“There’s no more out of date saying than ‘Today’s newspaper is tomorrow’s fish and chip wrapper,’ you know if something is written now and it’s wrong digitally, you need to get that changed. But also, you know that’s why journalists are more happy these days perhaps to change things online because it’s not like they have to put out a great big apology or a correction. A lot more of this goes on behind the scenes than you might think and the important thing is for the, you know, what’s there forever more digitally, written about someone, is accurate.”
Susan Freeman
Hi, I’m Susan Freeman. Welcome back to our PropertyShe podcast series brought to you by Mishcon de Reya in association with the London Real Estate Forum, where I get to interview some of the key influencers in the world of real estate and the built environment. Today, I am delighted to welcome Giles Barrie. Giles has over thirty years of experience and specialises in communication strategy, media relations, thought leadership, research and crisis communications. Giles is a former Editor in Chief of Property Week, who has also worked at the architect’s paper, Building Design, and as Deputy Editor at Building Magazine. Giles won British Society of Magazine Editors, Periodical Publishers Association and Association of Online Publishers and International Building Press Awards before joining FTI Consulting in 2013. Giles works in corporate and financial communications and public affairs and advises some of the UK’s best listed real estate companies, fund managers, developers, advisors, contractors and architects.
So now we are going to hear from Giles Barrie on his first career as a top ranking property journalist and his subsequent career pivot to trusted client advisor. Giles, good morning.
Giles Barrie
Morning Susan, nice to see you.
Susan Freeman
Looking at your bio, I realised it’s ten years since you stepped down after a ten year period as Editor of Property Week and then had a career pivot and joined FTI. So, I think we first met when you became Editor of Property Week in 2003, which is a few years ago now. So let’s just you know starting off talking about your career in journalism and what made you go into journalism in the first place?
Giles Barrie
Well Susan, my whole family are journalists. My father worked for the BBC, my mum was a prolific writer for Cosmopolitan and Good Housekeeping, my older brother worked for The Guardian and my younger brother was an award winning producer for Panorama so, it was kind of in the blood, it was all we ever talked about over the Sunday lunch if you like and it was just a kind of, a culture I’ve always been in and for the lost thirty odd years have got to know and love a load of people in media through that.
Susan Freeman
So there probably wasn’t much chance of you going into any other career but why real estate?
Giles Barrie
Like with other people, your first job is the one that you go on to do and I started off at something called Estates Times, which was a forerunner to Property Week and kind of fell in love with the built environment from there, you know it’s an amazing world which you can see, feel, touch, talk to your friends about, talk to your other half about. I absolutely adore it and I’ve worked also in architecture and construction media and it’s been a real privilege to see how the world and in particular London has changed since the nineties, it’s completely unrecognisable since then and all for the good, I think.
Susan Freeman
So it’s probably a little bit unusual for you to be interviewed?
Giles Barrie
I’ve never been interviewed in my life.
Susan Freeman
Wow, so this is a first. I am very flattered, Giles.
Giles Barrie
These days I like to stay in the shadows.
Susan Freeman
So, when you joined Property Week in 2003, can you give us sort of some idea, I mean who ruled the world of real estate? Who were the characters you were dealing with?
Giles Barrie
Well it was interesting because of course you had your FTSE 100 companies, your Land Securities and British Land and in those days, Hammerson and the like but it was very much a kind of world that was bestrode by the real big beasts, you know Gerald Ronson, Tony Pidgley, Sir John Ritblat, you know those characters had a bigger influence than entrepreneurs do now and you know sadly we lost Tony but Gerald and Sir John are still around. It was undoubtedly true that there were some really, really bit and influential, particularly developers, in those days.
Susan Freeman
And I think you also interviewed Donald Trump. How did that come about?
Giles Barrie
Yeah, well, it was an amazing experience actually. It was actually via CBRE, in fact I think they were probably Insignia Richard Ellis but, at Property Week. We always aimed really, really high. We always thought there’s no one we can’t, we can’t interview and if you don’t ask, you don’t get was always one of our sort of mantras so, via CBRE we arranged a meeting with Trump over in New York and I spent an hour and a half with him sitting in his, in the top of Trump Tower, a great array of pictures of himself, about 50 magazine covers, I can still see them sitting to my right and opposite him, you know, two or three feet away with this amazing haircut and kind of playing around with plans on his desk and playing around with this letter opening gold knife that he had but he talked very, very eloquently about buildings and property and was really the kind of first person I think who thought about lifestyle for the uber rich, as Nick Candy thought about it and about branding, you know, he’s very, very different now, of course I haven’t seen him since then and seeing him you know up in Court as he is today, is really, really, really strange and shocking, if you like but you know, I feel excited, I don’t know if privileged is the right word but excited to have met probably the most famous man in the world.
