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Cision is thrilled to announce that industry heavyweight Sir Craig Oliver, David Cameron’s former director of communications, will headline as CommsCon’s guest keynote speaker.
Currently a senior managing director at Teneo Blue Rubicon, Oliver oversaw the former prime minister’s comms strategy for the majority of his time in office. He assumed the role at a time when the news cycle was moving beyond a 24/7 environment to a full 360-degree news chamber with deadlines minimised to the time it takes to compose a tweet.
On a day full of discussion about the changing nature of the comms profession, he will explore how governments, businesses and institutions can develop strategies to manage the compressed, 360-news cycle and cut through the echo chamber of social media.
Oliver headlines a day where the industry’s best and brightest will examine why marketing disciplines are converging and how earned media can claim its rightful place in the marketing mix. The company has partnered with PRWeek, CIPR Greater London and AMEC to provide the insights and information to help communicators ride the crest of the earned media wave.
To hear can’t-miss insight and advice from Sir Craig Oliver, as well as from a host of other fantastic industry professionals, register below to secure your free place at CommsCon.
Adrian Wells, director of marcomms and ticketing for the Cricket World Cup 2019, discusses the local organising committee’s strategy to promote next year’s tournament.
Adrian Wells
What are the key aspects of your marcomms strategy for the Cricket World Cup?
Our goal is to deliver the ‘greatest ever cricket celebration’ to both a domestic and international audience. To do this we need to connect with, and entertain fans around the world with engaging content.
This approach needs to take into account that not everyone knows cricket well, so it is a careful balance of the sport, the star players but also the atmosphere, the fans and highlighting its entertainment value for all sports fans.
The Cricket World Cup brings with it a true carnival atmosphere and we want to celebrate the fact that in multicultural Britain, we are in a unique position to offer all 10 teams strong domestic home support and some incredibly strong fan groups.
This led us to deliver traditional milestones in new ways. For example, our one-year-to -go event was celebrated at Brick Lane in London rather than at Lord’s. We engaged a youth London-based poet, Caleb Femmi, to develop a manifesto for the World Cup and invite the world to come to England and Wales to be part of the celebration.
What will the ‘Are you in?’ campaign entail?
‘Are you in?’ is the name of the marcomms campaign that brings together a range of digital and physical activations across the 18 months leading up to and during the World Cup. It is a call to action to buy tickets, to attend fan zones, to be part of the films, to share your support and much more.
The campaign’s launch film stars Freddie Flintoff, a cricketer who transcends popular culture, singing and dancing to the sound of Imagine Dragons’ On top of the world, inviting the public to join ‘sports’ greatest carnival’. Seeing Freddie sing and dance is not what you would expect from cricket, and that’s the point – we hope to show cricket in a new light and engage new fans.
The campaign continues the marketing approach of putting fans, influencers and celebrities at the heart of the creative, reaching both inside and outside of the game to engage new fans with cricket. We have great plans in the next 12 months using music, comedy, entertainment and content to take cricket to a new place.
The campaign is very digitally focused and leverages CRM to deliver highly targeted and personalised communications to reach the right audience.
Is there a particular audience you’re targeting the campaign at and hope to reach?
A recent ICC global cricket study identified that there are over one billion cricket fans around the world, whilst the ECB identifies 10 million core fans in England and Wales alone, so it is essential that we engage these core fan groups to interact with the Cricket World Cup.
Our ambition however is to leverage the huge interest in cricket that the World Cup will bring to deliver a lasting legacy for cricket in this country, so we need to engage a wider group of big event fans and followers who have attended the Rugby World Cup, the Hockey World Cup, the Olympics etc.
Finally, we have worked closely with the ECB to identify the key audiences to deliver future growth in the game and have aligned our marketing plans to reach sporty families with 5-12 year old kids. We have a major schools initiative as well as club and community programmes to engage one million kids to interact with cricket across the coming year and to act as a platform for growth for the future of cricket in this country.
What are the main challenges when promoting events such as this?
We are collaborating closely with Sky to engage cricket fans across their platforms – they are core to the promotion of the World Cup. But we also aim to reach outside of cricket to engage fans across the country and the world to be excited by tournament.
