Conversation with Nicola Ellegaard – MasterMinds

Today on MasterMinds, we meet a global communications leader who is redefining how strategic storytelling, brand visibility, and relationship-building shape modern organizations. Nicola Ellegaard, Managing Director at Budgie PR and one of the distinguished professionals selected for the PRWeek Middle East Power Book 2025, has built a career that blends analytical thinking with creative influence — elevating brands through clarity, strategy, and purpose-driven communication.

With a strong international background, Nicola’s journey began in the education industry before her passion for leadership and communication led her to pursue an M.A. in Corporate Communication at Aarhus School of Business. Her thesis — exploring Social Media, Relationship Marketing, and CSR — set the foundation for a career dedicated to shaping how organizations connect with audiences across platforms and cultures.

Today, she specializes in strategic PR, integrated communication, and high-impact messaging, helping brands strengthen visibility, build trust, and communicate with authenticity in a rapidly evolving media landscape.

Nicola’s work reflects a belief that meaningful communication isn’t just about being heard — it’s about creating resonance, building relationships, and driving long-term value.

I started my career as a language teacher (Danish as a second language for adults), right around 9/11. I loved my job, and I got to work with students, expats, and refugees from all over the world for almost a decade. However, the political climate in Denmark made it very difficult to secure a permanent job in the field. Sometimes, it felt like I was more of a border patrol officer than a language teacher since I was employed under the Ministry of Immigration, not the Ministry of Education.

I took courses abroad and became an Apple Distinguished Educator. I launched a language learning podcast and started to understand the value of adding more digital tools to your curriculum. From that moment, I developed an interest in educational PR and marketing, and I decided to enroll at business school to study Corporate Communication.

There are so many facets of the communications industry, and we sometimes use the term “communications” interchangeably. I’m not sure that’s always a good thing. Marketing and PR are two very distinct disciplines, for instance, but I always knew I had a deep passion for strategy and PR.

My role as a PR consultant is to advise my clients and develop a PR strategy that serves their business goals and objectives. That’s why we work so hard on their messaging – to make sure we communicate exactly what needs to be said to support their goals.

We need to make sure there aren’t any gaps or misalignments. Does the client actually communicate what they THINK they communicate? That part of my job is something I truly enjoy. Without a proper strategic foundation, you’re just flying blind.

Working in an agency or consultancy setting is very different from working in-house. Many account managers or directors dream of moving in-house, but in my opinion, the grass is not always greener.

When you work as a consultant or agency, you have an outside perspective that can transform an organization and find all those hidden gems that could be PR gold if told externally. As an agency, you understand the significance of having a media hit.

If you produce the same media hit working in-house, you might not have anyone to celebrate that win with. I am sure many in-house PR and comms pros experience this underwhelming feeling. The third-party perspective is inherently missing when you work in-house, and most of your days will include lengthy approval processes and meetings that don’t really get you anywhere.

The stakeholder map can be extremely complex in-house. As an agency, you have a lot more creative freedom, and your insights and ideas might be appreciated in a way that differs from the same ideas coming from an in-house employee. It is indeed a bit of a paradox.

The first thing that comes to mind is that the regional media landscape here is really unique. What works in Europe or elsewhere won’t necessarily work here, and there are tons of cultural considerations you need to be aware of all the time.

That’s another thing I often have to educate my clients about. It could be anything from using appropriate visuals to adapting a less controversial PR approach. The UAE is a melting pot, but there are still many written and unwritten rules you need to know. When it comes to PR and media relations, there are also many differences.

Dubai is slowly becoming the event capital of the world, adding more pressure to newsrooms that are already stretched thin. I am sure the hectic pace here influences everyone, including the media. The UAE media landscape is constantly evolving, and PR pros who can adapt and spot new opportunities while understanding cultural nuances will see the best results.

That’s a very interesting question. I use my teaching skills all the time since many of my prospects and clients are new to PR. I’ve always felt that teaching isn’t just about knowledge transfer. It’s also about empowering learners and making them realize their skills and talent.

I have always enjoyed the motivational part of my teaching job: Building something from scratch – enabling learners to move forward and communicate in a whole new language. I see a lot of similarities to PR here. This is exactly how we build a presence for clients in the media.

Many of my clients start from scratch and have never done any PR before. We create that “media-friendly” language and messaging together before we start pitching the media. As a language teacher, I met hundreds of students – perhaps more than a thousand – since I worked as a substitute teacher across several schools.

It was a privilege to meet and connect with so many fascinating people from all over the world every day. I often had to teach six to eight hours at a time with people I’d never met before, so I quickly learned how to create that human connection regardless of cultural backgrounds or limited communication skills.

Strategy always comes first. If what we are doing creatively doesn’t support the client’s overall strategy, then why are we doing it to begin with? Everything has to be aligned in this sense, otherwise you are just wasting time on random content that doesn’t really say anything.

Sometimes, the role of a PR consultant is actually to translate “creative” marketing copy into factual content that is easier to understand for journalists – without all the superlatives and hyperboles. It can sometimes be difficult to understand for marketing teams, but media can spot promotional content in seconds.

As a PR practitioner, it is crucial that you always follow best practices to track the results. In the past, agencies used really outdated reporting methods – and a lot of vanity metrics. The first thing I invested in was proper reporting software that saves me hours every day and frees up more time for strategy work, pitches, and targeted media outreach.

