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By day Darren is a PR professional and interested in bringing new products and services to market. By night Darren enjoys good food and wine, mountain biking and swimming. Past pursuits include running a successful experiential gift business and circumnavigating the globe as a yacht captain. Darren has been actively involved in many organisations including the Melbourne Juniour Chamber of Commerce of which I am the current Marketing Director. He is the current Immediate Past President. I put some questions to him this week, and you can find his answers below.

1. Why did you get in to your current job?
After running my experiential gift business, I liked the PR side and had a lot of fun coordinating stunts such as abseiling Santa Claus off the Westin Hotel in Melbourne for the City of Melbourne’s Christmas celebrations or ‘throwing a mum to the sharks’ for Mothers Day. Once the business was gone, I followed the PR angle and ended up here.

2. Why should business owners consider hiring a PR consultant?
PR is all about communication. It should be a part of all marketing plans and be integrated in the business and align with overall goals. It is all about talking to the right people, in the right way to help get the right results.

3. What sort of clients do you work with?
I generally work with SME’s who realize that simply paying for advertising doesn’t get them more customers or build a reputation and they see the need to communicate and connect with customers in a more meaningful way.

4. What could a client expect after engaging the services of Darren Saffin?
They could expect a cutting edge strategy designed to help achieve their goals, implemented professionally and delivered on time and on budget.

5. Do you have any career mentors?
I strongly believe in having mentors and I have had a variety along the way, depending on what I wanted to learn or develop at different stages in my career.

6. You have been actively involved in the Melbourne Junior Chamber of Commerce for a long time. How has this benefited your career?
The MJCC has been great in letting me develop essential business skills from the soft skills such as communication and working with people, to allowing me to build hard skills such as the opportunity to sit on a real life board and learn corporate governance.

Alongside all of this is the like minded peer group I have developed and keep in touch with. I think this is the most important thing the MJCC offers young business professionals.

7. What advice would you give John Howard and Kevin Rudd about PR strategy throughout the upcoming election campaign?
Politics is always a PR challenge. I think these days people know ‘spin’ when they hear it and I would simply say be truthful. There are no secrets in this day and age and the truth will out, especially in an election year.

8. You have previously run an experiential gift business. Tell us a bit about it.
This was a load of fun. The business allowed people to give experiences such as driving a tank, flying a helicopter, a coffee connoisseur course or bicycle wine tour as gifts. We also managed events for the corporate hospitality market. Birthdays don’t have to be chocolates and flowers anymore!

9. What was it like traveling the globe in a yacht? Did the experience help you in your business ventures?
It was fantastic and meant I visited places I hadn’t even heard of when I started as well as lots of ones I had. I think it helped because it opened my mind to different ways of thinking and doing things. The world is pretty small and getting smaller so it is important not to be bogged down in one way of working.

10. Do you follow the AFL? If so, which team do you support?
I have a soft spot for both Melbourne and Hawthorn.

If you are interested in finding out more about Darren’s company DJS Communications, you can visit his website here.