Susan Freeman
And could you see then that he was a future President of the United States of America?
Giles Barrie
Not in any way at all, Susan. He was, he was a real, real, real developer but at no time in our conversation, and you can read it in the Property Week archives, we made the best of it, we wrote it over eight pages, at no time did he say anything political, it was all about buildings but you know I’m proud that we kind of held him to account in that, I rang around a lot of people and you know one person called him a bully and a bullshitter and we wrote that, you know we didn’t take any prisoners in those days and you know I think, I think speaking to him is, has been a fascinating experience. He actually phoned our house in the interim between writing it and the piece coming out and my wife Vicky took the call from his office and I still remember standing in our kitchen scribbling things down because he wanted to add a bit more down, he had a big ego, that is one thing I will say.
Susan Freeman
Incredible, and are there any sort of other particular highlights, I mean there must be so many highlights of your, you know your time at Property Week but I mean is there anything in particular that sticks in your mind?
Giles Barrie
It was a fantastic ride, you know. We made a lot of money for our parent, UBM, which was a FTSE 250 company. We had a fantastic boom, you know the period up to 2008 was really, really electric. I worked with some brilliant, brilliant journalists and then we had a spectacular bust and although the bust was really, really painful for the real estate world and also for Property Week, you know we lost valued team members, we had to retrench, it kind of was absolutely fascinating and a learning experience to write about, the global financial crisis, you know I was writing and we were all writing, we were learning on the job about deep, deep, deep financial issues at a very, very turbulent time – this is kind of through 2008, 9, 10 – and it kind of triggered our own evolution into a really multi award winning digital brand at the time because the turbulence that it caused made us take, like everyone, a long hard look at ourselves and that you know I’m really proud to have won some big awards along with some great colleagues after the GFC on the back of digital work but it was, you know, great characters, great people, great colleagues.
Susan Freeman
And I know in your role as editor, there were worrying moments, I think you were threatened personally on one occasion. Can you tell our listeners about that without naming names?
Giles Barrie
Well, a lot of people don’t realise that journalism is exhilarating, it’s exciting but it also can be pretty menacing, you know, the real, real, real downside for me was legal disputes, you know, I remember once getting a call about something really nasty and actually physically retching after I’d been told about it and many, many, many sleepless nights because we had brilliant journalists, absolutely brilliant journalists but you know, particularly around some entrepreneurs, we would get very threatened if we wrote things that they didn’t like and you know one character actually threatened to kill me at one stage. So that’s, that’s the side of journalism that kind of ground me down a little bit in the end. We never paid out big money to people, we never had a big, really big apology but, and also because partly because of that, we had brilliant lawyers at Mishcon de Reya.
Susan Freeman
Thank you, Giles. I knew you were coming to that.
Giles Barrie
Who I hadn’t mentioned, who I hadn’t thought about saying that to but really Susan, your team were fantastic in defending us on occasion and that that’s the downside and people don’t realise that you know you can lose your job very, very quickly with a big mistake on a business magazine like Property Week, less on the national media but hey, but it goes with the territory, if you are gonna have a big subscription base and a commercially successful title, you’ve got to write what people want to know.
Susan Freeman
Yeah, and I remember you were torn when at the point when you were threatened because you had something that you really wanted to put up on the website and yet, you know, you weren’t quite sure where you stood legally. So, interesting, interesting times and of course who can forget you appearing on Channel 4 News with sunglasses on, reporting from the Tchenguiz’ boat in Cannes on the day that they were raided by the SFO, I mean was that unusual to be on prime time news?
Giles Barrie
Yeah, we used to find ourselves on the news quite often actually. People were always phoning up for a comment, you know, The Evening Standard and the like. I mean, as ever with MIPIM, I don’t know if we all just imagine it but things seem to happen at MIPIM or during the time of MIPIM, it’s exactly the same this year, you know, global banking crisis kind of flares up while you’re at MIPIM, you know it’s just so typical MIPIM isn’t it. Oliver Shah mentioned this in his React News column just the other week. So that year Robert and Vincent Tchenguiz had been raided by the Serious Fraud Office and actually, were fully cleared later but a former colleague of mine, Jennifer Rigby had made the leap from Property Week to Channel 4 News, called me when we were down there and suggested that we do this film, so yeah look it was good fun, I actually had a lot of time for Robert and Vincent, they were great characters and, as I say, were ultimately cleared but you know that’s all part of being in real estate and being in journalism, you know you always want to be talking about it and raising your profile, I guess.