Capturing their imagination is a bigger challenge. To achieve this requires creative that makes people sit up and take notice, to deliver cricket in an unexpected way and to drive sharing as a way of increasing reach.
Which influencers will you be using to help promote the tournament?
We have developed a micro-influencer plan to develop a generation of cricket fans, using content to drive engagement. Unlike football, this base of influencers does not exist in scale, so we have partnered with people like Greg James, Josh Pieters (an ex-cricketer and now influencer), ReevHD and Danielle Haden (music.ly), to develop and share behind the scenes content.
We are partnering with comedians like Chabuddy G, to engage a new audience and have seen celebrity fans collaborate to develop and star in our marketing campaign, such as Cuba Gooding Jr., Jim Carter, Jamie Laing, Shame Williams and Imelda Staunton.
We have already collaborated with some of the star names in cricket to also feature within the campaign, including Kevin Pietersen, Michael Vaughan, Brian Lara, Brett Lee, Eoin Morgan, Joe Root, Michael Clarke, Chris Gayle and many more – it has been really encouraging to see how much the cricket community has supported us to promote the Cricket World Cup!
How much does the England team’s current success at one-day cricket help you to promote the World Cup?
It has been incredibly helpful to see England playing so well and importantly, new heroes like Jos Buttler, Jason Roy and Jonny Bairstow emerging to engage a new audience.
Cricket in this country is at a really interesting stage as we see fan interest moving from traditional five-day test cricket to shorter formats, including the recent announcement of the ECB’s 100-ball competition to launch after the summer of next year’s World Cup and Ashes series. We hope to be able to transfer the huge interest in the World Cup into future long term fans of the new competition.
As the local organising committee, our role is to promote the tournament to all fans around the world, but with 80% expected to be based in England, it certainly helps to have a strong support, so let’s hope for more success across this summer and next!
How will you measure if the campaign has been successful? Ticket sales?
We measure not only ticket sales but also national and international reach and a range of engagement metrics, such as viewership, website visits and social engagement. Finally, we measure closely the one million kids target to ensure that we successfully leverage the Cricket World Cup for future generations.
Finally, what’s your most memorable Cricket World Cup moment?
Last summer saw a real step change in cricket in this country when England won the ICC Women’s World Cup. We saw a transformation in attitudes, coverage, viewers and attendees as England dramatically won in front of a packed house at Lord’s.
It was a memorable day that goes down in history for the women’s game and I hope 2019 seems similar drama and positive global engagement!
Palm PR helped Choc on Choc to promote its range of layered chocolates by tying in the company’s products with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding.
Campaign: Love at first bite: Launching Choc on Choc’s Harry & Meghan Chocolates
Client: Choc on Choc
PR Team: Palm PR
Timing: 2 months
Budget: £750
Summary
With seasonal gifting, such as Easter, accounting for almost 80% of Choc on Choc’s sales, Palm PR worked to create a campaign for the brand that would drive awareness and trade outside of these periods.
Aware of the huge media interest in the Royal Wedding and keen to demonstrate how Choc and Choc can produce absolutely any design in chocolate, Palm PR challenged the chocolatiers to produce a white chocolate heart bearing the faces of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to demonstrate its key USP. These would be sold exclusively through the Choc on Choc website.
Objectives
The primary objective of the campaign was to raise awareness of Choc on Choc’s innovative designs and drive sales to the brand’s website during a traditionally quieter trading period in May.
Another key objective was communicating Choc on Choc’s point of differentiation in the market and its key USP – the patented production method which layers chocolate on chocolate and allows the team to produce unique designs that are unlike anything else available in the confectionery category.
The budget was limited so Palm PR was required to deliver a low cost but effective campaign.
Strategy and implementation
Before commencing media outreach, the agency analysed data on the Choc on Choc target customer and identified the print and online publications most read by these individuals. The agency drew up a KPI document, attributing points to this shortlist of titles to ensure that the campaign was generating coverage in the most valuable and relevant media outlets.
To broaden the campaign, Palm PR set up collaboration with Harry’s Bar in London in which the chocolates were available free with every purchase of the ‘Harrypolitan’ cocktail. The campaign was launched at the bar by lookalikes of the royal couple.
