cultural fest.

By Unicorn Jobs

How did you get into PR?

Like with so many people, my career has really been a combination of being in the right place at the right time and good fortune.

My first ‘proper’ job was working in the marketing team for an international business consultancy based in Edinburgh. Even with a reputation as an international leader in their field, and with over one hundred staff, there was no dedicated media relations person and everybody else had other priorities. So, as the most junior person in the team, it fell to me. It turned out that I actually enjoyed it and within a year I decided I wanted to work in PR instead of my planned business marketing career.

Despite a bold – and somewhat off-the-wall CV – which garnered me plenty of interviews, my lack of interning or work experience in a press office environment meant I was finding it hard to get that first rung on the ladder.

By chance, during this period a friend of mine was invited to the exhibition centre where the votes in the referendum to establish the Scottish Parliament were being counted. It was a very exciting evening, and when, a few months later, the opportunity arose to spend a year working in a press office involved in the first Scottish Parliament elections I took a 50% pay cut and decided to take a year out to do it. That was eleven years ago. I meant to do it for a year and ended up staying for a decade.

You recently moved to a communications role at the Edinburgh Fringe Society, what’s your job there?

I am the Head Of External Affairs. I joined in April.

For the uninitiated, what is the Edinburgh Fringe?

In the late 1940s some far-sighted individuals believed that what a war-ravaged country like Britain really needed was cheering up and so they decided to hold an arts festival in Edinburgh. The problem was that they were very prescriptive about who they invited and many people felt left out. So some theatre companies decided to just come to Edinburgh anyway and perform on the ‘fringe’ of the festival.

Since then every year, while the Edinburgh International Festival takes place here in the Scottish capital, a Fringe Festival takes place in the same month. I think that the anarchic and rebellious traits which were evident in 1947 are still evident in the Fringe today, even though it is now vastly bigger than the main International Festival and, in fact, is the world’s largest arts event.

So you work for the Fringe Society – what do they do?

The Fringe Society was set up, above all, to help sell tickets for the shows on the Fringe, on behalf of all the different theatre companies staging those shows. If you are holding an arts festival in venues spread across a city, often in converted church halls and the like, then it may not be readily obvious to visitors where they can get tickets from. The solution to such a problem is to have a central box office, selling tickets for all the shows regardless of venue. It was also felt that the audience would be helped by the production of a single programme which listed all the shows taking place on The Fringe.

So the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society was formed, and to this day the Society exists primarily to help performers and venues attract audiences to the shows that are being staged. And in one important sense what we don’t do is as important as what we do. We don’t select the shows or invite performers to be part of the Fringe. At the heart of the Fringe is its ‘open access’ approach. Anyone can come and nobody is turned away on artistic grounds.

Your’s is a new role at the Fringe Society – created mainly because of problems that occurred when the IT behind the Society’s box office failed last year just as the festival was starting. Tell us a bit about the role and why it’s been created.

2008 was one of the most difficult years in the Fringe Society’s history. In the Autumn a report was commissioned into what went wrong with the box office and how it was handled. One of the central recommendations to come out of that process was the need for a new management structure. My job is part of that new structure.

The Head of External Affairs works with the rest of the team at the Society to make sure that everyone with a vested interest in the work of the Society, from the ticket-buying public to the performers on the stage, know what is happening and why it is happening. During the summer the bulk of my time is spent handling the enormous worldwide media interest that the Fringe attracts, but all year round I work to represent the interests of the Society and the wider Fringe community to those whose decisions have an impact on us, such as the Edinburgh City Council and the Scottish Government.

Who does the Fringe Society communicate with, and how does it go about it?

The Fringe Society has to communicate with lots of different audiences and these audiences don’t all want to talk about the same things.

There are some bodies, like the government and the City Council, who the Society talks to about issues which affect the Fringe as a whole. This is different from performers and venues who often wish to discuss practical matters which will have an impact on their ability to attract an audience to their shows. And then there are the public and the media.

I believe that the most effective communication is that which starts by thinking about who the audience is. In the Fringe Society we are trying to make sure that we use all the tools at our disposal to effectively communicate our message. I wouldn’t say we had it spot on yet, but we are working on it.

One of the big criticisms of the aforementioned IT problems last year was the way the crisis that ensued was managed and communicated – do you think the Society is now better equipped to handle any future crises, should they occur?

Yes, I believe we are. Over the last few months a great deal of work has gone into testing our systems and our processes. We’ve considered a considerable number of potential scenarios and how we might handle them. An important part of that is thinking about who you need to communicate with, when you need to communicate and what messages you need to get across. The new management structure has been designed specifically to facilitate planning and anticipate different outcomes. That means that any challenge can be looked at holistically rather than just responding re-actively when issues arise.

Coming from a political communications background, it must be interesting moving to an arts organisation – how does your new job compare to your past roles?

Over the last few months I’ve jokingly been telling people that there are less artistic temper tantrums in my new job. Although, joking aside, I would say there are far more similarities than there are differences.

In both fields you are dealing with people who have a passion and a total commitment to their work. In both jobs I have met people who I want to help reach their goals by making sure they are communicating as effectively as possible. I’m passionate about making sure that poor communication doesn’t get in the way of people seeing the bigger picture.

And also, at this time of cost-cutting and rationalisation, the fears and insecurities of journalists are the same regardless of specialism. Although I do think that arts correspondents are still less cynical than their political counterparts, making for a less confrontational time for me.

What advice would you have for someone considering a career in PR?

Well I am sure that any student reading this knows the value of work experience and interning but if, like me, you didn’t do that at the right time don’t despair, you have other options. I took a massive pay cut at a time when I still had a lot of student debt to pay off to spend a year doing something that I saw as a major opportunity.

However, if there is one piece of advice I would offer based on my own experience it would be to try and get into a field that you have an interest in. When you work in PR you are above all else an advocate for your organisation. You don’t have to have any special skills to tell the difference between someone who passionately believes their case and someone who is just going through the motions. I’ve been very fortunate to work in two distinct fields that I have an abiding passion for and I think it makes a difference to my work.

What are you most looking forward to about this year’s festival?

Well hopefully actually getting to see some shows! Because parliaments are in recess during August I have been very lucky over the last decade to have had the time and the ability to indulge myself in the festivals every year. This year I shall certainly see a lot less than I have in previous years but I am still hoping to see some shows. There is nothing to compare to the thrill of seeing a show of which you know little about going in but has really had an impact on you by the time you leave. Discovering that ‘hidden gem’ is the real joy of Edinburgh in August.

Neil on the web

Edinburgh Fringe Society’s website