Our people
Neil Mainland
Neil has spent the past 18 years in financial services PR. He was a director at Valin Pollen in the 80s, then formed and ran his own agency for 10 years before selling the business to Financial Dynamics, where he worked as a partner until April 2002. His particular interests span the life, pensions and investments. He is involved in planning and positioning for most of the agency’s clients and he has long experience of advising directors and boards. He continues to write extensively.
Prior to entering the financial services industry, Neil was an industrial journalist, latterly for the Daily Telegraph. On moving into PR he passed the Stock Exchange’s Registered Representative exams. He is a past chairman of the IPR Corporate + Financial Group.
Brenda Bates
Brenda has spent the past 20 years working in corporate and financial communications. Her experience covers all aspects from advertising planning, marketing and market research to PR, media relations, crisis management, brand, corporate identity, employee communications and crisis and issues management.
Most recently Brenda was Director of Corporate Communications at Aon, the world’s largest insurance and reinsurance broker, where she sat on the main London board. Prior to joining Aon Brenda worked for Gavin Anderson & Company a specialist financial and corporate communications consultancy where she was a board director for 13 years. In addition to an extensive client list Brenda was responsible for the development and management of the Investment Funds Survey (IFS), a quarterly tracking study of comparative information on perceptions and performance of Unit Trusts and OEICSs amongst both IFAs and consumers.
Phoebe Davison
Phoebe has spent eight years in the financial services industry, working on public relations, editorial and investment research roles. Prior to joining Mainland, she spent five years as an investment fund analyst at Morningstar (London), a global investment research company. Here, she interviewed numerous investment managers for fund analyst reports and wrote news stories, features and educational articles for Morningstar UK’s consumer and trade audiences. She devised Morningstar’s press relations programme and acted as the company’s UK spokesperson.
Present clients include iimia Investment Group, Jupiter Unit Trust Managers and Retirement Plus.
Zoe Butt
Zoe joined Mainland from Holt PR where she looked after a range of financial services companies. Zoe has a degree in journalism and worked at the FT Business publications Money Management and Financial Adviser, predominantly in feature writing roles.
She currently works with clients in several different industries including asset management, employee benefits and mortgages. Past and present clients include The Annuity Bureau, Artemis, Hornbuckle Mitchell, L&C Pensions, MGM Assurance, Retirement Plus and Tri Investments, Positive Solutions, e.surv Chartered Surveyors and Truestone.
Kelly Rawlinson
Kelly has worked in financial services for over five years. She joined Mainland PR in 2004 from FIM, a hedge fund of funds company. Prior to that she spent two years at Eveleigh and Huckle, an independent financial adviser, where she gained the FP1 certificate. Kelly also worked as a pensions clerk at Abbey Life.
Before entering the financial services industry, she gained a BA (Hons) in International Business.
Kelly works on a range of clients including Bramdean Asset Management, Hiscox Investment Management, Jupiter and Midas Capital. Past clients include Scottish Life, Royal London Group and The Mortgage Business Expo. She also volunteers as a press officer for UNIFEM UK, the United Nations’ fund for the development of women.
Melanie Bradley
Melanie joined Mainland from Bournemouth University where she a gained a BA (Hons) in Public Relations. She has previous experience working in the BBC Worldwide press office and subsequently the marketing department at HBOS. Melanie decided however that her interests lie in the corporate and financial PR arena. Her current clients include Bramdean Asset Management, Retirement Plus and Tri Investments.
