Birmingham-based agency Smarts England has been cited as the Midlands most successful PR agency by industry bible, PR Week, in recognition of its fast-growing client portfolio and long-standing retained business. The PR Week Consultancies Report which ranks the top performing 150 PR agencies in the UK put Smarts in 60^th position overall, higher than any other Midlands agency and 8^th position in the outside London list.

Rebecca Scully, managing director at Smarts, said: “It is fantastic to be recognised as a force to be reckoned with on both a national and regional level. We’ve worked hard to develop a business strategy and offering that meets our clients’ evolving needs. This is a clear recognition of the team’s ability to design and implement successful campaigns for businesses and organisations across a wide range of industry sectors.”

Rebecca Scully added: “The high number of retained clients within our portfolio demonstrates the effectiveness of using PR as a platform to build brand awareness and drive new business. In the face of increasing cuts to advertising budgets, many businesses are recognising the increased credibility and return on investment that can be built up through effective multi-channel PR-led campaigns.”

Smarts England has also opened a Central London office in order to provide a point of contact for the agency’s growing network of London-based clients as well as providing an opportunity to meet potential new ones.

After a successful 2011 PR agency Smarts England is expanding by opening an office in London to serve its growing list of clients based in the capital.
The new office, in York Street, which is just off Baker Street, will provide a point of contact for the agency’s London-based clients as well as providing an opportunity to meet potential new ones.
Smarts enjoyed considerable growth last year and recently celebrated winning its 14th consecutive pitch. The most recent client win is a well known law firm based in London.

Rebecca Scully, managing director at Smarts, said: “The move to open this office is a reflection of the fact we are winning more business in and around London and the South East. Our traditional home will continue to be in Birmingham, but opening an office in the capital presents an exciting opportunity.”

“The last 12 months have been a time of terrific expansion for Smarts, which has seen a 100 per cent success rate, in new business pitches, and this move is the latest step in a continued programme of growth.”

by Rebecca Scully

The world is full of good ideas – and the PR world is full of fantastically creative, headline grabbing PR ideas.  But how can you be sure that any one of these headline grabbing ideas is actually going to deliver a tangible business benefit to a client or, if you are the client, to your company.

At risk of sounding like The Sun’s ‘New in Briefs’, an ancient Chinese Philosopher, Sun Tzu, once said: “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”

Wise words – and in other words, all the great ideas in the world won’t get you where you need to be without a strategy behind them.  However, a good strategy alone will, albeit slowly.  Clearly the ideal is a robust strategy supported by some really relevant creativity in the form of tactics.

However, strategy development in PR and communications remains a bit hit and miss and can often be missing altogether.  Here are what I believe to be the top five ‘must-dos’ when developing a communications strategy:

1. Define your task – if you can’t define the overall role that communications needs to play in the business in a couple of sentences, including the measurable outcome you want it to have, then you are not clear on what you want to achieve. 
2. Identify any barriers to you achieving your defined outcomes – this will often mean undertaking a vast amount of desk and market research to establish where you are currently compared with where you want to be.  It may also mean auditing the internal politics of a company.  If communications doesn’t have senior level buy-in you will need to allow for trust and confidence building as part of your strategic approach.
3. Be clear about who you need to engage – no communications activity can reach everyone as we are all different and therefore engaged by very different things.  Prioritise those audiences whose engagement in you or your product will have the quickest and greatest chance of you achieving your defined outcomes.  These should be your phase one focus.
4. Summarise – can you summarise what you need to do to fill the gap between where you are and where you want to be?  Trim this down until you can communicate it into three or four verbs.  For example, do you want to educate people or inform them?  This summary is the basis of your strategic framework.  Your framework should have relevance to your company or brand over the medium to long term.  As already implied, you may need to break it down into phases, depending on the scale of task ahead of you.
5. Integrate with the marketing and sales strategy and activity (and support it!) – finally, and perhaps most importantly, PR does not exist in a vacuum.  Marketing and sales generally have a greater level of board level buy-in and therefore their strategies generally receive earlier approval.  Any communications strategy should be clearly integrated with marketing activity and share many of its desired outcomes.  You should also be prepared to show, tangibly, how the communications activity will actively support and enhance the sales effort.

By Jonny Maunder, studying Modern Languages at Durham University
Smarts work experience

“I remember my first work experience” a certain PR account director tells me, regaling me with stories of how even less than 10 years ago, it was far easier to find employment.
“No-one took it seriously, most of us tried to wriggle out of it, because we never had to worry about jobs in the way school and university leavers do now.”
Tell me about it. At the fresh-faced and youthful age of 20, it seems as though I am already falling behind in the cut-throat world of internships and work experience.

Today, everyone from the age of as early as 16 to 25 is searching for a way to stand out above the crowd, and enhance their CV. Clearly, the obvious way to do so is to gain a couple of weeks of work experience, as I am doing now. And all the evidence points towards this being of enormous benefit.

One need only consider that in 2009 in the US, only 14 per cent of soon-to-be-graduates without any internship on their CV had jobs waiting for them upon graduation, and this percentage has only dropped in the last three years. All companies now seem to require a broad range of experience in their particular field, be it PR or Golf Course Management, however it is becoming harder and harder to find such opportunities without a foot in the door from family, friends or relatives. All internships now are fiercely contested by university students of the highest calibre, and with the youth unemployment mark around one million now, it is clear to see why the need to bulk your CV from an early age is ever increasing.

So why join the scrap for experience, and how is it best to go about doing so?

