The Art of PR: Gemma Moroney on Letterpress, Language, and the Sea

You co-founded SHOOK to reimagine how communications move people. What problem were you determined to solve when you started it, and how have your approach, process, partners, or principles differed from those of other agencies?

We wanted to create work with lasting impact – whether on sales, sentiment, or society. Not creativity for the sake of it, but clever, commercial creativity. We use behaviour design – which I was trained in by Stanford’s BJ Fogg – to power that. Our principles – values – are open, honest, restless, generous, and fun, and that runs through the work we do and how we do it. We were recently described by industry guru Andrew Bloch as “a very intelligent, creative agency”, which is exactly what we set out to be.

Your first love is words; your second is words you’ve written. Where do you draw the line between a communicator’s duty to be clear and a poet’s right to be ambiguous—and when do you choose to cross it?

I can’t stand long words and a load of words when a few will do, at work. However, I definitely bring a poetic vibe to my writing when it’s appropriate. We did some focus groups recently for some branding work, and someone described it as poetic. My heart lept a little. My poetry is usually quite straightforward – no complicated metaphors. That’s actually something I’m trying to change. I saw John McCullough perform recently, and I love how he mixes up images, like himself, as moss.

Letterpress is slow, physical, imperfect. How does the labour of making—the weight of type, the ink, the pressure—change your relationship to the words versus writing digitally?

I’m a perfectionist. Always not quite happy with something. Think it could have been better. Kick myself if I should have done something else. And I’m always operating at a million miles an hour, always have my phone in my hand, always “on”.

Letterpress is slow, imperfect even if you do it perfectly, and you have to focus on the one thing you’re doing.

It’s a brilliant antidote/ opposite to 2025 life. It’s also one of those weird things that used to be done for work/ industry and is now done for creativity.

Every letterpress is always slightly different, depending on the pressure you’ve applied. And there’s evidence of what the blocks have done before, in the staining of the blocks and the chips and marks in them. I love that the blocks you’re using have told a thousand stories before.

When I write words I am a gut feel person. I rarely plan out a piece of writing. It just comes to me. Noel Gallagher says he plucks songs out of the air. Nick Cave says he has to sit down and work at it. I start writing and edit as I go, whether on my phone notes, laptop or on paper. It’s actually something I’m trying to get better at – be more Nick – when I write for myself. I’m easily bored, and so I find it hard work working away to improve a poem. But I know it’s something I need to work on.

With letterpress, you can have a plan, but you do have to edit and adapt as you go. You can’t just get it right first time; there’s always some fine-tuning. Whether it’s because a block you need is missing or you need to adjust as you go to make something work.

I think if I could get away with it, my entire house would be covered by slogans and sayings. As it is, I have quite a few Anthony Burrill prints, a poem from “The Elephant Man” by Richard Ardagh and a print of the Grunwick strike leader Jayaben Desai by Hazel Roberts, including the words:

‘What you are running here is not a factory, it is a zoo.  There are many types of animals in a zoo.  Some are monkeys who dance to your tune, others are lions who can bite your head off.  We are those lions, Mr Manager.’

Your type blocks have printed a thousand things and bear the marks and chips of previous lives. Which chapter of your own story do those imperfections mirror most—and what “chip” would you never sand away?

I actually can’t think of one chapter. I think it’s more than you are the sum of your experiences, whether good or bad, success or failure, and there’s beauty in that.

Your sea-inspired poem comes from living in Brighton. Beyond metaphor, what does the sea teach you about cadence, pacing, and pause in both poetry and brand storytelling?

So a friend of mine, Andrew, told me that when you reach the sea you’ve got to turn and face what you’re running away from. That inspired Lapped, the poem I wrote that appears on the bus. “When you reach the sea, there’s no turning back; you’ve run as far as you can. Turn and face what you’re running from, the answers on dry land.”

For me, the sea is a constant. Whatever the time of the year or the weather, it’s there, making you realise you’re small and there’s a huge world around you. There’s something comforting in that consistency. I like the idea of checking your progress against a constant.

There are definitely themes there you can make relevant to both poetry and brand storytelling.

More widely, I’m obsessed that centuries ago, people thought “I’ll go and see what’s out there.”. The bravery of setting off with hope and anticipation to discover something new, with no idea what was out there.

In comms, revision often sands edges; in poetry, it can sharpen them. How do you decide when a line (or a line of copy) should soothe versus sting?

I refer to my answer to question three.  Plus, I like combining both soothing and stinging. I have a poem that has a line that says, “Have I wrapped lies around me, like an onion. No. Not like an onion, like a scar. That grows slowly over tender flesh and, slowly, changes who you are.” I would say that is hard-hitting and somehow comforting at the same time.

The Art of PR initiative brings together visual artists with PR backgrounds. What drew you to take part, and what does this exhibition say about the evolving relationship between publicity, practice, and artistic authorship?

I have always loved printmaking, but my school art teacher didn’t love me! I guess I wanted to prove them wrong. Plus, I saw my (ridiculously talented) friend Simon being part of it last year and wanted to join in. It’s really lovely what Ade has created. I think it underlines that creativity is not the preserve of advertising. And that there are some really wonderful, interesting side missions people in PR have. The side missions make the day job better and vice versa.

You perform at poetry slams and have work on display on the side of buses—writing that moves and writing that must land fast. What have those constraints taught you about attention, memory, and the single line people actually carry away?

I’m going to steal from Leanne, who expertly runs the poetry night I go to. She says as poets, we should either get empathy or we should educate. I.e., people see their own lived experience, or they live someone else’s for three minutes.

What it has taught me most is the power of vulnerability for the poet and the audience. Yes, the overall takeaway is important, whether that’s a line, a feeling or a vibe. But from the poets I’ve most enjoyed at slams, which range from a tracksuit-wearing university lecturer to a guy who looks like a builder and does high-speed punk poetry on subjects like orgies in a horse box to an amazing poem about veganism done as reverse psychology, there isn’t a consistent thing, other than them being wholly themselves.

Where can our readers find out more about you?

Work-wise: welcometoshook.com

Poetry-wise: I am redoing my socials