Rick Guttridge

Founder & CEO , Smoking Gun

With 25 years of agency experience under his belt, Rick has worked on some of the biggest brand names in the world. Obsessed with proving the impact strategic PR can have on an organisation, his agency's name embodies the search to find the irrefutable proof of success. He's also passionate about business having a positive impact on society and on top of reduced rates for not for profits, a minimum of 1% of profit is given to charity every year. Having started out working in a full service agency, he takes a holistic view of PR and its place in the marketing mix. This approach has proven invaluable as the media landscape has evolved at a rapid pace in recent years and he has embraced the opportunities created by new social media channels and the further convergence of PR and other disciplines such as SEO (dare we call GEO a sub discipline??) to build and defend reputations for clients.