by Darryl Sparey, co-founder
Last week, Hard Numbers was named “B2B PR Agency of the Year” at the PRMoment Awards for the second year in a row.
I could reach into the usual drawer of cliches reserved for announcing award wins - I’m delighted, thrilled, surprised, excited and much more besides to announce this win, naturally.
Of course, within this post I will recognise the amazing efforts of our team and all the ‘Numbers past and present. I’ll express my very real gratitude to our clients who’ve trusted us to manage their reputations and communications efforts over the past six years. And I’ll recognise the vital role our bank played in providing the loan facility for the enormous wads of cash we transferred to the judges of the category… I’m joking… But we are also genuinely thankful to the expert panel of judges, many of whom are competitors, peers and industry stalwarts, who judged our hotly contested category, and picked Hard Numbers as the best B2B PR Agency for a second year. I’ll cover all this at the end of the post.
First, I thought I’d use this post to try and articulate WHY I think we won this award, and have done it two years in a row, and what makes us genuinely different to the other 4,000 or so PR agencies in the UK.
Why is Hard Numbers B2B PR Agency of the Year… Again?
It’s probably not the “done” thing in PR to be as transparent about our award entries as we are - last year, when we won this accolade for the first time I published a blog with a link to our full entry, for all to see why we were selected B2B PR agency of the Year 2025. I’m genuinely proud of what our agency achieved last year, and I’m as proud this year. So I’ll share with you the key things we talked about in our award entry this time around:
Hard Numbers is making the most of the AI opportunity for ourselves… And our clients.
Hard Numbers has already studied earned media’s impact on AI search results in our “Reputation in the Age of AI” research back in November 2024. We were tracking how some clients were appearing in AI results before the term “Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO)” was used in a blog post by A16Z in May 2025. At Hard Numbers we defined a proposition, and tested it with existing clients. We developed a “GEO Audit” product for brands, plus ongoing AI visibility monitoring, then we got out there and promoted it like our livelihoods depended on it. Because they did. The results? We generated over £250k of pipeline, proposing GEO services to 18 companies, winning 6 new clients, and working with 7 businesses on GEO briefs including blue-chip financial services firms and leading tech scale-ups.
Hard Numbers makes the case for PR’s importance with data… and PR!
In 2025, Hard Numbers used its first research paper relentlessly across 2025 to generate thought leadership, speaking opportunities, media coverage and more. The leadership team of Hard Numbers spoke at over one event per month, including a keynote at AMEC’s Global Summit, interviews on a host of industry podcasts, including the excellent PRMoment podcast, PR Week’s podcast, Data Malarkey, and a two-part episode of “PR in the Real World”. The team at Hard Numbers wrote a 2,500-word blog on GEO for PR professionals, detailing everything we’d learned about GEO for PR people. We turned this into an ebook and created a resource for PR folks trying to make the business case for investment in this new arena. It’s been viewed over 1,190 times. Few agencies did more to use their time, treasure and talent in 2025 than Hard Numbers in making the case, with data, for investment in PR and earned media.
Hard Numbers commits to results, and demonstrates that we achieve them.
Hard Numbers has set its stall out very clearly when it comes to KPIs. We write our KPIs into our contracts, and we have a clause in our contracts that says we will hit them in any given quarter, or we’ll work at our cost until we do. We effectively guarantee that we will achieve media coverage for our clients, a fact that my business partner Paul has written about more - much to the amusing fury of an entire community of American PR freelancers. You can read more about this unique approach in PR Week, or hear more about it on The Digital PR Podcast (you can listen here or watch here). We sell results, not the time they take to deliver, and we commit to their delivery.
The growth of Hard Numbers underlines its unique proposition.
2025 was a challenging year for PR agencies, but in a difficult trading environment, Hard Numbers grew its revenues by 15.5% year-on-year, delivering its best year to date. We achieved a 92% NPS score and generated over £350k organic revenue growth, demonstrating strong client satisfaction. New business was also strong, with 28 new briefs from 19 new clients.
We launched Hard Numbers just six years ago. We took advantage of the fact that we started with a blank sheet of paper, and designed an agency, built a tech stack and developed a business model which eschewed timesheets, and sold our services by the value they create, not the time they take to deliver. We’ve created a different kind of agency, with a different kind of approach. And, it seems, the judges of the PR Moment awards recognise that, and for that we’re profoundly grateful.
Now for the thank yous…
My most heartfelt “thank you” goes to every single ‘Number, past and present. Our agency is the sediment of all your hopes, hot takes and hard work. I genuinely appreciate and admire the contributions of each and every one of you… But I don’t have enough room to name you all!
Thank you to our clients. We've worked with just over 100 companies in the past six years. Amazingly, some of them have been clients for this whole period. It’s a genuine privilege to promote your innovation, manage your reputation, and support your growth. Thanks to all of our clients, past and present.
Thanks also to everyone who’s supported us or shown an interest in our journey (that includes you, for taking the time to read this far). We are hugely grateful to the CIPR, PRCA and AMEC, as the trade associations who represent our business, and have supported us with client recommendations, speaking gigs, networking opportunities, and much more besides. Thanks in particular to Lyndsey Dunlop, Sarah Waddington and Johna Burke.
And I have to say a huge thank you to Ben Smith, the man behind PR Moment. I've got to know Ben over the course of many years in PR and a couple of lunches in the New Forest. PR Moment gave us our very first award - New Agency of the Year - back in 2021 - and I'll always be grateful for the platform that they have provided for Hard Numbers, the 48 other agencies that started the same year as us, and the 4,000 others that we compete with every day for attention, eyeballs, clicks, likes and leads.
The PR industry has probably never been more competitive in the UK. In fact, you could probably make an argument with the advent of AI that it’s at the zenith of its competitiveness. The year we launched saw 48 other agencies launch, and I confidently predict in my lifetime you will never see that many PR agencies launch again in one year. We are grateful for accolades like the “B2B PR Agency of the Year” award, because it helps us stand out from a crowded field. The question is…. Can we make it an unprecedented hat-trick in 2027….?