Using the best PR SaaS tools in the market allows me to deliver consistent results through clean and verified data. In the past, performance data could come from several different sources and cause confusion or inconsistencies. I don’t want to present data to my clients that I’m not able to explain. When you work with clean data, it means that the data is accurate, complete, and consistent – without any sugarcoating.

I keep seeing this as a double-edged sword, and the changes are happening really fast in the industry. With AI, we have a new challenge with new players in the market posing as PR “agencies” that can promise you coverage and “features” on imaginary websites that turn out to be non-indexed ghost sites.

With the belief that PR can be fully automated, we are also going to face a massive volume and authenticity crisis. Newsrooms are going to get overwhelmed by AI pitches, but I am sure there will be ways to filter irrelevant AI-content in the future. Some pitching platforms already detect and blacklist AI-pitches – for good reason.

Absolutely! Human relationships and the way we tell our clients’ stories and journeys will always be most important. Yes, we often use data insights to create data-led narratives, especially for business stories, but without the human element, nobody would bother reading them.

Combining data nuggets with real and human storytelling is truly an art form. Those stories cut through the noise and resonate with the outlet audiences.

I was once told that I am “too honest” to be in PR, so I made it my mission to prove that you can be a successful PR consultant while having a transparent approach.

Shortly after Budgie PR launched, I started posting on social media about transparency in PR, using #HonestPRTalks as my hashtag. The initial idea behind the hashtag was to address the many fake promises and “guarantees” of media coverage we often come across in the industry.

I believe you should have honest PR talks with your prospects from day one. Transparency has now become a differentiator for us. Budgie PR is the only agency in the region that shares all results and performance openly on the website.

Publishing all the cumulative results on the website was a pragmatic decision at first. I often shared those coverage reports with prospects to show them exactly what results I have landed for my clients. Case studies are great, but they can be manipulated to only show the best results without any indications of the time it took to land those results. I wanted a new and more honest way of showing how we help our clients.

Use every chance you get to absorb and learn. I did a summer internship at a PR agency here in 2011 to get some real exposure and industry experience. I loved every minute of it. I was 37 and probably one of the oldest interns Dubai has ever seen, but it was all worth it.

Find mentors, keep learning so you can keep up with the latest developments in an evolving industry. In this region, you really need to take time to learn and understand cultural nuances and unwritten rules. That local knowledge and cultural awareness will make you stand out. What you invest in your own education is going to pay off eventually.

My vision for Budgie PR emerged from within, so to speak. When I launched Budgie PR in 2022 as an independent PR consultancy, my first goal was to find a way to work in the PR industry without compromising my integrity.

I wanted to build a different agency where ‘transparency’ wasn’t just a tagline, but a foundation for how we operate. That’s why we publish all results openly. Prospects and clients deserve to see what they are paying for, measured with real results, and not just beautified case studies.

Currently, I work with clients in the finance and property sectors, but I also work on personal branding for founders and serial entrepreneurs in other industries.

Working with serial entrepreneurs means you have to stay flexible if they suddenly get new business ideas. This year, I supported a gaming startup for the launch – despite never having worked in gaming PR before.

PR is really having its moment right now with AI search, especially earned and traditional media. I am extremely hopeful about the future these days.

After years of pay-to-play hegemony and focus on influencer marketing, traditional earned media has become central to discovery and visibility thanks to generative engine optimisation. PR pros that master AI for LLM-discovery and brand visibility are going to dominate, for sure.

I have learned a lot about what goes on behind the scenes, from a PR perspective. It takes a lot of efforts for large organizations to align all their global communications and messaging.

Working with agile regional agencies with deep market expertise and cultural understanding can really add value to global brands. It is such an exciting process, and it’s an amazing feeling when big brands appreciate your hard work and results.

Of course, working with big names also means you need to adjust your PR efforts – depending on current global affairs. You need to be ready at all times with responses if your clients are suddenly in the global media spotlight. All clients should really have a crisis management plan ready.

I was trained at a small agency where I didn’t have the luxury of saying ‘no’ to new industries. Today, I’m really grateful for that experience since it taught me how to adapt and quickly learn the basics about new sectors.

From a PR perspective, you don’t really have to be an expert in the oil and gas sector, for instance, to develop PR stories for that industry. No oil and gas client would ever expect you to be an engineer or corrosion expert. You need to have a basic understanding of the topics, of course, but the most important skill is learning how to distinguish between what can become a real news story and what would be more suitable for the client’s website.

That is what you need to be able to identify as a PR consultant – across any sector you work in. Clients often get very excited about things in their business, but that doesn’t mean that everyone else would be equally excited to hear or read about it. To succeed in PR, you’ll need to act and think like a journalist and assess the story potential of every single business update your client brings to the table.

Sometimes, it’s just not relevant enough, even for niche or trade media. That’s when you learn how to say “This could be such a wonderful story for your website or social media.”

PR is the only way for startups and founders to generate third-party validation and credibility. An ad placement or billboard won’t ever make you trustworthy, but that’s what PR and earned media can do for you.

In the age of AI, PR has become even more important. That’s the only way your brand is going to show up in AI search results when customers ask AI for recommendations. You can’t put a price on credibility or discoverability.