Susan Freeman
Absolutely and you mentioned during your editorship, news reporting changed dramatically. I mean, did you see immediately what was happening because I think as you said, suddenly from having a once a week print magazine, every day became press day, I mean that must have been extremely challenging.
Giles Barrie
Yeah, like every minute became press day in the end, Susan. I mean, yeah when I started as a journalist it was a very gentlemanly lifestyle, you know you would, of course it would be exciting when, you know you go to press on the Wednesday and come out on a Friday and on Thursday and Friday you’d be out kind of researching, which could mean anything from the Henley Regatta to you name it. Always, always worked really, really hard but you know it was a more gentlemanly scene and then you know digital came, EGI, which was really, really great when it arrived, Estates Gazette Interactive kind of broke the mould and we at Property Week had to follow, CoStar News, now you have React News and Bisnow and others, are all firing on all cylinders all day, every day and it’s no exaggeration to say that a journalist, you know someone like Mark Kleinman on Sky News who is also absolutely brilliant or a David Hatcher on React News can hear something, stack it up as we used to say, and post it on Twitter and have a huge impact probably within three/five minutes of hearing about something, I mean that’s absolutely electric and you know, if you imagine, I can’t believe there’s many professions that have had a bigger change in working pattern than, patterns than journalists over the last twenty or thirty years.
Susan Freeman
What does that mean for journalism and the trade press because now everybody can be on social media and you know giving their version of what’s going on?
Giles Barrie
Yeah, look I think they have to work a lot harder and a lot more consistently and there are some really, really, really good reporters out there. I think also it’s been a kind of liberating of media, you know it used to be a monopoly really of someone who found themselves on a magazine or a newspaper or a broadcast and now there’s multiple real estate influencers out there, you know people have great followings on LinkedIn and we really encourage that and Susan, you yourself have become a notable influencer. We talked about going on Twitter ten years ago and now you’ve got, what, I think over 12,000 followers and so, so you’ve got as big a say as, well a bigger say than a lot of journalists.
Susan Freeman
No, well of course I wouldn’t have started on Twitter if it hadn’t been for you, Giles, as you know because you said, ‘well I think you ought to have a look at Twitter’ and I said, ‘why, you know it’s just scurrilous gossip’, I had a look and could see that it was an amazing source of information but I’d not intended to say anything but, you know, there you go. So you started me on that. So, how has comms changed as a result because you know if you’re a property company, you know how do you control what’s going to be said about you in the press?
Giles Barrie
I think it’s really interesting, well you know, now that I’m in communications and as I said I’ve been, I’ve been kind of in the background for ten years, Susan, and I actually really quite like that because it was all very public back at Property Week. I think, I think property companies also have to be, property companies, advisors, anyone looking after their communications has to be extremely agile and alert, you know I’ve worked on some really big crises over the years that just come out completely out of the blue and you’ve got to be extremely on it and work with a great in-house team who are on it as well. You know, so again it’s really, really, really 24/7. I talk to colleagues here who basically you know would go home in the evening and no one could reach them in the days of no mobiles. It couldn’t be more different now. I also think though what I really am, as I said before, a proponent of is capitalising fully on earned and owned media, you know, I think the really big difference now is that the real estate world can have its own voice, you know, there’s particularly during Covid, LinkedIn really, really came into its own and we’ve done a huge amount of work with companies on what they call their owned media, which is their own channels, you know LinkedIn in particular, you know you can post something and get literally thousands of readers, which is the same kind of punch as you get getting something earned in a real estate title, I think the two of them can work really, really well alongside each other and I think one without the other can’t work, I think earned and owned is where it is and it’s what we’re doing for an awful lot of clients. Producing the content, helping them produce the content for the owned and making it reach as many people but I would never, ever decry the need to get that earned media on all channels, from real estate, to national media, to broadcast, it still has that kudos and that appreciation that, you know, you’ve been covered by a neutral voice.
Susan Freeman
And presumably you have to work quite hard at getting the earned media?
