INTERVIEW
MIDNIGHT MOVER
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John Peel played our record and he said it was the best name for a band he had ever heard.
Caraline Brown, founder and MD of Midnight Communications, celebrates her company’s 21st anniversary this year. Midnight was at the forefront of the Internet revolution as the first PR company to recognise its huge impact, and, as well as winning the title of PR Week’s PR Company of the Year, the firm also produces the highlyregarded Sussex Business Awards. Ian Trevett spoke to Caraline about how she created such a successful brand.
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I
have known Caraline for the best part of 15 years and there has always been one constant: if you are invited to a Midnight
revenge in print. In organising events, Caraline
played her band’s record on Radio 1. And she
simply applies the same professionalism and
has only just started, as she reveals when I ask
attention to detail she has in any aspects of her
her what her current ambitions are:
Communications event, you don’t miss it; you
spectacular career in PR, in which she rode
know it will be expertly run, the venue will be
the wave of the Internet boom and broke down
country, to travel the world, to come up with
just right, the guest list will be spot-on, and
the barriers in a profession which had been a
a death-defying app; to come up with a really
you will have a great time. Always sociable,
largely male preserve.
good killer idea. I’ve had loads of business
Caraline knows how to put on a fantastic party.
“I want to write a novel, to live in a foreign
Along the way, she sold her company and
ideas over my life and I’ve never had the time
To start a feature making the point that
bought it back for a fraction of the price, she
or the luxury to make them work. I’ve got one
Caraline is adept at organising events is not
led Midnight to the accolade of PR Week’s PR
more dance left in me, as the song goes, and
the introduction she would choose, but the
Company of the Year (as well as winning several
I’d like to do another business. When I set up
fact is that in my career as a writer, editor and
South East Consultancy of the Year awards), and
the Brighton Business Awards, that was a
publisher, I have largely encountered Caraline
she defied the convention that a successful PR
totally new venture, which is now in its 11th
through the PR company’s events. The media
company has to be in the centre of London. But
year. We acquired the Sussex Awards, and
can be a spoilt, judgemental herd, and the
Caraline enjoys defying conventions. She worked
that’s all gone well. I’d like to set up a gay
perception of a client can hang on the success
in a women’s refuge and refuses to work with
wedding chapel. I’ve always wanted to set up a
of a launch event. On New Year’s Eve 1999,
unethical businesses; she is a musician, an
taxidermy shop.”
journalists were left queuing outside in the
active Labour Party member and recounts her
rain at the Millennium Dome, and they got their
proudest moment as being the time John Peel
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All a bit outlandish? Her back story suggests otherwise…