The campaign was designed to ensure that coverage was generated on different pages in each publication and in a variety of titles:
The media launch attended by the Harry and Meghan lookalikes was targeted to generate national newspaper picture stories
The venue partnership allowed the campaign to secure coverage in ‘going out’ pages of national and London titles
Reviews of the product itself were featured in the product placement and food and drink pages of all publications
Results
The Love at first bite campaign generated 24 pieces of coverage, including features in The Sunday Telegraph, Metro Online, Daily Star, MSN, Hello! and new! magazine. In total, this reached a combined audience of 129,050,525 people.
Throughout the campaign, both traffic on the Choc on Choc website and online sales increased by 10% and 24% year-on-year respectively.
Testimonial
Flo Broughton, founder of Choc on Choc, said: “Palm PR implemented a campaign that succeeded in driving traffic and sales on our website, whilst also communicating Choc on Choc’s key USP, our patented production method that allows us to create unique designs. The campaign was reactive, creative and worked hard to meet specific business objectives.”
Kajal Bakrania, founder of Just Sawse, explores the cycle of influencer marketing and the ways which brands will need to secure their services as the sector evolves.
Engagement, metrics, algorithms: welcome to the influencer game.
As an industry we have reached capacity on talking about influencers, micro-influencers, ASA regulations, authenticity, gifting and how much to pay. As a brand you need to decide what route you want to take whether you want to pay the price of using #ad or organically gift.
Only one option is guaranteed exposure. Brands are still being told which influencers to use and what impact they will have, but the results differ for many reasons.
The cycle of influencer marketing
Typically, when tasked with a new launch, PRs across the country have a little black book of bloggers they can rely on for a quick mention. There are some who will take the freebie, some who will promote for a fee and others where money is not enough.
Once you’ve exhausted your go-to contacts, you then produce a great coverage deck full of engagement rates and stats. Brands continually ask what is the ROI? What are the engagement rates? How much do they cost? Should we go down the micro route, or just pick Zoella?
What you need to do first is your research. You don’t need to find out the data on what they eat, when they wake up or how much Drake they listen to. You need to need to ask yourself what type of influencer are you looking for and does their content fit your brand image?
Relevance is key in the influencer game. It doesn’t matter how many followers they have, if their audience don’t believe they actually use the product or service, the purpose of influencer will be worthless.
#AD or gift?
The next question you’ll ask is do we need to pay? The offer of payment seems like the easy route, but money may not be enough to secure a deal, although it can help speed the process for a mention if and when the contract gets signed.
Gifting is often a waiting game with a lot of scrolling through social feeds every hour of the day, but this benefits from coming without the need of #ad. This is where the argument of authenticity comes into play as they are not being paid to say what they like.
Both options comes with pros and cons but gifting can pay off in the long run, as you can build on the relationship if your desired influencer loves your product.
If you choose the paid activity route and want to increase your authenticity make your fee spread out towards a more long-term contract with an ambassador role on offer. For consumers we are getting more sceptical of the #ad, so use it wisely.
The future of influencer marketing
Influencer marketing is now a permanent fixture of any PR plan. With the likes of Alfie & Zoella setting up their own company and dominating the influencer world, influencers are beginning to take more ownership of their industry and call the shots.
Brands have a lot of decisions to make and not all of them will have the same strategy when it comes to influencers. One-off posts by brands will start to fade out and long-term ambassadors will take over, providing a meaningful relationship for both parties.
The influencer landscape is an exciting one and my message to brands is do your research and you will reap the benefits.
Adam Tranter, founder of Fusion Media, reveals how he transitioned from being a racing cyclist to an agency founder, why Fusion focuses on endurance sports and what the future holds for cycling.
How did you end up transitioning from a racing cyclist to a PR agency founder?
Completely by accident. I wish the answer was more profound than that, but it’s not.
I’ve been cycling most of my life, and after realising I wasn’t going to make a career from racing a bike, and also being aware that I could end up with almost no demonstrable skills, I started writing about cycling – the topic I knew most about – instead. That coincided with the start of Britain’s newfound obsession with all things bike – helped hugely by a large cycling medal haul at the Beijing Olympics.
