Meet the Expert: Chris, Director and Founder of Resonates

Chris Dace founded Resonates over 20 years ago. With many years of marketing and tech experience, he shares his journey so far, thoughts on the future and of course his love of cycling!

How has your PR and marketing journey grown?

After graduating in electronics and completing a masters in microelectronics, I started my career designing integrated circuits for mobile comms – including the first ever ASIC to meet the digital GSM (“1G”) standard. From there I transitioned to consulting, marketing, did an MBA, resigned my pan-European corporate marketing job and started Resonates, having never worked in a PR agency before. I’ve never looked back.

What do you find most rewarding about your job?

Seeing the positive effect our work has on our clients’ businesses, and the collective impact we have on the net-zero agenda.

What’s your favourite brand and why?

Rapha does a really good job of convincing people like me to part with ridiculous amounts of money for cycling wear. They produce good content; they’ve got the whole community thing going and I like that they invest in grassroots cycling. It helps that their shorts are super comfortable (and I only buy stuff when it’s on sale).

What content are you enjoying consuming right now?

Rory Stewart and Alistair Campbell’s “The Rest is Politics” podcast, about reclaiming the centre ground in UK politics.

The future workplace is evolving – what do you think businesses need to focus on in the next few months?

The pandemic has changed the workplace forever as many employees found that their quality of life improved immeasurably by working from home, rather than sitting in cars and trains for hours and hours every week. Offering a flexible choice of office and home office working is the optimum future workplace. Businesses who no longer offer the office as an option should ensure that their employees, especially younger team members, don’t become isolated.

What are the major challenges to tackling Net Zero and how do you overcome them?

When I see the amazing talent and cleantech innovation in our client base it’s hard to believe that we haven’t already solved the challenges we are facing. The ongoing challenge we have is that despite being in a climate emergency, governments are too slow to implement the policies we need for fear of upsetting their electorates. From ‘nudging’ people to eat less meat to not upsetting them with onshore wind, it seems governments see these actions as vote losers rather than essential actions to save the planet. I think we need strong, single-minded policy as a matter of urgency.

What green products/services do you use/like/would recommend?

I’ve driven electric vehicles since 2014 and love them. It would be wonderful to see ‘European standard’ cycling infrastructure in the UK instead of the unfortunate and often rather dangerous tokenistic schemes that town planners dream up here. However, we seem to have descended into a ‘cars vs bikes’ culture war in this country which has been fuelled by tabloid and social media, so sadly I have low expectations of ever having world-class cycling infrastructure in this country.

If you could choose to do anything for a day, what would it be?

Bikejoring.