Evie Barrett wants the PR industry to have more faith in itself
At a coffee shop in Soho, PRWeek UK’s Deputy News Editor preaches the power of ‘genuine creative ideas’
There are only a handful of people who decide which stories get published about the public relations industry. Although she thinks of herself in more modest terms, Evie Barrett joined that exclusive list when she was promoted to Deputy News Editor of PRWeek UK in June 2025, only a month before turning twenty-four.
“I’m not sure I personally have as much influence over the industry”, she said in a way that suggests that she had thought about this before. “It’s tricky, especially having never worked in PR, to feel like I’m a fountain of knowledge on these things”. Yet, it seems like she’s always being courted by the industry’s top executives. The first time Evie and I met for coffee, she’d just had lunch with Greg Jones, European CEO of MSQ agency Smarts, at a nearby venue. And when we met again recently at the same joint, she was returning from her meeting with the sports agency, Premier. When she arrived, I was fully set up and had ordered some green tea. She sat opposite me, my laptop and notebook between us.
It’s understandable that Evie would be reserved about her contributions to the industry if she doesn’t think it’s a rare feat. “I think Haymarket [PRWeek’s parent company], in general, is quite good at trusting its young talent with positions of authority. There are various people in their twenties at other Haymarket titles in Deputy Editor roles of sorts,” she told me. Her smile at that moment bore a strong resemblance to coyness. I could not help but think she was genuine; she never seems over-the-top; to celebrate her most consequential promotion yet, she drove back home to visit her family—mother, father, and younger brother—for dinner. “Nothing too dramatic.” She simply got on with the work.
Evie was born and raised in Basingstoke, Hampshire. Although she didn’t have a fancy education, by her own admission, she was still the first in her family to go to university. As a kid, she liked English and Maths—a rare combination—but figured that whatever she did long-term “needed an element of creativity”. Since math wasn’t a viable path to achieve this, she chose words over numbers. She chose journalism, earning a BA from Kingston University (KU) in 2022. Like many journalists who have come before her, she wrote for the school paper, The River Newspaper, and in perfect foreshadowing, served as its News Editor. A simple Google search shows that in 2020, Evie won KU’s Most Promising Journalist award, and in 2022, she was named KU’s News Reporter of the Year.
Later in our conversation, Evie would make a stronger case for creativity and, ironically, sound like a fountain of knowledge. “I’d like to see the PR industry have a bit more faith in itself. Because I think, at the moment, especially for consumer PR, it’s difficult. It’s rare that you see consumer PR agencies that just do that [consumer PR] nowadays,” she says in response to what she hopes the industry can change about itself. “Agencies are adapting by taking on more social media work or more integrated briefs. But I hope that PR can prove its worth at its core by showing that genuine creative ideas that earn attention are still what is best for a brand. PR still has value, in that a good idea, that doesn’t need paid spend behind it, is still the most powerful thing above all”.
On the 12th of May 2022, PRWeek released the first episode of its ‘Beyond the Noise’ podcast. In doing so, it adapted to the needs of the changing media consumer. So while Evie trained to be a writer, she now finds herself as one of the podcast’s hosts. “I think public speaking generally is something that I’ve had to become better at. It’s not something I necessarily thought I’d be signing up to do when I became a journalist. I think a lot of people get into journalism because they like writing, but nowadays you have to host podcasts, speak on panels and conferences, and things like that. So you do have to work on the confidence side of it in terms of speaking.” Strangely, the work she’s proudest of since joining the magazine is her podcast interviews. “The nicest ones are where I’ve interviewed someone who is maybe well known, outside the PR sphere. I can send it to my family, so they can understand what I do”. We both laughed.
As if podcasting wasn’t enough, she had to speak with me, and this time, on the other side of questioning. But I think she prefers to be the one asking the questions. “It’s quite intimidating. I mean, I’ve never envied people I’m interviewing because I know it’s a much easier job to sit and ask questions and wait for an answer than it is to actually think about what response you’re going to give and how you might be quoted”. After I turned off the recording, she just had to ask me a question of her own, “Did you get everything you needed?”
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