We’ve been fortunate that almost each year since there has been something that keeps cycling in the national consciousness; whether it’s Boris bikes, a couple of British blokes winning the Tour de France, the London Olympics, the Tour de France in Yorkshire, and so on. What started as a fairly niche passion has transformed into a scalable business.
Why have Fusion Media focus on endurance sports?
Cycling is just one part of what Fusion Media does. We think there’s something in the DNA of someone interested in endurance. Whether that is cycling, running, triathlon, walking – generally enjoying outdoor pursuits – we find there’s a huge crossover in how they behave and the media they absorb.
We focused on a specialism in endurance sport. People like passion and subject matter expertise. We’ve seen a huge focus in agencyland towards niche; the knowledge and passion we used to take for granted has now become hugely desirable for brands looking to reach a sizeable group of very passionate people.
What are the benefits of focusing solely on one niche area of PR?
The great philosopher Michael Gove MP said that Britain has had enough of experts, and I thoroughly hope that he is wrong. We live in a culture where consumers get their information, almost instantly, from a variety of sources.
But they’re still not making instantaneous decisions; research we’ve done in cycling suggests that the average consumer is taking six months over a bike purchase. The key for us is to have unrivaled expertise of the endurance market and knowing how, as an agency, we can have a significant commercial impact in the decision making process.
And, ultimately, we believe brands want and deserve better. If your customers are spending many hours being well-informed, you want your PR agency to, at the very least, have the same attention on the sector. When you’re dealing with passionate people, technical products and aspirational brands, genuine knowledge and understanding is very important.
How important is the digital aspect of what you do at Fusion Media?
It’s massive for us. As I mentioned, customers are incredibly well-researched and the techniques our agency uses needs to match where they’re getting that information. We’ve seen SEO agencies move into the PR space with some success, but there’s no-one better at selling stories and getting placements than a good old-fashioned PR agency.
So we made a very conscious decision to get ahead, use our PR expertise, but develop the agency into offering services around SEO, content, community management and paid social. It is now so much more than the coverage.
What are the next big things to happen in cycling?
I think there is a huge need to improve gender parity in cycling. I saw some data recently which suggested that cycling in the UK, in terms of gender participation split, is at present where running races in the US were in 1996. Today, more women than men partake in running, and it shows the huge potential for cycling.
It will take disruptive brands to invest and grow the sector, but we’re starting from a good base as women’s cycling is already some of the most exciting to watch.
We’re working with OVO Energy, sponsors of the Women’s Tour race, and this year announced at parliament their funding for equal prize money for women versus the men’s Tour of Britain. It was a proud moment for us as an agency but really just the start of a long list of things that need to happen soon to realise the potential of women’s cycling.
Here’s a round-up of the week’s top PR news – featuring the PRWeek Awards shortlist announcement, changes to Marks and Spencer’s press team and Buchanan’s rebrand.
Paris-based car rental app Virtuo has selected Frank PR to handle its launch into the UK market this month. Frank will be developing creative campaigns and raising awareness of the service among key influencers.
Covent Garden-based restaurant Belgo Centraal has appointed Launch to oversee its relaunch following its refurbishment.
Folding bike brand Brompton Bicycle has appointed Fusion Media to manage its UK PR. Fusion will look to engage both existing cycling audiences and new urban consumers, as well as promoting the brand’s new Brompton Electric e-bike.
Mongoose will handle PR for track cycling event Six Day London. The agency will manage PR and comms around the event at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in October.
Lifestyle tech brand Nolii has selected Canoe to oversee all of its UK PR activity. The agency will provide an underlying press office function that includes PR campaign development and implementation, strategic product placement and day-to-day media relations to raise brand awareness.
Travel tech firm Vibe has appointed Brighter Group as its first UK agency. The agency will focus on raising the profile of the brand through a comprehensive media relations programme.
Blockchain fintech company Blackmoon has appointed Jargon PR to lead a global PR campaign generating brand awareness.
Workspace Commerce has appointed Brazen to help launch the company’s new co-working space in Hoxton.
