I’m Ben Veal…
A PR and digital marketing professional based in Wiltshire, with 5 years’ experience in PR, marketing and brand development. In short, I’m a wearer of many hats.
I am an Account Manager for Plum Communications & PR Ltd, a leading creative communications agency which provides innovative marketing and PR solutions to a range of clients in Somerset and Wiltshire.
I’m also the co-founder of Guru Magazine, the world’s first digital-only science lifestyle magazine, which launched in June 2011.
As the ‘Media Guru’ (yes, I came up with that moniker), I’m responsible for the magazine’s marketing and publicity, primarily by using social media to its full advantage. Guru uses crowd-sourced content to deliver current affairs, news and features from a scientific slant, without the ‘geek’ factor you get in a regular science magazine. Try it – you just might like it.
I’m also very proud to be an Accredited Practitioner and Member of The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (MCIPR). I’ve served on the CIPR West of England Committee for the past two years and am the Social Media Officer for the region, sharing best practice and news of upcoming events across Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Oh yes, and my dirty little secret – I’m a wrestling journalist. Yes, that’s right, professional wrestling. I started watching the sport in the early 1990s as a very young man, and, unlike my peers, I never quite grew out of it. Now I run a wrestling news site called Collar & Elbow, through which I regularly interview some of the industry’s biggest names, both in the UK and the US. Somebody’s got to do it, after all.
In a previous life, I also used to handle PR for Andrews, one of the UK’s leading independent property specialists with over 80 branches across the South of England. I was part of the in-house team that won the silver award for ‘Best Marketing’ at The Sunday Times 2010 EA Awards, and was firmly involved in driving forward Andrews’ CSR activity – in particular the implementation of a charity campaign in conjunction with Oxfam and ActionAid which raised over £17,000 for those worthy causes last year. It’s a role that I’m still very proud of.
And going right back to the beginning, I have an Honours degree in Film and Communication Studies from Cambridge’s Anglia Ruskin University and hold the CIPR Advanced Certificate in Public Relations from Cambridge Marketing College.
What else can I tell you?
I’m a keen photographer (it comes with the turf), an amateur novelist and script-writer (by amateur, I mean that I have written many but published none), and I also occasionally try my hand at painting, with mostly limited success. Oh yes, I also keep freerange chickens, and ‘enjoy’ running, having now survived two half marathons. I’m still contemplating whether or not I can face a third.
