Fast talking, fast walking pays off for PR supremo

By William Mace, via Fairfax Business Day

You should see Jane Sweeney work the room at an industry party - her distinctive red curls bounce effortlessly through chit-chat with government ministers and chief executives alike.

As a public relations pro and managing director of one of the country's foremost practices, Porter Novelli, she knows how to work a room no matter who is in the crowd.

Legend has it that Ms Sweeney's cellphone has more than 2000 numbers in its directory, many of them representing direct lines of communication to some of New Zealand's most influential businesspeople.

There are undoubtedly hundreds of news-worthy stories locked away in those memory banks, but at our interview Ms Sweeney was focused on just one story - putting her spin on the agency restructure.

Far from being booted out of Porter Novelli, she announced she was relinquishing some day-to-day control of the agency for her own good, and the good of the company.

She has been managing director since 2005 and will retain that title, but former KPMG executive Strahan Wallis has moved into a new general manager role and Valerie Mackenzie has joined as chief operating officer.

The change had been a long time coming and allows Ms Sweeney more time to sit on the shoulder of executives and bail up powerful people at cocktail parties, she said.

It means Ms Sweeney will now be able to play to her strengths: advising existing clients at chief executive level and bringing in new clients in what is expected to be a growth phase for the Clemenger Group-owned agency.

"She's mad, but mad in a good, energetic, crazy way," Clemenger Group chief executive Jim Moser said.

"She loves people, loves talking and learning about people but she doesn't do it necessarily for a business outcome. That's an added benefit."

Mr Moser said he was personally indebted to Ms Sweeney for introducing him to the New Zealand business community when he crossed the Tasman three years ago.

"She is exceedingly good at what she does but it's something that comes naturally to her: she's smart, she knows the market well, she's well connected in terms of journalists, and her advice generally is spot on."

But Mr Moser was also keen to see her concentrate less on office admin and more on high-end business - "It can't be 'the Jane Sweeney company'," he said.

AN EX-JUNIOR employee confided that they would sometimes avoid Ms Sweeney for fear of being handed a "Jane Special: a job with an unrealistic time frame that they were never properly briefed on because she was too busy.

Ad Feedback "Jane is a whirlwind. She enters a room, walks fast, talks fast and everyone else scrambles to keep up," the source said.

The agency was "all about making a profit when I worked there", with little emphasis on the review and mentoring schemes that Ms Sweeney now espouses.

But the source admitted the commercial attitude was largely prompted by the agency's struggle to stay afloat during the recession.

Also at that same time Ms Sweeney was diagnosed with breast cancer after a mammogram in February 2009 - but she wasn't out of the loop for long.

Surgery followed a month later, and she was back dabbling in the recession-hit business soon after.

"My best friend says I'm the only person she knows who has been diagnosed and cured all within a month," she said, crediting regular mammograms as the key to her quick diagnosis and treatment.

"I was off work for about six weeks [after the surgery], but I worked quite a lot through that period.

"It was a terrible time because we were right in the midst of the recession . . . I just wasn't able to completely switch off and focus on getting well, I had to focus on the business at the same time in order to keep it healthy and profitable."

She said it caused her to re- evaluate her work-life balance, something her extensive CV showed was always tilted towards the work end of the scale.

"I've never drawn a line between work and home, it's always been a part of our lives as a family.

"I have a lot of work functions at home and I enjoy doing that . . . but I have learnt to manage my energy levels a lot better and appointing Strahan and Val is key to that, just to make sure I'm not as stretched as I have been in the past."

Born in Bournemouth in the south of England, Ms Sweeney, 51, moved to Auckland when she was 16 and settled in Te Atatu, where her father had access to his work with the RNZAF at Whenuapai.

Her mother is an artist.

She readily accepts the "Westie" tag, although she went to Epsom Girls Grammar School in the central suburbs and went on to study English at Auckland University.

After media and writing roles at World Vision and the Christian Broadcasting Association, she decided a little more weight in the pay packet was needed and moved into PR with Auckland firm Network Communications.

Ms Sweeney married Mark in 1986, and soon after he began his training as a nurse while she started climbing the corporate communications ladder.

"In those days it was very male dominated," she said.

"But I enjoyed quite a quick rise to a reasonable level. I think there were a few eyebrows raised back in the 80s as they were, but it was a great training ground.

She put her success, both then and now, down to being good at expanding an existing business.

She and her husband moved to London in 1990 with their one- year-old boy, Joseph, only to find the economy crashing.

"I got The Telegraph newspaper as soon as we landed in the UK and it said dismally that 2000 senior PR people had been laid off in the previous six months, and I wondered what the heck we were doing there, quite frankly," Ms Sweeney said.

Nevertheless she found work with independent communications agency SFB, which promoted her to director and eventually shareholder - a move that she considered the making of her management ethic.

Four years later she took another plunge into a job that put her love of everything French in the forefront - as New Zealand Trade & Enterprise's trade commissioner to France.

She calls herself a committed Francophile - her early ambition was to be a cordon bleu chef - which meant living in Paris was a dream. Albeit a dream with three toddlers at home and a husband engrossed in his studies.

"I have a house-husband, but he has always worked or trained," she said.

"My three sons just love having their dad around - they think that's normal, they think it's weird that other dads don't clean toilets and do the shopping.

"He actually told me that if I ever talked about him in an interview again it'd mean divorce, but we just had our 25th wedding anniversary so I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon."

As a result of her own experience, Ms Sweeney has made flexible working environments a top priority for her staff since returning from Europe, first with Consultus and Acumen Republic, and now with Porter Novelli.

Children's books dot the coffee table and a baby-changing table is nearby for regular visits from the mothers whom she keeps close to the business.

"I have a view that you should be able to have a life and you should enjoy your work."

For someone whose life is so wrapped up in their work, it is perhaps one of Ms Sweeney's biggest challenges to now practise what she preaches.

AS for leisure time: she listed a recent advanced scuba diving session on a Balinese wreck, cooking messily, aquajogging to help a knee she busted in a skiing accident, and an interest in the latest fashions from Andrea Moore and Veronika Maine among others.

But she remains committed to answering those late night phone calls from distressed chief executives, and often asked her staff to anticipate "what's keeping CEOs up at night".

"I do get calls in the middle of the night, and I get people turning up on the doorstep on Saturday morning with the weekend newspaper, looking a bit panicky.

"For me it's the ultimate litmus test - if we're not dealing with what keeps the CEO awake at night then we're not doing our job.

"Typically they don't always ask, so that's what I mean about being a trusted adviser and actually having enough gravitas that the CEO will go and have a coffee with you because you're not a waste of space, you're not a bit of PR fluff."