TVC Group has appointed sustainability comms specialist Ashleigh Lezard as an account director. She will work on The Economist Group’s World Ocean Initiative brief, focusing on promoting the initiative’s three core themes of better finance, governance and innovation.
Marks & Spencer has announced changes to its press team. Michelle Stageman, head of product PR for home, kidswear, christmas and beauty is now on leave. Sophie Barton and Jessica Hampton have both been promoted to PR manager, while Jessica Harris adds kidswear to her remit, becoming head of womenswear, lingerie and kidswear. Ravina Khela has been appointed as press assistant for womenswear and lingerie.
EMERGE has appointed David Mahoney as senior account manager to work across the agency’s Another_Space, Ania Haie, Beauty & Go, Missoma, rewardStyle and LIKEtoKNOW.it briefs.
Shooting Star has hired Emma van Nieuwenhuijzen as a senior account manager.
Brandnation has expanded its fashion team, hiring both Natalie James and Charley Paton as account executives.
Agency news
Business comms consultancy Buchanan has rebranded to reflect the expansion of its offering to encompass a full range of services, including an in-house design and branding team.
PRWeek Awards
The Cision team at the PR Week Awards 2017
This week marked the announcement of the PRWeek Awards 2018 shortlist, with Taylor Herring headlining the list with a total of 13 nominations, including for the Small Consultancy of the Year prize.
Joining the agency in the Small Consultancy category is The Romans, which also receives 10 other nominations, while W and Tin Man feature in eight and seven categories respectively. The full shortlist can be found here.
The ceremony will take place at London’s Grovenor House on Tuesday 16 October. More information can be found on the PRWeek Awards site.
Nigel Sarbutts, founder of freelance network The PR Cavalry, argues that senior comms professionals need to include freelance PRs in their long-term strategies.
It’s indisputable that the range of tasks that in-house staff and consultants now perform has expanded more rapidly in the last few years than at any time.
PR programmes now range far beyond the core function of media relations. SEO, content creation, influencer marketing, native advertising and others feature in even routine meetings.
Exciting, but highly volatile and the challenge is obvious. How can your team offer genuine expertise in new activities while maintaining your fundamental ability to know the media in numerous sectors?
Volatility and traditional team structures don’t mix. This explains the huge growth in freelancing as in-house and agency teams have seen how freelance talent brings niche expertise and the priceless emotional energy of new perspectives and contacts.
Freelance PRs are no longer a stopgap solution
But we have barely scraped the surface of shifting from a stopgap use of freelancers to viewing them as a strategic resource.
The obstacle is that the huge pool of mid to senior freelance talent is not searchable, making it haphazard and laborious to find the right people, with the right experience at the right time.
That is the problem we are fixing using search technology and an algorithm that matches detailed freelancer profiles to detailed client briefs.
Making that resource truly searchable by industry sector, by the type of work required and recency of experience (as well as by other factors like day rate and proximity) would transform the way teams approach resource planning because you reduce that challenge of volatility, confident that the right person for the right brief was identifiable.
Matching freelancers to the right brief
The industry needs better ways of finding freelance talent than posting requests on social media and asking around. It’s laborious and isn’t a strategic response to the opportunities of a new way of working.
For freelancers, finding the right brief is equally time consuming. Hunting for clients in ways that haven’t changed in decades: networking events, word of mouth and personal branding, costs freelancers money and precious billable time each month. Recruitment agencies have been a solution but at significant cost.
A comms director for a number of famous UK brands told me recently: “It’s hard to get approval on full-time staff so hiring freelancers is easier – but my board look at me like I’m mad when I explain there’s a 20% recruiter fee to pay on top”.
We are taking that barrier away by charging a far more modest commission (10%) to freelancers, reflecting the value they get of not having to forego billable time and costs to hunt for new clients (and for finding them highly profitable work because the brief is accurately matched to their skill set). Every freelancer we have recruited grasps that saving immediately.
By harnessing technology to a formerly laborious, haphazard task for both freelancer and client, the numbers make sense; on the one hand for freelancers to realise a much bigger financial benefit and for clients it makes it easier to plan for and make hiring decisions.
