In this insightful interview, Sharon Flaherty, founder of the award-winning agency Folk, shares her journey from financial journalism to building one of the UK’s leading inclusive communications firms. She reflects on the evolving challenges in marketing—from geopolitical uncertainty and shifting DEI narratives to the rise of AI and its impact on creativity and authenticity. Sharon discusses Folk’s strategic approach to inclusive marketing, the tools she relies on, and her commitment to working with ethically aligned brands.
This conversation is a preview of the upcoming webinar where Sharon will go deeper into the realities marketers face in 2025, how brands can remain culturally relevant without losing their core values, and why inclusion should no longer be an afterthought.
Join the webinar here: Register Now
Q1. Tell us about your business, its brand(s) and your role
Folk is a multi-award-winning creative communications agency specialising in strategic comms.
Founded in 2014, we have established ourselves as a leading force in delivering impactful, inclusive and results-driven communications. We’re really committed to inclusion and particularly inclusive comms. We’ve built a unique panel of inclusive communications professionals to help us in our mission to help brands be inclusive in their comms as standard not an afterthought. Our goal is to help brands communicate in meaningful and memorable ways and do so inclusively, so they reach the audiences they want to and don’t unintentionally exclude them.
Q2. What career path did you take to get into marketing?
I did a degree in International Business, followed by a postgrad in Journalism at City University. A few years into being a financial journalist at the Financial Times, I moved in-house to be the editor for Confused.com managing content and subsequently PR and Social. I then moved to head up the PR and Social for Moneysupermarket.com and Travelsupremarket.com before setting up my own agency, Folk.
Q3. What are the biggest challenges for marketers?
It’s always interesting to be a marketer but there’s always times where things get even more interesting, this is one of those times. The impact of global political tensions, especially Trump’s tariffs, means the world as we know it is changing. Tariffs are making economic growth unpredictable, therefore creating continued business uncertainty. This leads to challenges for marketers from budget constraints, smaller teams, and interesting questions and roll-backs on Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI). Since Trump announced a U-turn on anything ‘woke’ or DEI, this narrative has begun to spread to the UK and some firms here are also leaning away from DEI compared to 5 years ago after the black lives matters movement. On top of that we have AI and the different ways businesses are adopting it for good and bad. We’ve recently seen a rise in fake contributors and commentators which means comms teams may need to prove that the experts they are putting forward to media and using in campaigns, really are who they say they are, or it risks damaging a brand’s reputation. And I think that’s at the heart of all of the challenges for marketers today, protecting a brand’s reputation has always been key, but it’s much harder now given how easy it is to fall foul of cultural moods and expectations. Knowing what you genuinely stand for and sticking to it regardless of how the wind blows politically is crucial to be an authentic brand.
Q4. How does an innovative approach to marketing allow you to meet the challenge?
It’s always about thinking differently about a challenge and reflecting the current world we’re living in, so what we do as marketers protects a brand but makes it cultural relevant too. We have to be much more alert now to the mood of not just our nation, but the world and how that plays out in the brands we represent.
Q5. Can you share a best practice model / tool / technique that you couldn’t be without / believe every marketer needs
To make sure we are as inclusive as we can be in our work at Folk, we created a set of 6 principles that act as a strategic framework when assessing if your campaign has hit the mark when it comes to inclusivity. By running our campaigns (and all work) through this lens, we make sure we have thought about inclusion from the outset. These principles can be found here: Our inclusive principles - The Folk Group - Inclusive communications agency
Q6. What is your go to resource e.g. books/podcasts that you recommend to marketeers?
Some sources of inspiration include Julian Cole for Strategy, reviewing the Cannes Lions winners, Project Nemo, as 12 month disability campaign to improve disability inclusion in the fintech sector. Project Nemo - Accelerating disability inclusion in FinTech
Q7. What is your view on the impact of AI for marketers?
AI can level the playing field with brands that have smaller budgets compared to those that have bigger budgets. For example, Sora can help with video for brands that may not have had the budget to do it at scale. It allows you to create a number of videos to test different messages. You can then put a small amount of paid media behind say 50 videos to see which does best with your audience. This isn’t something brands without deep pockets could have done before to this degree, so it creates opportunities to scale marketing departments for smaller brands, improve testing and ultimately improve the final work that gets put out into the world, which has to be a good thing. There’s plenty of downsides to AI but I won’t go into those here.
Q8. How important is sustainability and what impact does this have on your decision making/role?
The older I get, the more sustainability touches on more areas of my life personally. Professionally at Folk, we are much more focused on working with brands who are doing something that doesn’t damage our planet. For example, a core group of brands we work with and are looking to do more work with, is in the renewable energy space. We won’t work with brands who ethically breach our moral code of conduct. We’ve also signed up to Ecovadis, to ensure we are managing our ESG risks and improving the sustainability performance of our organisation and our supply chain.
Q9, What advice do you have for people considering a career in marketing?
Learn as many practical skills as you can. Those who can demonstrate they have strong multimedia skills will have a head start. There’s so many people who I have interviewed who will say ‘I'm not very good at social,’ that just can’t be in 2025.’ Know all of the platforms, even the ones you don’t use. It’s not enough to know Tik Tok but not understand LinkedIn or discord or reddit.
Join the free webinar here at 1pm, Thursday 22nd May here: Register Now