Giles Barrie
Absolutely because there’s less space, although there’s big digital channels, there’s less space in print media now and people still like to see something in print actually. Of course, yeah, you’ve got to have a good story, you’ve got to have a good argument, you’ve got to be saying interesting things, to an extent you’ve got to be an admired and respected organisation and you have to have good, never underestimate good media relations, you know, journalists are human too and you know, want to be talking communicators and, in our sense, real estate organisations who they like and are interested in.
Susan Freeman
So, before we drill down a little bit into your career at FTI, I just wanted to mention that before you stepped down as Property Week Editor, there was an amazing tribute in the magazine from the, I mean vast number of once rookie journalists that you trained and I’ve not seen that before or after and they talked about you as an inspirational leader who really took the time to shape their careers and there are so many of them who then went on to you know, many went on to national media and one of the things that they mentioned was the dread inducing post-it notes and I wondered if they still featured in a you know high-tech age or whether the post-it notes are still used?
Giles Barrie
No, no, no. No, that’s long gone and you know, look, I love the team here at FTI, they’re really, really talented. You know, those days were I guess a different era. People worked in a different way and I still, I’m still in touch with nearly all of them. All we ever did was try and do the very best. It was a very, very fast-moving environment and you know I probably left you know ten dread inducing post-it notes over the years. Post-its are kind of out now, aren’t they?
Susan Freeman
Well, that’s why I wondered but it was quite funny but I mean, so many of the young journalists you trained are now senior journalists and still working in media, I mean you know people like Dan Thomas, Deidre Hipwell, Clare Barrett, I mean there are so many of them, you must have actually devoted quite a lot of your time to helping train them.
Giles Barrie
Well, to UBM, which was our former parent, we had a brilliant, brilliant training scheme overseen by a colleague now, Adrian Barrick, who is at the FT. Yeah, the three you named, you know, there’s others that I hugely admire and respect, you know, David Hatcher who played a big part or amazing part in creating React News, Helen Thomas who is on the FT, Angela Monahan who is now a senior on The Guardian, Deirdre, Clare, Dan, brilliant journalists and I’m still in touch with all them, I’m really, really pleased to say that. I’ve got a great affection for them all, I’m really, really, really incredibly proud of them all. All of them have done better than I ever did as a journalist and perhaps we played a role at Property Week, my deputy James Whitmore and I, in helping them along their way. It’s certainly great to see their names in the papers and when they come out with something brilliant.
Susan Freeman
And do you miss chasing a scoop? Because that’s something that came up in the tribute, how good you were at actually that story.
Giles Barrie
You know, I was 47 when I left Property Week and you know, it’s kind of hard to keep your edge. I’d been a journalist 25 years after that, you know, I used to love in the end getting stories and passing them onto the team. You know, I get just as much excitement now at FTI if we win new business or if we get a great, just a really nice email from a client, I had one yesterday from someone which kind of made my day, when we’ve delivered a really, really good service or again, you know secured some really good coverage or come up with a really interesting innovation or an idea, you know, there’s different, different ways to get a buzz, it probably took me two or three years to really, to really adapt to that but I think if you’re into your job, you find the highs whatever it is really.
Susan Freeman
It’s interesting. So, you’ve now had ten years at FTI advising property clients on their strategy. What do you reckon your well-honed journalistic skills brought to the role and was there anything that was like difficult to adapt to?
Giles Barrie
Yeah, it was really, really hard to adapt at first because you know if you’ve been doing something a long time, just the sheer change of career, a career change at 47 is quite a big thing but I’m lucky in that I was still in media, I stayed within the built environment, you know, it was probably a less big career change than say becoming an editor of a insurance title or something like that so, it really, really helped. Just a whole change of lifestyle. Having clients, which you would never do as a journalist, took a little bit of getting used to but I think, I’d like to think I’ve got the hang of it now. I really, I really, I really needed a change by then and you know I’m really glad I did it.
Susan Freeman
You mentioned you know dealing with sort of corporate crises and media crises, I mean what do you reckon corporates tend to get wrong? You know, if something, if something goes wrong, do they know how to, you know how to react to that? You know, do they know how to phone you quickly enough? How does it tend to go? What can go wrong?
