Lucy Irby founded her eponymous London-based public relations agency in 2019 after working at the fashion wholesale and PR agency Rainbowwave. It was a move driven by the hunch that she could bring a fresh, dynamic approach to communications in the interior design industry; and when she and fellow PR pro Lucy Rubinstein met, they realized they shared a holistic, cross-disciplinary approach to brand-building. Rubinstein joined Irby in 2020, and they are now preparing to relaunch as Irby & Rubinstein.

Together they have built a dedicated team of 10, and a client list that includes interior design heavyweights such as Toogood, Bryan O’Sullivan Studio, Beata Heuman, Tatjana von Stein, Rose Uniacke, MG&Co and Buchanan Studio, alongside the iconic brands Ginori 1735 and Anglepoise.  The pair sat down with me to talk about the power of PR to create meaningful connections in an increasingly fractured media landscape.

Emma Moore: PR was once a link between brands and the press, but now it seems to be more. How do you see your role?

Lucy Rubinstein: We’re a partner to our clients, responsible for the presentation of their brand. We might get them working with a certain writer to rework their website’s “about us” section, because it’s not quite serving their vision and mission. Or it might be that existing visuals won’t get them the attention they deserve so we reshoot campaigns, or connect them with videographers and photographers. We really try to understand a client’s objective and target audience, so the stories we are placing are strategic.

Lucy Irby: We are building towards positive perception in the press, but it’s the brand’s visibility more broadly too. It’s about creating ambassadors, bringing them into the brand community via events, or putting the product in their hands so that they speak about it to their peers and friends. One of our objectives for Nordic Knots, for example, is to make sure that their rugs are in many beautiful homes in the UK, and then that word really travels. 

EM: What does your day-to-day look like?

LI: Meeting with a client, working on strategy, ideating stories, pitching them. And then building and nurturing relationships that we can leverage on behalf of our clients.

LR: Press contacts are vital and we work hard to make sure we have a great network of editors. We spend time on our feature strategies—teasing the stories out of the brand or designer, and then working out where we should tell that story. And as much as we pitch to editors, they will also come to us for help developing an idea. 

LI: At the same time, we’re growing our creative database. So we might be meeting with a new photographer whose work we really like, a new chef or artist; anyone that can help facilitate the presentation of our brands. We also meet with other PR firms—in fashion, hospitality and the food industry—to think about how our brands can work together, through a launch at a new restaurant, for example. 

EM: How much power do you have to make or break a brand?

LI: We are a key component, but everything else needs to work too. You can have a really good quality product that makes sense and is produced responsibly—the visuals are great, and the story’s brilliant. But then other parts come into play, like the functionality of the website, pricing, customer experience, packaging. All these make the brand. We hold power in the sense that we are guardians and protectors of a brand. We have to know when to say no to publicity, for example—an excellent publication might show interest but it might be the wrong topic or the wrong time.