Campaign: The Other Harry & Meghan Client: Sheraton Grand London Park Lane PR Team: Switched On Timing: May 2018
Summary
To showcase its suite of art-deco wedding facilities, the Sheraton Grand London Park Lane handed a complimentary luxury wedding package to a couple who shared the same names as the Prince and his bride-to-be Meghan Markle.
The other Harry & Megan married on 4 May, two weeks before their royal namesakes tied the knot at Windsor Castle.
Objectives
Switched On was briefed by the hotel to shine a light on its wedding offering and in particular, the collection of grade II listed art-deco rooms and the dedicated team of planners which are key to the Sheraton Grand London Park Lane’s offering.
The campaign needed to:
Visually showcase the wedding spaces
Reference the dedicated wedding planning team
Position the hotel as a premium wedding destination of choice in London
Strategy and implementation
There was really only one wedding that was going to capture the world’s attention this year; the marriage of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. The question for Switched On was how to cut through all the inevitable PR-generated clutter and deliver something genuine.
The hotel has royal links, given it is a stone’s throw from Buckingham Palace and the rumoured location where Queen Elizabeth II learnt to ballroom dance. Switched On’s thought was a simple one: what were the chances that somewhere in the UK, a couple who were planning to marry shared the same names as the Prince and Meghan?
Together, the agency and the hotel pieced together a luxury wedding package and announced that the Sheraton Grand London Park Lane was celebrating the Royal nuptials by offering a complimentary five-star ceremony to another Harry and Meghan.
Step forward Harry Hindley and Megan Morley from Nottingham. After spotting a piece in the Evening Standard, the pair – who run a dance and drama school together – got in touch.
With everything set for the big day and with the blessing of the couple, the agency set about sharing their story with the nation in the run up to the royal wedding. The pair exchanged vows on Friday 4 May 2018, in front of 100 family and friends.
Given the hotel’s premium credentials, Switched On ensured that it targeted titles whose audience reflected the hotel’s luxury nature through a series of strategically placed features and news pieces.
Results
The campaign reached 1.9 billion around the world.
Coverage highlights included BBC London, a three-minute dedicated video feature that ran as a “must view” on the homepage of BBC News, an interview segment with the couple that ran on BBC World Service and features in the Evening Standard, Daily Mail and Hello! magazine.
Outside of the UK, notable hits included the New York Times, NBC in America and ABC, Australia’s biggest television network.
All of the coverage was positive and the majority included visuals of the hotel’s wedding spaces. All coverage mentioned the hotel’s location, while more than 70% carried additional details of the wedding facilities.
Juliet Cameron, chief operating officer at Launch, argues that both interns and employers should look to summer internships as an extended job interview.
Too much work experience on a CV never looks good as we know that savvy candidates see a placement for what it is: One long interview. If work experience is handled well, it could result in a job of a candidate’s dreams, now or in the future.
At Launch we offer paid work experience placements and see these as a key part of our succession planning strategy. Those who’ve made (the right) impression as a ‘workie’ number some of our brightest rising stars, including a current account manager and three execs.
Every work experience placement is an opportunity – not just to bolster your CV but to get hired once you’ve sussed out whether you like the nature of the work and the culture. We always give people an itinerary and induction to our business before we allocate them key tasks – but the rest is very much up to them.
So how can you show you’ve got what it takes to be a comms professional of the future without looking over confident and high-fiving the CEO as you take the top chair in the boardroom?
Introduce yourself
It sounds obvious but this is so important. Your buddy will no doubt introduce you to key people on day one, but if they don’t or if later in the week there are new faces, be proactive and introduce yourself. A great way to make early friends and keep engaging with people is to do the tea round, often.
Always show willingness
We’ve all been there. You’ve done your finals, have some strong work experience placements under your belt and quite frankly you might feel a bit overqualified to source a pink flamingo hat, hunt down a copy of “Pigeon Keeper Weekly” or get in the chocolate brownies for a meeting.
You’re not. Show genuine enthusiasm for every task you are given and it will be noted. Employers know your academic credentials, what they want to see is some great common sense, perseverance and resilience. Buying pink flamingo hats is not easy!
