Current Industry News
Using Public Relations to Market Your Business
Public Relations is one of the most powerful, yet often misunderstood avenues available for small businesses to promote themselves. While most people think of it only as getting publicity, it includes much more.
A good public relations expert can help you create a unified message that helps your marketing and business development. They can help you define your product or service from the customer’s point-of-view, get you on the speaker’s panel at trade shows and conventions, get articles about your firm in the relevant trade publications, and help with collateral material development. An agent should also make sure your presentation is professional, with excellent support materials, so that your message, like your photographs are in focus, instead of a blur.
Don’t expect PR contacts to get you ink with weak, boring or untimely material. Editors are bombarded with puff stories in fancy press kits. Make sure you have a story interesting enough to stand out. Even if you think you don’t have a story to tell, it may be worth your while to interview a few firms to see if they can suggest ways to promote your business you had not considered.
Susan Banashek, who now has her own agency, Banashek and Company, in San Francisco, has worked with a number of large institutions, including Bank of America and First Interstate Bancorp and their subsidiaries. Susan suggests it’s imperative to use PR when actions you take will effect special interest groups. Also, when you change your message about product, service, or management, or when there are changes in your corporate structure that may concern clients, investors, or your community, use PR to let the public know your point of view.
Susan suggests, “When a company changes its name, whether as a result of merging or to project another image, there is a need for PR tactics to raise awareness and reinforce its new image in the community. Certainly you will want to control the dissemination of information in the case of mergers, acquisitions or reemergence from bankruptcy.”
Events as a publicity tool has been used as an integral part of the PR business for years and can be far more effective than bombarding editors with press releases. Many companies focus on staging events mainly because their products get lost trying to get undeserved publicity. Events, on the other hand, create great photo opportunities if timely and of interest to the community.
Ed Niehaus of Niehaus Ryan Haller Public Relations in South San Francisco explains, “A small company can do its own PR, but an agency brings more than just additional hands to this effort. An agency can add media experience, finding creative ways to make compelling news and stories out of the company’s products, services and events.”
Finding an appropriate agency is the most important step. Look for growing firms with a specialty in your industry or market segment. Talk with reporters and editors about who they respect. Hollie Webster, an independent public relations and marketing expert in Orinda, suggests reviewing stories in related publications and contacting the company to inquire about who their agency is and how well they have worked together.
Once you have a number of potential agencies to pick from, start analyzing and comparing. The most important element is chemistry. Public relations is a judgment skills business and it is imperative to ascertain the values, ability and judgment of the principal account executive assigned to your account. Compare the personalities of your firm to the agency. Is there a match? Is it fun to work with them? Is their attitude one of “how do we solve this?” or is it “that can’t be done.”
Request to see a list of active clients with telephone numbers and contacts and talk with the clients. Ask how they worked together and would they hire them again. Check accounts lists for conflicts. Compare size and prestige. Do you fit in? Visit their offices. Carefully consider whether an agency’s expert in New York will be worthwhile after you pay travel and conference call expenses.
See if the agency volunteers how they saved clients money. Look for evidence of work product. Not just fancy presentations and flip charts designed to impress you, but look at the design of their programs, how the goals were established, how the audience was targeted and how success was measured. Make sure the agency really wants your business. Forget those agencies where it seems they are doing you a favour by taking your account. Find someone who gets truly excited about working with you. Enthusiasm and persistence are critical assets when it comes to communicating your message to the public.
When it comes to working with firms, Webster suggests, “It is essential that clients don’t bluff about their knowledge, and therefore their expectations of the PR process. The PR firm can’t help unless you adequately communicate the scope of your knowledge about the business.”
Get the agency on the management team. Make them part of your strategy at the planning stage of products and programs. They can add helpful ideas and steer you away from policies that create expensive problems. According to Niehaus, “One mistake too many companies make is not bringing an agency in early enough for announcements. Launching products or services takes time and many companies begin the work months in advance.”
Don’t expect too much too soon for too little money. A PR firm will likely need a couple of months to do their spade work and a couple more months will pass before any media results can be expected. In the meanwhile, they should be helping with trade publications and collateral materials.
Results will come even more slowly unless the agency has the full cooperation of your staff and access to the executives on an as-needed basis. Also, the better job you do of positioning your product or service, the more the agency can concentrate on getting results.
Do expect to have instant access to your account executive or at least be able to reach someone at the agency knowledgeable enough to help you. Meet the principals of the agency and discuss how often they will be getting together with you and what your expectations are from the relationship. Expect clear, explicit plans once you get started. The plan should tell how they will be penetrating your target media, planning for special events, developing targeted collateral materials and accessing your most appropriate markets.
Agencies work on retainer, and are usually paid a month in advance. Some firms now work on a contingency basis and get paid only for story placement. A retainer firm may charge as little as $1,500-$4000 a month to $10,000-$30,000 a month for a major firm.
Good PR work, including press coverage, goodwill generated, and increased impact on public perception of your firm can be powerfully effective. According to media experts, articles are believed and remembered four to six times more than advertising. So, you can get a big bang for the buck with PR if you have a good story to tell.
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Costly D4 now streets ahead of Beverly Hills
Top of Form
THE glitterati are aghast at the news there were no Irish entries on the list of most exclusive streets in the world, despite strong claims made on behalf of Shrewsbury Road in Dublin.
The list, published last month on ‘Wealth Bulletin’, a Dow Jones website, found that Avenue Princess Grace in Monaco – where buyers pay €12,581 per square foot — is the most expensive street in the world. Others on the list include Fifth Avenue in New York and Ostozhenka in Moscow, and the locations are noted as places where homes sell for up to €70m.
However, all is not lost for the Irish hoity-toity set.