Giles Barrie
I think listed companies tend to be absolutely brilliant at it because they know they have to be transparent and be clear to the stock market and I’ve worked with some real, real, real professionals who’ve got a real problem and within two or three hours of that emerging have you know, we’ve worked together to get a statement out and I think that’s brilliant. I think in the, outside the listed arena, you know companies can have a tendency to be in denial or hope for the best, you know if someone’s got a serious crisis which is almost certain to come out, you’ve got to be really, really, really fully prepared and I think it’s being in denial can be a problem and hoping for the best and I think I would always, if someone’s got a crisis and is feeling threatened, use your PR firm as your first line of defence. As a journalist, nothing is worse than, you know, the threat of legal action. I think it’s always best to use your PR firm as your first line of defence, to get something changed or removed or taken down, if it’s inaccurate, before going to lawyers. Some people go straight to lawyers, I think that can really, really up the ante. I think we see ourselves as the people who can solve a problem without the legal expense and the threat of lawyers but I also think journalists have to hold their hands up, if they’ve got something wrong, they should correct it and they tend to, you know, if you can prove something is wrong, the media we deal with across the board tend to respect that and change things. But I think, yeah, don’t be in denial, use your PR firm as a first line of defence, only go legal if it’s really, really necessary and people are refusing to change things or listen to you.
Susan Freeman
Yes, so obviously I might see things slightly differently from the legal side. The vote is that, you know…
Giles Barrie
Don’t get me wrong, if people aren’t playing ball and you’ve been seriously damaged, I see no problem with resorting to lawyers, you know, I’m a great believer in the truth and I can totally see why law firms have an important role to play.
Susan Freeman
Yeah and I think, you know, we would tend to try to you know negotiate, you know rather than you know look at the legal process as a first resort but I think the answer is that we would, we would work together. And are you able to tell our listeners about sort of any particular sort of crises that you have you know been able to deal with and defuse and sort of out?
Giles Barrie
No, because lots of these things never see the light of day, Susan, you know it could be something that’s defamatory, it could be something that’s just plain wrong. I think one thing these days that is way better, really in the digital age, is that people don’t go seeking apologies these days because you can just change stuff so quietly and seamlessly and it’s less humiliating for the journalist if they’ve got something wrong, it’s really important for the client that the record is there and it’s accurate, there’s no more out of date saying than “Today’s newspaper is tomorrow’s fish and chip wrapper” you know, if something is written now and it’s wrong digitally, you need to get that changed. But also, you know that’s why journalists are more happy these days perhaps to change things online because it’s not like they have to put out a great big apology or a correction. A lot more of this goes on behind the scenes than you might think and the important thing is for the, you know, what’s there forever more, digitally, written about someone, is accurate because that’s what’s coming on Google. So a lot of it goes on behind the scenes, Susan.
Susan Freeman
And are all your clients in the real estate sector?
Giles Barrie
No, we have clients, there’s 35 of us here in the, in our team at FTI, so FTI Consulting is a multibillion dollar, US listed organisation across a number of different segments and in Strategic Communications in London, which is PR basically, there’s 300 of us, I’m co-head of a 35 strong team which is really across the built environment. The majority of our clients will be real estate but we also work for architects, contractors and within real estate we work for a lot of listed companies, fund managers, developers, advisors, banks, the whole lot really.
Susan Freeman
And also in proptech I think? I mean you’re very…
Giles Barrie
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely in proptech. We’ve helped that grow, I think. We’ve got some really great clients, Pi Labs, VTS and Smart Spaces, Essensys and others, really, really good, who I think have helped to really, really, really shape the property sector in the last five/six years.
Susan Freeman
I think a lot of your clients are London based so, I wondered what your thoughts were on the challenges for London right now?
Giles Barrie
Well look, I think, I think, you know, I from London, I’m from London, Susan, you know apart from three years at university, I’ve lived here all my life and as I said, I’m really, really proud to see how it changed. I grew up in Black Heath, near Greenwich and you would never have gone over to the Isle of Dogs when I was a kid, you know, it was a complete no go zone and when you went into central London it was a complete dump, you know I remember Leicester Square and Trafalgar Square being really, really shabby and you know, we should never, ever underestimate the massive progress made since then. I think planning is a massive issue in London now, it seems very, very hard to get anything built and I don’t think we should get into the stage where you know things are turned down more than they are approved, you know, it’s really, really important to keep progressing in life in every arena and I think we should always be a city that says yes unless there’s a really good reason to say no because that’s progress really.
Susan Freeman
And do you think we’re too hard on ourselves as a city because we’re sort of always beating ourselves up about the things that don’t go according to plan so, you know for instance with Cross Rail, now the Elizabeth Line, there was so much focus on the fact that it was, you know it was late and over budget that we sort of somehow didn’t see that this was the most incredible achievement.
