4 things to consider when deciding your company’s PR strategy

Time and money

For small­er organ­i­sa­tions, in par­tic­u­lar, in-house PR or comms teams could rep­re­sent a cost-sav­ing com­pared to agency fees. This can ring-fence more bud­get to be used else­where. As Jess Mag­ill, the co-founder of Pow­derkeg, a micro­brew­ery in Exeter, explains: “Doing our PR in-house means we can direct all avail­able spend towards mar­ket­ing. We tar­get things such as dig­i­tal ads, print ads in whole­sale mag­a­zines and events.”

As a small busi­ness, Mag­ill adds, it is impor­tant for Pow­derkeg to be “very nim­ble” and able to change its mes­sag­ing quick­ly accord­ing to evolv­ing sit­u­a­tions. Nod­ding to the con­texts of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic or cost-of-liv­ing cri­sis, she says this has become “espe­cial­ly impor­tant over the last cou­ple of years… The fur­ther away your com­mu­ni­ca­tions [strat­e­gy] is from the company’s [cen­tral lead­er­ship] team, the more time-con­­sum­ing and cost­ly it can be to change direc­tion.”

But Kieron Golds­bor­ough, the CEO of Dif­fer­ent Nar­ra­tive, a New­­cas­­tle-based mar­ket­ing and PR firm, says the con­sis­tent and steady expense of an agency fee might be more cost-effec­­tive than recruit­ment or in-house train­ing – and give small­er busi­ness­es access to resources they wouldn’t oth­er­wise have.

He asks: “Are you bet­ter off hir­ing a new mar­ket­ing grad­u­ate on a salary of around £23,000, or will you get bet­ter out­comes by invest­ing that £23,000 in an agency, which would set up a team of graph­ic design, PR, media buy­ing and adver­tis­ing experts for your account?

“Agency part­ner­ing also reduces the risk to busi­ness­es oper­at­ing in fluc­tu­at­ing mar­kets of hir­ing staff but then need­ing to let go of them dur­ing a qui­et peri­od. Clients can dial up or dial down their activ­i­ty, in line with their busi­ness oper­a­tions and needs.”

Who is controlling the PR message?

For high­ly spe­cial­ist or tech­ni­cal organ­i­sa­tions, using an in-house PR or comms team could help with guar­an­tee­ing the nec­es­sary exper­tise. For Steve Hynd, the pol­i­cy and media man­ag­er at City to Sea, an envi­ron­men­tal char­i­ty in Bris­tol that cam­paigns to stop plas­tic pol­lu­tion, this is essen­tial.

“Hav­ing a knowl­edge base around plas­tic pol­lu­tion and wider envi­ron­men­tal­ism allows us to tai­lor our exter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tions to make sure we’re not just get­ting the cov­er­age of our cam­paigns, but also that our key mes­sages are accu­rate­ly and effec­tive­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed,” he says. “Work­ing in-house allows us to quick­ly give spe­cial­ist pro­fes­sion­al opin­ions about break­ing sto­ries or com­plex over­lap­ping issues.”

Sports Inter­ac­tive, the Lon­­don-based video game devel­op­er respon­si­ble for the Foot­ball Man­ag­er series, uses a mix of its own in-house PR, in-house PR with­in its pub­lish­er Sega and sev­er­al exter­nal agency part­ner­ships. Andrew Sin­clair, the PR man­ag­er who works direct­ly for Sports Inter­ac­tive, says that his team han­dles most of the media requests and cam­paigns attached to the games. For Sin­clair, the tone of press cov­er­age is vital and the in-house team at Sports Inter­ac­tive ensures more tech­ni­cal details of the games are com­mu­ni­cat­ed acces­si­bly and that the right out­lets are tar­get­ed.

“By keep­ing most of our PR out­put in-house,” he says, “we can con­trol the mes­sag­ing of how our games are spo­ken about. Tak­ing a more DIY approach to our PR func­tions means we’re much more attuned to the media land­scape, who the peo­ple are that are talk­ing about our games, and the cov­er­age they’re pro­vid­ing. We’re able to shape a stronger bank of favourable con­tacts based on hard evi­dence, rather than try­ing to spray all fields.”

Sports Inter­ac­tive tends to use agen­cies, Sin­clair explains, to syn­di­cate press releas­es and oth­er assets to their clients, often in oth­er coun­tries, “where we don’t have con­tacts and a lan­guage bar­ri­er exists”.

Gaining a fresh perspective

While it may be fair to say that a busi­ness is often well-placed to com­ment on itself, Amy Sto­ry, an account direc­tor for tech­nol­o­gy at the Lon­don arm of the Amer­i­can agency Fleish­man­Hillard, sug­gests it can be ben­e­fi­cial for organ­i­sa­tions to work out­side their bub­ble.

Alex Sil­cox, the chief client offi­cer at the Lon­don arm of anoth­er Amer­i­can agency, Hill+Knowlton Strate­gies, agrees. He points out that while in-house teams may indeed have a strong han­dle on their spe­cif­ic field, they risk miss­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to explore or inter­sect with oth­ers, by sim­ply not being exposed to them.

“Part of my role as CCO is to help clients ben­e­fit from the many touch­points and view­points we have,” he says. “Con­verse­ly, [com­pa­nies that use in-house teams] can be, under­stand­ably, ham­pered by a rel­a­tive­ly nar­row ‘win­dow out’ from their busi­ness or cat­e­go­ry pres­sures and chal­lenges.”

Where in-house teams risk suc­cumb­ing to bias, Sto­ry notes, agen­cies are also able to give “more impar­tial coun­sel”.

Bringing in PR insight, expertise and access

In-house PR or comms teams are not always made up of staff with PR or comms back­grounds or train­ing. Some­times, the per­son or peo­ple on in-house teams are jug­gling mul­ti­ple respon­si­bil­i­ties.

Dif­fer­ent Narrative’s CEO Kieron Golds­bor­ough points out that agency teams can focus their efforts. “They spend 24/7 work­ing in a cre­ative envi­ron­ment which will not only ensure your PR cam­paigns use the most inno­v­a­tive ideas, but they’re also on top of chang­ing trends in the sec­tor.”

“Work­ing with a glob­al PR agency like Fleish­man­Hillard,” Sto­ry high­lights, “gives a busi­ness access to hun­dreds of experts across mul­ti­ple spe­cialisms, includ­ing cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions, pub­lic affairs, cri­sis sup­port, social media, and mar­ket research. We are also part of a glob­al net­work of near­ly 80 offices in over 30 coun­tries, which makes it eas­i­er for our clients to acti­vate or extend their comms activ­i­ty as need­ed.”