The Dublin-based estate agency Lisney has indicated that Shrewsbury Road should, in fact, make a prominent appearance in the list, and that the other properties were only focused upon because they are up to four or five times the size of homes located on Shrewsbury Road.
The average size of a house on the road in Dublin 4 is about 6,500 sq ft. And so, through simple mathematics, Ireland gains a place in the top 10 with an average cost of €3,076 per sq foot for its most-exclusive enclave — making it more expensive than properties on Via Suvretta in St Moritz and Carolwood Drive in Beverly Hills. And that’s in a recession.
One house in Shrewsbury Road sold for a €56m three years ago, or €13,750 per square foot. The last home on the road sold by Lisney was bought by businessman Denis O’Brien in 2005 for about €30m.
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Press offices now some of most creative places to work in charity sector
The growth of global media channels and 24/7 news networks means the work of charity media and communications departments has never been more important in getting vital messages out across the planet. While once consigned to a peripheral role within many voluntary organisations, press offices are now some of the busiest and most creative places to work in the charity sector. Media and communications departments are staffed by a huge variety of people with specialist skills, from press officers to film-makers, copywriters, designers and celebrity bookers.
John McKie, ex-editor of the now-defunct pop magazine Smash Hits, works at development agency Christian Aid as an artist liaison, which means he manages relationships with celebrities to help raise the charity’s profile.
“We reach millions of people through our media coverage, but sometimes it helps if you can add a celebrity in the mix,” he explains. “They might go and visit a project, and might be able to speak knowledgably about the issues. That can be a massive benefit to an organisation like us, and most charities have someone doing this kind of work.”
Star attraction-
McKie’s past jobs in music journalism mean he is accustomed to working with celebrities, and is not easily star-struck. But there are big differences between his past career and his current work.
“I didn’t have to be an expert on the Mozambiquan civil war at Smash Hits, and I don’t need to know much about Steps in this job,” he points out. “The main skills you need for this are perseverance, patience, a certain strategic brain, and it helps if you have people skills.”
Beth Jepson, multimedia officer at WaterAid, has made similar cross-over career moves. A degree in media professional studies – in conjunction with Mersey Television – led her to gain experience as a runner on the Channel 4 soap opera Brookside. From there, she got a job in admin at Save the Children and worked up to be the media unit co-ordinator before moving to WaterAid. “My job at WaterAid is to make short films to highlight our work,” she says. “I sit in the press office, but my work spans the whole organisation. We use films to gain media coverage, or if we have an event or issue to push.”
This year is the International Year of Sanitation, so Jepson has made short viral films published on YouTube, called Pooing in Public, to shock viewers into understanding how vital sanitation is for public health.
“My job is an emerging one,” she says. “You can talk to supporters and journalists, but it’s hard to capture what it means to live without access to a toilet. Putting these videos online is quite new and has been hugely successful. Charities are also starting to see the importance of giving a voice to the people they work with, which we can do more of through film.”
Small charities, big ideas-
WaterAid and Christian Aid are high-profile organisations, with room for specialised jobs like film-making. But there are thousands of smaller, more obscure charities that also need to sell their cause.
Jaime Eastham is the communications and membership manager of the Bat Conservation Trust – one of only two in her department. “With a lot of charity PR, the cause is already sold and it’s a matter of getting a bigger piece of the pie,” she says. “I like it that this is a more unusual area. Bats are a misunderstood animal and you have to really change people’s minds.”
Eastham worked as a journalist in her native Australia and, after moving to the UK, worked in the press office at Action for Prisoners’ Families – another difficult sell. The challenge is to find creative ways of getting your charity into the public consciousness, she says, and to think on your feet when stories break that are relevant to your organisation.
“Last year we partnered with the New Covent Garden food company during Halloween,” she says. “I also try and turn around negative stories. If a building development is held up by a roost of bats, I try to explain why. Then there was the story recently where a woman found a bat in her bra, after wearing it to work. I had dozens of calls that day, and in the end it wasn’t such a negative story at all.”
The real difference for people working in charity media and communications is that they are promoting something they feel is important, often more satisfying than just pushing product at a public relations agency.
“I just find it more motivating to sell a cause rather than a product or service,” says Eastham. “Bats have recently been accepted as an ‘indicator species’, which the government uses to assess the health of wildlife as a whole. That was after lots of lobbying by us. I like knowing that what I do has made a difference.”
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Costelloe brings history to life for fashion fiesta
Paul Costelloe has become a fixture at the opening of London Fashion Week and this year was no exception as his tailored looks kicked off the style fiesta.
The Dublin-born designer took pride of place at the event by being the first major show of the week. In fact, he has opened the event for the past five years and has been showing here for the past 15.
His new designs were enthusiastically received by the packed audience which included shoe designer Jimmy Choo, model Erin O’Connor and Harold Tillman of the British Fashion Council, who were all in the front row at the Natural History Museum.
Costelloe explained that this collection was a “meeting of 19th-century colonialism with the African continent”. Whatever its historical influence, this was a confident display from the maestro who has now been 25 years in the clothing business.
The colonial theme was highlighted with a selection of mixed military-style coats, large buttons and structured shoulder epaulettes. For daywear, there were plenty of pretty short dresses in an array of colours.
A tan light coat with high collars and wide belt was teamed with a mid-thigh fitted skirt for city wear. A sharp black dress had silver buttons and capped sleeves with a round collared neckline. His high-waisted pants are cut off above the ankle and given the Capri touch with strappy sandals.
The blazer is also in vogue with crested pocket and brass buttons. And the mixture of structured dresses nipped in at the waist with tulip skirts is an interesting trend for the season.
London Fashion Week will see armies of models taking to the catwalk for over 50 shows. Designers including Luella, Temperley, Christopher Kane, Vivienne Westwood and Erdem will be revealing their creations over the next few days.
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