Giles Barrie
I think you’re right, Susan, you know, I mean if you talk to anyone abroad, they have tremendous respect for the United Kingdom and London in particular. I remember when Liz Truss was going through her disastrous premiership last year, hosting a brilliant journalist, Steve Cuozzo, who’s, I’ve known for a long time from the New York Post who was over and visiting and you know I took him to see Battersea Power Station, which he thought was incredible and Steve and his wife Jane also rode around London on the Elizabeth Line and at the very time that we were all in the absolute depths of despair and we thought Britain was going to the dogs and we were all finished and what a mess we’re in, Steve came back to America and wrote a big piece talking about how New York’s got its problems compared to London, which has just opened Battersea Power Station and the Elizabeth Line. And I thought hold on, that’s right, you know, we have got something to be proud of, we’re not such a, such a mess and I do think it takes an outside perspective sometimes to see just what a special place London and the UK is really.
Susan Freeman
I saw that article and I didn’t realise that you were behind it. Because I looked at that and I thought wow, yes, you know, we’re doing really well in London and yet, you’re right, you know we tend you know not to see that quite in the same way ourselves and of course if you compare you know London to New York at the moment, you know we’ll see there are certain areas where we are ahead. I think the, you know for instance return to the office has been a lot slower there and they, you know they have problems that we don’t necessarily have in London.
Giles Barrie
Yeah, look I think the price of, the price of apartments and housing in New York makes London look cheap and so much so that a lot of people have to travel in a long, long, long way to work, you know, I’m lucky enough to have a half an hour commute but I don’t live in a particularly smart part of London. That I am sure has driven the return to the office and you know I’m in five days a week just because I like it, colleagues are in three or four days a week, it really, really adds to the general buzz around the place here, I think.
Susan Freeman
Yes, and actually when you go back to what we were saying about the young journalists that trained, I mean that wouldn’t be possible in the same way with people working from home.
Giles Barrie
Yeah, it’s not just, it’s not just becoming good journalists, it’s the fun and the laughs and the camaraderie of not just journalism but all work, you know, I would have hated to look back and I’m by no means finished yet, Susan. I would have hated to look back over my time at work, you know, I want to be working for at least ten more years and thought ooh, wasn’t it fun spending three days a week or four days a week at home, I mean think of the things that wouldn’t have happened, you know, the friends I wouldn’t have made, the laughs I wouldn’t have had, the jokes we’ve had, you know just the, you know the same with clients, we get on really, really well and actually during lockdown we had some great experiences and it was quite bonding in some cases but you know I think the, there was a really great piece in The New Scientist about this last year. What people who spend the most of their time at home miss, and I totally get it with working families and things like that because I’ve been there and I probably would have spent a lot more time at home if my kids were young, but the whole point about coming into the office is the serendipity, what would have happened, right down to the friend of a friend you meet in the pub after work who you just wouldn’t have met otherwise.
Susan Freeman
It’s an interesting point, I have to say I was really focussing on that at MIPIM this year because I think a lot of people went there thinking well, you know do we need to travel to the South of France to see people that you know we would be able to see at home and I just a had a succession of these serendipitous meetings where I just ran into people I hadn’t expected to run into that I wouldn’t necessarily have seen otherwise and it sort of somehow makes you know the whole thing, whole thing work. And I just wondered, I mean what did you make, obviously you have been to quite a few MIPIMs through different economic cycles over the year, what did you make of this year?
Giles Barrie
Oh I really, really enjoyed it. I mean, I’ve been to almost thirty MIPIMs and you know started as you know a tiny, tiny thing in the Palais, two or three thousand people and you know obviously got very, very, very big in the mid noughties, a bit excessive you know with all the sort of banking money sloshing around and very tense by 2008 and then sort of rebooted itself. I thought it was really great this year because I felt there was a whole load of new people there, lots of people who hadn’t been to MIPIM for four years and I felt there was a kind of new generation there looking to get excited and get involved, some really, really good senior people, great content, nice weather which never does any harm, I thought it was a really, really good buzz but also overlaid as I said before, was traditional MIPIM kind of currency of there’s always something happening at MIPIM, there’s always a big talking point and as I said this year, it was banks really.
