Playtime PR celebrates its 10th anniversary this year: Lesley Singleton, founder & CEO tells Toy World the achievements she’s most proud of, and why she’s keen to keep making lives more playful.

“Our launch back in 2014 was somewhat naïve!” Lesley says, when asked if she thought Playtime PR would be where it is today when she set it up a decade ago. “I had three or four toy brands to play with, no financial backers or investment and my business plan at the time was: “Well, what’s the worst that could happen?” I had an inkling there was an appetite for something fresh in the toy marketing space, but I also had a hunger to create a genuinely flexible working solution for really good PR people.”

While there are many moments Lesley can be proud of during Playtime’s 10 years, she highlights a few standouts: landing the December cover of Stylist for Sylvanian Families, having a Shetland pony at a Christmas show and real mermaids at a launch event. More recently, she says the reaction to Playtime’s new Libraries Board Game Club initiative has filled her with pride: “We had hoped the industry would share our passion for wanting to make games more accessible for more communities in this climate, but the feedback from games companies has been even better than anticipated. Really heart-warming, actually.”

To officially celebrate the landmark anniversary, this weekend saw Lesley take her team away to a country house for a two days of ‘food, walks, chatter and chill-out time’. Posting on LinkedIn, Lesley wrote: “Playtimers are excitedly heading from all corners of the UK for a couple of days of true quality time together. I’ll never take it for granted that not only do they choose to keep working for Playtime, but they genuinely love each other’s company too.”

Looking ahead to the future, Lesley told Toy World she’ll be focussing on three core things: “We’ll continue creating playful and impactful comms campaigns for some of the biggest and smallest toy brands in the world. We’ll keep striving to innovate what we offer whilst collaborating with other brilliant agencies and suppliers to create meaningful, sales-driving activations to suit every budget. And we’ll continue to be the best business for our team and broader communities by living and breathing our ‘Making lives more playful’ mission.”

To read the full interview, which was published in the March issue of Toy World, click here.