We’re delighted that our consumer PR campaign for Rolls-Royce Motor Cars in 2011 has been nominated for two awards.
We’re shortlisted in the Best Automotive Campaign category of the CIPR Excellence Awards and in the Automotive category of the EMEA SABRE Awards.
Hilary Meacham
Good marriages succeed because both parties want it to work and they nurture the partnership to keep it fresh and rewarding. Parallels with client/agency relationships are legion but sometimes it can seem as though clients are from Mars and PR consultancies are from Venus.
Each enters into the relationship with good intentions but, unless both parties fully understand upfront what those intentions are, the chances of a long-term healthy, successful relationship are slim. Lack of clarity is not intended, but can cause irreparable damage.
AAR’s business director Alex Young says that her organisation identified three key characteristics of positive client/agency partnerships: “When clear expectations have been set, when roles and responsibilities are clearly defined and, possibly the most important, when both sides listen to one another.”
Another well-known ‘marriage broker’, Steve Antoniewicz, managing director of Recommended Agency Register, spells out the importance of communication clearly: “If both parties are completely honest and open from the outset then a partnership will have a far greater chance of success. If not then tensions start to appear very quickly. Clients, you need to be honest and realistic with agencies (and with yourselves) about your expectations, your objectives and your budgets. Agencies, you need to be straight about your experience, resources, what you can deliver and, of course, the price!”
Traci Dunne, consultancy manager at advertiser representative body ISBA, advocates “truly open lines of communication with regular 360° relationship evaluation. This requires bravery on both sides to be honest about the direction a campaign is going and the behaviour within the relationship, or to push back on bad habits. It’s all about working as a partnership, rather than taking a parent and child approach.”
This need for genuine collaboration comes through clearly from the client fraternity too. Eileen Livingston, marketing controller, Courvoisier and Imported Whiskeys at Maxxium UK says, “I believe that mutual respect, brand understanding and passion are fundamental, as well as a desire to be seen less as client and agency and more as genuinely one team working together to drive brand success.”
Nicky Wheeler, fair director for The Affordable Art Fair agrees that “it’s all about working together as a team where everyone has a genuine interest in the space and a strong understanding of the business goals, with ideas, problems and – most importantly – successes shared”.
The true test of any relationship is the ability to talk about even the most difficult of subjects. Where PR is concerned, one of the most commonly-encountered elephants in the room is a lack of understanding about public relations among many marketing professionals. This is compounded by a tendency for agencies to use jargon or make assumptions to avoid embarrassing the client or themselves.
As Traci Dunne observes, it’s essential to acknowledge the issue and address knowledge gaps if a campaign is to be effective and measureable. “I have found with PR that clients can sometimes only have a basic understanding of how it works and what it can do. Agencies should take the time to evaluate the level of their clients’ PR understanding and try to enhance their knowledge so appropriate targets and objectives can be set. This will provide a platform for measurement and evaluation.”
There is much that agencies and clients can learn from one another and all parties seem to agree that honesty and open dialogue from the very first contact are essential for success. In conjunction with our clients and team, we’ve put together ten golden ingredients for a happy, productive collaboration between consultancy and client:
Over half of Focus PR’s total fee income comes from clients with whom we have worked in happy, rewarding and mutually profitable relationships for five years or more. Tells you something.
Hilary Meacham, managing director, Focus PR
First published in Marketing magazine, 12 October 2011
Diana Vickers is the first celebrity collaboration for Collection 2000
When it comes to celebrity tie-ups, there is an absolutely crucial checklist of criteria which must be met for it to work, irrespective of product category. Gary Lineker has certainly been a marketing dream for Walkers crisps whereas Glenn Hoddle for Shredded Wheat failed miserably. We have years of experience marrying brands with celebrities, and here we reveal our golden rules for a successful collaboration.
Firstly, ensure that there is a genuine link between the celebrity and the product. Consumers need to believe, or at least suspend disbelief, that your chosen celebrity would engage with the brand, so it’s essential to research this fully.
Secondly, the new ‘face’ of a brand needs to act like an ambassador both on and off campaign (being spotted drinking Coke while working for Pepsi Max wasn’t Britney’s finest moment). To make this work, so much of it comes down to the quality of your relationship with the celebrity and their team. Mutual trust, honesty and genuine brand affinity will maximise your chances of success.
The more involved in the process the celebrity is, and the more they have invested emotionally in the tie-up, the better. Endorsements made purely for financial reasons, even with large sums of money at stake, can easily sound hollow. To paraphrase The Beatles, money can’t buy you love.
It’s essential to make sure you have a watertight contract which meets the needs of all parties. After the negotiations are over and the ink has dried, the hard work starts. If anyone’s feeling hard done by as a result of the contractual terms, it’s going to make it nigh on impossible to work together effectively!
Look at how else you can extend the campaign beyond the obvious advertising, point of sale and PR touch-points. Social media can play a key role in this respect. If all goes well, new commercial opportunities to extend the partnership could emerge, benefiting all parties and embedding the relationship for the long-term.
Collection 2000, long-standing Focus PR client and now fifth-largest high street cosmetics brand in the UK, had never worked with a celebrity until 2011 and its recently-signed partnership with Diana Vickers. Diana, girl-next-door-done-good, is a Northern lass just like Collection 2000 and has referenced the brand as the one she grew up with on many occasions. She is the girl that Collection 2000’s consumers would like to be: pretty, successful (but not in a scary way), approachable, aspirational. Diana loves makeup and experiments with her look, just as we encourage Collection 2000’s consumers to do.
Diana is fronting an autumn/winter PR and point of sale campaign for Collection 2000, a brand that rarely advertises. The media has been very excited about the partnership (we’ve already secured two front covers and an abundance of features in target titles) and retailers have been hugely inspired by having Diana’s image across all their stores. The marketing team has made ambitious sales forecasts and, in the very early stages of the campaign, the signs are all good.