Susan Freeman
This is true. And I mean one of the issues that you know we have discussed over the years is the sort of general reputation of the real estate sector and it’s obviously a sector that we both love and care about and it’s always frustrating to find that people outside the real estate sector don’t view us with quite the same enthusiasm and do you see opportunities to improve it, you know where are we going wrong?
Giles Barrie
Oh, I think the property industry has always, should always hold a mirror up to itself, you know. It’s still not brilliant in terms of diversity, in all senses. Bisnow has a brilliant initiative called Rise going on this summer around sort of racial diversity in the industry, which is you know shockingly low. I think it’s really interesting, I mean women play a much bigger part than they used to but still not big enough at all. Back at Property Week in 2006, we did a women’s issue, guest edited by Liz Peace, which we banned any pictures of men in it and we had a Hundred Most Powerful Women in the Industry, a load of other, an interview with Ruth Kelly, who was a minister at the time, and I’m really sad to say that at that time, it was very, very hard to find a hundred powerful women in property, I think now you could find several hundred, which is fantastic but it’s still not a sector with enough senior women, it’s just obvious. But I think, I think people are trying and you know making progress.
Susan Freeman
And do you think there’s something about the real estate sector that discourages women?
Giles Barrie
I think going to MIPIM, you know it can look a bit laddish, you know, I think the MIPIM Lads Twitter handle, you know shone a light on things. So there is that kind of attitude which I think… you know, I once had to give a talk to Women in Property and I think there were probably a hundred women in the room and me and two or three men, and one of the women at the end of the, end of the session, said now you know how it feels like for us and you know, I don’t know what causes it, it’s probably deep-seated, historic reasons, reputation, what happens at schools, what’s happened within families over the years, what’s happened within certain universities but I do think, I do think firms are making a big effort, in particular the big agencies are doing everything they can to increase diversity within the property world.
Susan Freeman
I think that’s right and I think they’ve been doing it for, you know for quite a long time and I think the problem is they do you know attract quite a lot of women graduates but then they, a lot of them leave when they have children and then you know it’s difficult, it’s difficult to get back but I know everybody is much more flexible now about sort of working, you know working hours but I suppose if you see your male colleagues you know being able to do you know the after work activities and get involved in the social things and you can’t, it makes it, it makes it more challenging. So, Giles do you have any thoughts on virtual real estate? Do you get excited about that?
Giles Barrie
I struggle to, Susan. You know, I’ve always tried to be into all things tech and digital but it’s interesting, Meta, Meta has started to sort of review its ambitions in that world a bit and you know, you hear about virtual homes or virtual sites changing hands for like millions of dollars and it’s a bit odd. I don’t think people quite get that. I’m a massive believer that tech changes things more than we’d always expect it to because that’s tended to be what’s happened but this one, I think the jury is out.
Susan Freeman
Yeah, it’s interesting. We’re certainly very much at the beginning of you know of that journey but it’s interesting that you know some of the retailers and agents you know have started to have a presence in that world to just put out feelers but it’s difficult to get your mind round really.
Giles Barrie
Well, like I say, always tech has a bigger influence than we think, you know I remember back in the noughties, shopping centre landlord executives, mostly men, mostly in their fifties or even sixties, would always say oh women will always be coming to shopping centres because they’ll never buy clothes online, they need to touch it and feel it and I remember thinking well, how do you know and low and behold, my wife and daughter, just, they buy all their clothes online and why shouldn’t they, you know, so I think it’s always best to overestimate or over account for what will happen with technology than write it off.
Susan Freeman
You’re right and I remember at sort of Business School when all this was starting to happen and absolutely the view was that high end fashion certainly wouldn’t be sold online and then along came Net-a-Porter and it was, it was an incredible success but you also make a good point that a lot of the retailers didn’t actually have women on their boards, which was odd because a high percentage of their customers were women.
Giles Barrie
Hey but Primark does brilliantly even without a serious online operation so, same as Private Eye in media, doesn’t bother with the internet apart from sell subscriptions and does pretty well. So I think if you’ve got a brilliant, brilliant product then you, you know you can row your own boat.
Susan Freeman
And Primark does seem to be the sort of one exception doesn’t it, it’s, it’s pretty, it’s pretty amazing but I think even those of us that didn’t buy clothes online, certainly started to during lockdown. So, Giles, with your writing skills, have you, have you got a yearning to write a, write a book perhaps?