Take notes
If you’re in a meeting or even an informal catch up, take your note book and write notes. You may never need them, but it makes you look organised and keen. And, you never know when someone may come back to you and ask you to do something related to that meeting.
Get involved
Accept every invitation – to meetings, team lunches, socials whatever. If people are inviting you to stuff it hopefully means they are happy to have you along. Good start.
Get to know your colleagues, ask them questions, act interested (even if you’re not) and be open about you, your interests and passions. But, do NOT drink too much. Never as a ‘workie’.
Be a meerkat
You need to have your eyes and ears open at all times so that you’re not only taking everything in and learning, but it also means you can contribute to the office banter and show your personality (very important), and also volunteer your help at every opportunity showcasing your skills.
Simon Addy, owner and director of talent booking agency RunRagged, reveals how PRs should go about working with influencers and which celebrities he’d love to work with.
Can you give a brief outline on what RunRagged does?
For over 20 years, RunRagged has been helping PRs and brands connect with influencers and A-list talent for PR campaigns, endorsements and events, ranging from Kate Moss, Stormzy and Benedict Cumberbatch through to the Virgin Group, Samsung and Champneys Spas.
We could be in our office one day and be at an event the next. No day is the same for us!
How do you like to work with PRs?
Right from the beginning. We’re able to profile the right celebrities for the brief at the right price, utilising our expert knowledge and buying power to achieve the best results.
We often get pulled onto booking projects last minute after PR agencies have struggled to do it themselves. Long term this ends up costing them and the client more when they have to get an expert on board last minute; talent agents can sense desperation when it’s close to the wire so fees go up, also team resource has been wasted.
Are there any common mistakes PRs make when booking or negotiating with celebrities? How can these be avoided?
A celebrity can have four or five people looking after them and the right contact will differ for each celebrity depending on the project. Going to the wrong person, having the wrong pitch and not knowing what a talent will or won’t do wastes valuable time and often results in overpaying.
If you can’t negotiate within your price bracket, move on. Throwing cash at the problem will only set a precedent and inflate the market for everyone else. At the end of the day, it’s all about value – if the celebrity believes in the cause, they’re far more valuable and authentic than someone just there for pay.
Having a long-term strategy for celebrity marketing is key to uncovering genuine advocates of the brand, who will deliver better authenticity and value to a campaign later on.
What’s the benefit of working with a talent booking agency versus doing it in-house?
Talent booking agencies like ours have contacts and relationships with agents and celebrities directly, meaning we’ve built up trust and understanding over many years along with personal knowledge about celebrities – their likes, dislikes, which jobs will appeal, which won’t and their market value.
We profile the right talent for the activity and the budget. This saves PRs time, stress and money in the long run and manages expectations from the off, helping them avoid any pitfalls to guarantee a successful campaign.
Using a good booking agency is exactly the same as using a good PR agency. It’s down to contacts, the strength of those relationships and an in-depth understanding of the industry.
How does the evolution of influencers affect what you do?
There’s three categories of “influencers”: talent (sport, actors, musicians, comedians), celebrity (reality stars and similar) and the social media influencer (those born of fame from Instagram etc). Brands increasingly want to engage with social media influencer, meaning paid-for activity on social media has become an integral part of most brands’ PR and marketing strategies.
Our work now includes this activity on a daily basis, from seeding product to talent for organic exposure through our unique online gifting portal The VIP Suite to content creation. We tend to work now with ‘earned’ influence and natural organic relationships that have the most impact for brands.
How do you see the sector evolving over the next five years? How should PRs stay ahead of the game?
Endorsements are becoming more organic and meaningful, so it’s important for PRs to create long-term relationships with celebrities and influencers. We developed The VIP Suite gifting platform to help brands and agencies find genuine fans among celebrities.
Collaborating with these is more likely to deliver value for the brand as they are passionate, rather than doing it just for the money. Finding these real fans early on ensures better value for campaigns later.
Finally, who’s the celebrity you would most like to represent?
We actually don’t represent any celebrities, which makes us unique as we’re completely impartial meaning we can put the brand first. But if we did, we’d love to represent the power house that are Beyonce and Jay Z!
