CorpComms Magazine

Press and public relations can be a bloody battlefield, as can the minefield that is the legal system. So how appropriate is it that the man who heads up the communications for many of the country's top family lawyers is an enthusiast for all things military? Indeed, Keith Johnston's career has been planned with the precision of a battle commander: appropriately for a man who studied military history at university and confesses to spending his spare time playing war games.

But what's apparent about 35 year old Johnston, a board member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations and for the past eight years, in charge of communications at STEP (more about that, later) is that he is a card-carrying member of the cheerleaders for his profession.

What marks the dapper Aberdonian out from the crowd is his intense enthusiasm for associations, rather than corporations, and his single-minded promotion of the interest group.

It all stems from a career dedicated to the not-for-profit sector - although he's mindful not to dismiss the corporate world.

His career in communications started pretty much straight after he graduated from the University of Glasgow, when he went to work at the Student Loans Company as a press office assistant. He soon got a taste for the work - and that meant heading south.

Even though he was only still 21, he had enough chutzpah to write off 80 or so speculative letters, asking for a job in PR. 'I got two replies and two interviews,' he says. 'One was for a PR company in Whitehall which I accepted.'

Installed in an unpleasant flat share in one of the dingier parts of South London, the idealistic left-winger found himself working on accounts for security companies and lobbying for Israeli arms companies wanting to pick up lucrative government contracts. 'Before that, all I'd really been doing was the photocopying and cutting up newspapers. This was the real thing.'

He stuck at it for a few months until a new opportunity presented itself: running the communications at the wonderfully-named Lighting Industry Federation in deepest Balham. 'It was fantastic,' he smiles. 'I was 22. I had my own office, my own company credit card and I was in sole charge of the association's lobbying of government.'

Although it sounds like the kind of organisation Reggie Perrin might well once have worked for, there was an eminently serious side to the association. Even though there were plenty of statistics which showed that good street lighting reduced crime, the government at the time needed convincing of this and this was one of Johnston's missions.

Wasn't he even slightly scared? 'I got a lucky break getting the job,' he says. 'Yes, I did need to be confident: most of the people I was dealing with were 20 or more years older than me. But it was a good way to learn the business.'

After he'd been there two years, he went in and asked for a pay rise of £1,000. 'My boss said Well you can have the £1,000 but you'll leave anyway, why don't you find a new job? He was quite right, but it was the spur I needed.'

He landed up at the London Housing Unit, a think tank for the Labour-run London councils, which lobbied government for more investment in social housing stock. But then the unit was merged with the Association of London Government to create London Councils. 'We were effectively neutered,' he says 'I felt wasted: there were few opportunities to be creative. It was time to move on.'

That was when he moved to STEP, the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners. The aim of the association is to promote and lobby on behalf of private client advisors. It might seem a big leap from his former job in the right-on world of social policy, but it was the structure which appealed to Johnston. 'I am an enthusiast for the membership organisation; for the strength that comes from a body of individuals with common interests.'

When he started eight years ago, he was running all of STEP's press, public relations and lobbying. Now he has a staff of six but remains very much involved in the day to day activities. And he's still as politically-minded as ever.

When we talk, he's just about to go to the Labour Party Conference in Manchester - he missed the LibDems' Liverpool fiesta although he ruefully admits he probably should have attended. His role at the conference will be to press the flesh, to attend fringe meetings, to promote the activities of STEP and to put its opinion over to those in power - or those who may one day be in power.

So why is he such an enthusiastic for an organisation that, frankly, seems a bit dry? 'I've just found that I really love working in house for trade bodies and professional organisations,' he says. 'It's not all about the bottom line. We have 8,000 members whose interests are there to be promoted, who want us to get across the message that using a professional to run a trust or handle your will is the best option. But that's not to say we aren't commercial: we have services to sell, after all.'

Currently he's working on creating webinars and updating as well as creating new publications for members of the public who want to find out more about STEP's members. But what's it like working with the legal profession?

Johnston points out that STEP members work closely with families, not companies, so by nature they are more likely to be approachable. 'We are talking about really clever people,' he adds, but admits that can be part of their problem: a lawyer, after all, will think nothing of writing a multipaged document full of sub-clauses: but that does little to sell their services. 'That's what I'm here for,' he smiles. Proudly, he points out that 94 per cent of STEP members say they are more than happy with the organisation.

And that's why he's such an enthusiast for his chosen profession and why he's sat on the CIPR board for the past year. 'It's a way of putting something back,' he says. 'I am a great believer in professional development and I can see how we can put our profession on an even more professional footing.'

As if that wasn't enough, Johnston is also involved in UKPAC (the UK public affairs council), a self-regulatory body for lobbyists. 'I think that it is important that our profession is seen to be above board and that is why regulation is important.' With all that on, it's a wonder he gets a chance to do anything but work. But how does he see his career progressing? Even though his career so far has largely been in the public sector, he doesn't dismiss a move to the private side, saying that an in-house financial sector job would not be out of the question.

And his dream job? 'Well, if the top post at the South Bank came up that would be amazing,' he says. 'I am a bit of a culture buff, so that would combine a few interests.' And what about a move back north of the border? He visibly shivers. 'No way. The weather's awful,' he says - even though, at that moment, it's absolutely pouring outside his London office window. I suppose that's what you call putting a positive spin on things.

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