Giles Barrie
I have written a book actually, Susan. I wrote a book when I was 22 called 525 Ways to be a Better Manager. It was my break into media. A friend of mine, his dad needed someone to co-write a book for him. It’s actually sold over 100,000 copies. It was a kind of idiots guide to management, which did particularly well in emerging nations like China and Eastern Europe. My staff, or the team here, embarrassed me by wheeling it out at our Christmas party last year. So, I’ve done that but being more serious, you know, I wish I’d taken more notes or written a diary every night kind of over the time when I was a journalist, if I’m honest because you look and see and hear so much that by now, I definitely could have done a book but I think that’s better left to the likes of Peter Bill who’s done a, done some good ones so, you know, sadly not.
Susan Freeman
And I think also, the problem is if you are still in the, you know still in the business, you would find that a lot of the more interesting things you’d like to write about, you probably couldn’t so the whole thing would be far less sort of juicy than it otherwise would be.
Giles Barrie
Yes, yes, I’d definitely have to run it by Mishcon’s lawyers.
Susan Freeman
Yeah, that’s true. So, Giles, when you’re not working, what, what are your sort of main interests?
Giles Barrie
God, I read loads and loads and loads of books, I really like going to the cinema, I’m a big football and cricket fan, I love going to the pub, I like spending as much time as possible with my wife Vicky, I’m really, really proud of my children Eva and Daniel, you know, I think it’s really, really important to have a life outside work that’s very, very different. Vicky is training to be a counsellor, as in a counsellor that people talk to, and has worked in schools over the years. I quite like coming home from the world of real estate and media and talking about something completely different. I think it’s important to stay grounded in that way and you know try and not think about work as much as possible outside work, although it’s always, always on my mind really.
Susan Freeman
And I suppose there are the odd calls sort of outside normal work hours when a crisis comes up.
Giles Barrie
All the time, all the time but I like that as well, you know.
Susan Freeman
And, I haven’t seen your children for many years, I mean, since you mentioned this family interest in journalism, have either of them gone in the direction of journalism?
Giles Barrie
My daughter Eva is in what you broadly call media, she’s currently working for an advertising agency. Daniel, my son, is at university, he’s very, very into politics, you know I think the thing people have to realise these days is, journalism is quite, quite a hard game in terms of the salary levels are shockingly low and you know one thing I really do believe in is that you know, it shouldn’t be a kind of world just for the children of the better off, you know, there’s some great journalists out there that haven’t come from privileged backgrounds and I’m afraid because of the economics of it, people don’t get paid very much these days and you know it needs to be, they need to be respected and rewarded for the very, very hard life, exhilarating life but at times risky life that they lead.
Susan Freeman
No, that, that’s absolutely, absolutely true. And Giles, as we’re coming to the end of this interview, maybe you should tell me what I should have asked you that I haven’t asked you during the course of the last, last half an hour or so.
Giles Barrie
Oh Susan. Any regrets? Not really. Would I have done anything else? No. You know, I can’t see myself doing anything else, you know, I’ve got a very short attention span, I can’t believe anyone, I find it amazing that people do jobs that they’re not interested in. I wouldn’t change a thing, Susan but you know, I’m looking forward to learning. I’ve got a lot of friends who are retired and I love work because it keeps me young, you know, it keeps you learning, keeps you engaged. As I said, I come into the office every day. One of the best things is coming in and seeing, seeing people in their twenties and hearing what they’re talking about and what they’re doing, I love all that.
Susan Freeman
Yes. It’s great to about new things. I mean, talking about, you know not wanting to retire and you look at what’s happening in France and that huge sort of you know revolt about you know the idea of increasing the retirement age from, what is it, from 60 to 62, you know you wonder what all these people are planning to do with their retirement.
Giles Barrie
Yeah, sure. It’s just boring. That’s what I don’t, you know, there’s plenty of time to do all that and look why not keep learning really.
Susan Freeman
Absolutely, I’m with you on that. Well Giles, that’s great, I am honoured to have been allowed to interview you and I hope, I hope you didn’t find it too difficult.
Giles Barrie
No, it’s an intriguing experience, Susan being asked questions rather than asking the questions and that we’re old friends, it’s really nice to, nice to chat. I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t speak to anyone else, Susan so thank you for having me.
Susan Freeman
It’s a great pleasure, Giles. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Giles. It’s really fascinating to hear from someone who has such a deep understanding of both the real estate sector and the media and the person who started me on my social media career which led to this podcast.
So, that’s it for now. I hope you enjoyed today’s conversation. Please join us for the next PropertyShe podcast interview coming very shortly.
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