Celebrating 20 years of KOR Communications
Celebrating 20 years of KOR Communications
As a communications consultancy focused on delivering for clients in the land and property sectors, KOR Communications rarely spends time reflecting on its own journey.
But with 2026 marking the 20th anniversary of the business we thought it was time to look back on our two decades of growth, celebrate the successes, acknowledge the challenges and set out some ambitions for the future.
KOR was founded in 2006 by husband and wife Guy Newman and Annette Richman. Both had significant experience as journalists before deciding to move into the world of public relations and establish their own business.
Annette’s previous career spanned regional and national press and broadcast media, including ITN, Sky News and ITV. She worked as a news editor, shaping the way in which stories were told and ensuring they were informative and engaging.
Guy, trained as a newspaper photographer and was a founding partner of a large News Agency, providing high quality stories and pictures to national newspapers, magazines, and corporate publications.
Early clients for our fledging business included Clinton Devon Estates – still a client today – which helped to set KOR on course to become a specialist communications consultancy for the land and property sector with a strong focus on landed estates.
From those early days as a business with just two employees KOR has grown – but always with a clear understanding of the need to recruit team members with the specialist skills to support clients in the sector.
A knowledge of land and property management, including farming, and a clear understanding of the particular nature of family legacy businesses, often with very long histories, underpins the KOR team’s specialist skills.
Massive changes in the way land is managed have made diversification a key part of the way landed estates operate and KOR has the expertise to provide communications support for clients undertaking major planning applications for renewable projects, new home developments and a range of other changes of use.
Consultation is a key part of any such development, particularly for long-standing family businesses where relationships with the community and stakeholders are crucial. We understand the importance of getting this right and have supported many clients navigate potentially difficult changes with positive results.
We now have a team of 14, including experts in public affairs, local government, agricultural management, and digital and traditional media, including radio and TV. Social media has grown hugely in significance in the past 20 years and KOR has specialists on the team who understand how to get the best from social media for the benefit of clients – and avoid some of the pitfalls.
The fast-changing media landscape and the growth of online content has given clients the opportunity to manage their own stories and stay in control of their narrative. KOR has been able to help a wide range of clients running land and property businesses all over the country benefit from this ability, creating online content for their websites, while continuing to place positive news and features in external publications, in print, broadcast and online.
Our client list now runs from Estates in the south of England, including the Englefield Estate in Berkshire and the Hadlow Estate in Kent to businesses serving the rural sector, including NFU Mutual, the UK’s leading rural insurer.
Our own Estate Matters podcast has featured major figures in the world of land and property including former NFU president Minette Batters, ex-Defra Secretary George Eustice and many leading Estate owners and managers.
The insights they provide in conversation with our podcast host and senior rural affairs consultant, Anna Byles, have become essential listening to across the sector.
Annette says: “The media landscape and the sectors in which we work have both undergone radical change in the 20 years since we launched KOR. But the underlying principles that guided our business at the start remain as relevant today as they have ever been.
“Building trust with clients, partners and the media has always been our number one priority. Showing resilience against the pressures that affect many small businesses through sometimes difficult economic times, such as the 2008 downturn and the Covid pandemic, has been crucial to our success. And evolving to meet changing circumstances has kept us one step ahead.
“I’m so grateful to our employees, our clients and the individuals and organisations with whom we’ve built close and lasting relationships for their continued support. Communications is a team game and we’ve been able to build and nurture a great team over two decades. Here’s to the future – and the next 20 years!”