Dutch PR Awards 2025 - Sophie Nicholson about The Romans

The Romans is participating in the Dutch PR Awards 2025 and submitted itself for PR Agency of the Year 2025

The Romans is participating in the Dutch PR Awards 2025 en submitted itself for PR Agency of the Year 2025. We've interviewed Sophie Nicholson, Partner at The Romans. 

Can you introduce The Romans?

The Romans was founded in the UK in 2015 and came to the Netherlands in 2023. Yes, we are entering PR Agency of the Year in our second full year of operation. Yes, we know this is punchy. Yes, we’re aware we’re going up against stiff competition; more established, bigger, more known on the scene. And yes… we hope we’ve got a chance. We have gone for it these last two years – relentless energy, unlimited team power, continuous growth.

The Romans was born of being bored of boring PR. We use creativity and our obsession with culture to connect with diverse audiences with stories and collaborators they care about. We earn attention by being genuinely relevant. Staying at the forefront of niche and mainstream trends to find ways for our clients to show up for communities authentically.

Since inception, The Romans has had a singular business strategy: seek out the very best talent in the world and develop them to be individually exceptional. Build a culture that celebrates the exceptional in everyone and the rest is history.

Having expanded its empire across London, New York and Dubai, The Romans’ Amsterdam opened in 2023 – and started hiring exceptional talent from the Dutch market.

In 2024 and 2025, we’ve hired superstars from Ace PR, News Lab, Team Lewis, and Publicis to name a few. We’ve also bolstered our international capabilities with hires from global agencies like Ogilvy and Porter Novelli. In the last month, we’ve welcomed a new Director and two new Account Executives, bolstering our diverse, female led team. In fact – we’ve doubled our headcount this year, and we’re still hiring.

Together, we’ve won an exciting roster of international and Dutch accounts. Delivered strategic and creative work for some of the world’s most loved brands. We’ve hired against client needs to offer more corporate and B2B capabilities – and are now delivering corporate remits for several new clients. We’ve secured coverage for our clients in every Dutch consumer title bar none – and we’re getting there on trade and business titles too, as we grow our offering.

We moved into a bigger, better, sexier new office and welcomed more than 100 of our clients, business partners, and industry colleagues to our office warming and 18-month birthday party (yes, a weird milestone). We’ve launched our first thought leadership report, which underscores our perspective on integrated, 360, global and local brand campaigns. We announced our place at AdNight, where we’ll be bringing PR to the ad world – in a bid to build collaboration and creative brilliance for clients.

And we can genuinely say: it’s been bloody good fun.

Globally minded, locally connected. Culturally ravenous, creatively ambitious. People people. We are The Romans Amsterdam.

What is your vision on the development of the PR-sector?

Our approach to PR is to earn attention with creativity that cuts through the cultural and media agenda and allows the brands we partner with to authentically become part of the cultural worlds of our audience. Identifying the places and spaces, niche and mainstream trends and passions, that connect us with diverse audiences and showing up through stories, innovations, collaborations and campaigns that really get us talked about.

We want to see more brands truly believing in the power of earned in The Netherlands. Not just using PR agencies to develop the communications messaging and the distribution strategy, or being plugged in after the creative campaigns are set as a bolt on – with limited influence and impact. Rather, we want to see them in the engine room of creativity. Working with creative partners across the entire marketing mix, to deliver work that takes brands (and budgets) further, by earning attention and talkability.

How do we want to see it done? By continuing to invest in the best, most diverse talent from The Netherlands and beyond. Mining and upskilling strategic brilliance and creativity from people of all walks of life. Inspiring them to work and think differently; beyond the boundaries of the every day, the tactical, the been-there-done-that. Empowering them to be exceptional individuals.

Finally, we want to see PR being seen as a truly creative channel. We live in a world where ‘earned first’ is the only way for brands to cut through in culture. Our goal is to work in collaboration with agency partners and clients who recognise the power of PR, to deliver truly exceptional earned first results.

Which new customers have you onboarded in 2024 and this year?

We won our first client project, Don Julio’s ADE campaign, the day we opened our doors… and haven’t slowed down since. This year and last, our client growth has only accelerated. We have extended our Diageo portfolio with new wins on Ketel One (Global) and Smirnoff Ice (local). We won, and continue to work on, Dutch PR retainers for Oatly, Life360, Stanley, TicketSwap, and Patagonia - the latter of which we also run a pan-European speaker bureau. We’ve created brand new relationships and delivered projects for Doritos (PepsiCo), easyJet, Gymshark, Santa Maria (Paulig Group), and HMD (the makers of Nokia). From a corporate communications perspective, we’re now working on a retained basis with Insify and Founteyn. We’re not sure a single month has gone by when we haven’t welcomed a new client.

The feedback we’ve had from the many competitive pitches we’ve been in is around our creativity. Aside from that, the best commentary (and overwhelmingly the most frequent) is in praise of the energy, enthusiasm, cohesion, and in-depth understanding of the client’s challenge and brief of our entire team – including the most junior people in our agency.

Which PR-campaign are you most proud of?

The toughest question of them all!

One we’re really proud of is Ketel One. A Dutch brand, that we’ve taken into culture on a global scale. The relationship we have with our fantastic clients is second to none. The openness, ability to challenge one another, and build the work together, has meant not only did we create, produce and launch the concept ‘After Dark’, but that it’s now being rolled out across Europe, including here in Amsterdam.

With low consumer awareness for Ketel One, we needed to create an irresistible cocktail experience. And we needed to tap into an existing part of culture that was familiar and desirable – to build from and insert our brand so it would show up in a way that felt organic and locally relevant.

Enter Ketel One After Dark, an after-hours takeover of these buzzing coffee hotspots, fusing the crafts of baristas and bartenders into one unforgettable experience. A brand-first, late-night takeover series serving the best Espresso Martinis in the cities it pops up in, leveraging its second to none trade and bartender relationships, to elevate the cocktail to a new level with an experience that only Ketel One could do.

The results have been phenomenal to date. Hundreds of social posts with millions impressions and a 15% increase in Ketel One Instagram followers. Influencer partnerships generating a reach of 1.5 million. Tons of coverage - with 80% in top tier titles. Thousands of Espresso Martinis served.

Not to mention our key KPI - queues around the corner, which meant our team was asked to leave the venue to create space for more guests. Never have we been happier to be chucked out of a vibing party.

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Gepubliceerd door: Daan Dekkers