Campaign’s PR Faces to Watch 2022 – Ronak Thakkar, Account Director, FleishmanHillard Middle East
Campaign’s PR Faces to Watch 2022 – Ronak Thakkar, Account Director, FleishmanHillard Middle East
Age: 30
Lucy O’Brien, General Manager & Partner, FleishmanHillard Middle East: Ronak drives himself to improve outcomes for his clients and to make relationships better. He excels at making connections and thinking laterally, bringing clients together for conversations of shared value. He has an unusual combination of creativity and business acumen and is able to suggest creative ideas to clients that show an unmatched awareness of their business. He has proven himself able to lead a portfolio of accounts over an extremely challenging period of change and disruption driven by the pandemic. He guides and motivates the junior team with a smile, and can always be trusted to be a standard-bearer of our agency culture.
Career highlights
I’m a communications professional with a decade of experience working for global brands and governments in the Middle East, Asia & Subcontinent. Having worked at agencies, I have learned from content strategy & planning to making friends in the media space and new business pitches to crisis comms- I am pleased to have built a solid network and foundation in PR at an international level. At FleishmanHillard Middle East, I am leading Corporate and Technology Practice and am proud to be a part of my team who is focused on making an impact.
Guiding principles
- Journalists should remember you for the story you sell, not for the press releases you send
- Pen down like a leader, frame like a news editor to make a den for your reader
- The most important thing in PR is your content. A good story never goes unheard.
Side hustle
I like to read, read, and read. In my spare time, I mostly spend time reading BBC/Vice news over Chai (we call it ‘Karak’ in the Arab world). The rest of the day, I choose to play with my pets, post content on their Instagram and spend time with family.
