We sat down with our Strategy & Operations Director, Nate, and asked him nine questions to unpack what he’s learned working in a boutique PR turned to full-service agency over the last nine years.
Q: Nate, what’s the biggest difference in Papermill when you started in 2016 versus the Papermill you know in -2025?
A: While the breadth in our service offering has probably quadrupled, the ability to measure success has become vastly harder to define. One of the key things we do for our clients is define a goal up front – is it reach, is it sales, is it sentiment? If we can clarify that answer from the start, we can tailor a strategy to really meet the client’ss objective. Back in 2016, we just didn’t have that same level of reporting or data that we have today. Oh, and back then, I wore skinny jeans in the office … which will never happen again!
Q: Do you think our industry has become harder to navigate or easier?
A: Well, an agency is meant to do the navigation for you, call me Google Maps!
I think what we see now is marketing and holistic communications have become a lot more fragmented, which means there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits all model for clients. You’ve got to be bespoke in your approach and more importantly, you have to listen. There’s no point taking on a campaign if you’ve got misaligned objectives from the outset.
Q. What’s the hardest part of the job?
A. Pretending to be okay with some of the terrible music we have had to listen to in this office.
Q. What’s the best part of the job?
A. Knowing my music taste is superior? No, I would say sharing a good story. We see thousands of ads and brand messages every day, so when you work on something that really cuts through and you see it everywhere, that’s a really amazing feeling.
Q. What about AI? Do you think AI is taking our jobs?
A. AI is our friend – a new, good friend! When I started at Papermill, tools and systems and software were just nowhere near what they are now.
AI takes all of the grunt work out of the admin tasks that we used to hate doing and reinvests that time back into our clients and getting results. The best and most relevant example is taking minutes in a meeting. AI can scribe Zoom calls for us (and mostly well – a few LOLs here and there)
Q: What do you think makes the most successful campaigns?
A: Relationships! At the end of the day, we’re in the world of people so if you hate people (and let’s face it, some people do), you’re not going to get the best out of your client or campaign. We have some clients we’ve held at Papermill for over a decade now where the relationship is the key driver in being able to get the best out of each other. Without that rapport, you don’t get access to those sound bites that might make a great PR headline or a demographic insight that might inform a branding decision.
Q. What would you tell Nate nine years ago if you were giving him career advice?
A. Embrace the unknown! You will not learn, grow or evolve if you stay in one lane.
Q. What’s kept you at Papermill for so long?
A. Largely our agency’s ethos around reinventing itself and embracing the idea of new and old media. The agency game can be tough and rightfully or wrongfully, our industry is demanding the workforce to become more and more two dimensional in skillset. For me, that’s exciting – and for Papermill, it has probably been a core reason why the agency is still going strong 15 years later.
Q. What’s the forecast for 2025?
A. If you asked me at the start of 2024 what a BRAT summer was, I’d have no idea what that means (and maybe some of you reading this still don’t) but that’s the thing about communications – it’s incredibly unpredictable in the best possible way. We have a corporate part to our business, which is largely influenced through policy changes, government and funding deals and then a consumer and lifestyle arm of our business that are creating PR hooks out of memes, trends and internet culture. We really do get the best of both worlds.