1) Whilst it may seem like you are more of a hindrance than a help, you are constantly learning new skills that will help you in later life. In interviews when asked about your personal skills, it is crucial that you back up your answers with examples of where you have applied them, and internships provide an ideal response given you are employing such skills in a real work-pressured environment, as opposed to your school classroom.

2) Ask your family and your friend’s parents about their professions. Whilst you may be young, these people are your first and probably only port-of-call, the first contacts that you have and they are more than often happy to help you find some sort of experience, be it at their own workplace or elsewhere.

3) Think about uploading your CV to internship agencies, such as ‘Inspire Interns’, or ‘Instant Impact Interns’. Companies will regularly approach these sorts of websites when they require new interns. Such websites allow you to upload information on your interests, what you are looking to gain experience in, and when. Effectively they do the search for you!

4) Start networking! Stay in touch with any companies that let you join them for a period of time. Regular contact with companies that you worked hard for means that when you start looking for full-time employment, you already have a foot in the door and a good word to be put in for you.

5) Internships help you decide what you want to do! Unlikely though it may be, a month’s work for an insurance firm might set off alarm bells that you really DON’T want to be doing this for the rest of your life! More likely is that it will confirm what you want to do later in life (a pretty big decision to make!), and inspire you to pursue such a career.

So if you haven’t already, start thinking about uploading your CV to these sites, and get hunting! Be it paid or unpaid, and a large chunk out of your holiday, you truly will reap the rewards. Unfortunately, like a certain account director here, we can no longer get away with “a couple of weeks shelf stacking in Boots”!

By Christine Smart, senior consultant and crisis communications expert

Are you stuck in an analogue time warp? You’ve probably never thought about it before but in the world of crisis communications, thinking socially could be a matter of brand survival.

Analogue thinking is when you apply inappropriate strategies in an online world. For example, what would you do if your corporate Facebook page suddenly came under attack from a group of determined activists with an axe to grind? They start posting negative or even obnoxious content at the site in a troll-like fashion and your corporate brand is facing a real-time online attack.

It’s every marketer’s nightmare and it happened to Nestle when the company faced attack by Greenpeace for allegedly using palm oil in its products (KitKats), which was damaging the habitat of orangutans. Instead of taking the problem in hand and either blocking the content originators or redirecting them to a dedicated page, Nestle reacted by closing its Facebook page down. What happened next? A rogue page was created and the online attack took on a life of its own, minus Nestlé’s side of the story.

When it comes to managing your brand reputation online, the key is to think socially. When managing a potentially brand-damaging crisis, you should aim to get your message to a wide audience, as quickly as possible. If a hate site already exists, this is likely to mean creating your own content in the form of a dedicated web page and using adwords, for example, and SEO techniques to ensure it can be found easily by users of the hate site.

Getting the tone of your communication right also matters. Try to avoid being overly-defensive or reacting in a knee-jerk way by closing sites down or firing out legal letters – the analogue-thinkers default response. The best strategy is usually to set out the facts openly and honestly, communicate any action you are taking, and then leave the online visitor to make up their own mind.

Of course, as with all crisis communications, preparation is the best defence. In the online world, this means monitoring online mentions, securing an online army of advocates and creating lots of really good, engaging content. Basically, lots of good old online PR.

ENDS

Greg Aris, Account Director, Smarts England.
Through a combination of laziness and a four year disconnect from life in the trenches of a newsroom, I enlisted the help of some former colleagues who are still on the front line of reporting – telling you and me what’s going on in ours and other people’s towns, cities and countries.
I simply asked them, ‘apart from the obvious* what are your gripes with PRs and what as a journalist don’t you want from them…’
I started with former colleagues in Dubai, from which I left, along with my ten year career in journalism in 2008. Two rather specific Middle East gripes, which have not made the final five but are of particular note are; being whisked to a remote corner of Lebanon by a PRO in the hope they ‘might get caught up in a firefight’; and a regular practice of PRs phoning English language journalists who, following a press conference that day, attempt to embargo a story because the Arabic newspaper journalists didn’t feel like writing up their copy that evening.
My former colleagues who have contributed to this, and when I say contributed I really mean done all the hard work for me, are employed by well known TV channels, newswires, newspapers and magazines both in the UK and overseas. For many PRs they could be the people you’re pitching your next story to.
This is what they don’t want from you, or me, for that matter:
1) Don’t bother calling if you haven’t done your homework on the journalist – or publication
“Getting invited to the launch of a printer, and my patch is labour! Or holding a ‘top secret event’ that turns out to be the launch of a credit card, it’s a complete waste of the day and everyone’s time,” says one reporter friend.
“Not getting the right pitch for the right publication or section is what gets me and PRs who don’t know who our readers are,” says another.
2) Don’t think like a PR person
“I think what irritates me the most is a lot of PR people not putting themselves in the position of a reporter when they write a press release or send a story idea and thinking how the reporter would pitch the story to their editor,” revealed one assignment editor.
“Telling me what the story is and who I should interview is annoying. The most important person in the company might not be the most interesting person for the story.”
3) Don’t pretend to be a friend
As one magazine editor put it: “It’s annoying when PRs pretend to know me and are really casual and “matey” on emails or on Twitter, like we’re friends – but I’ve never met/heard from these guys.”
4) Don’t waste a single second
As one newspaper group editor points out: “I receive probably several hundred emails every day. I worked out a while ago that I probably spend less than five seconds (if that) initially looking at a press release, quickly scanning it to see if it is of interest. So less than five seconds is how long you have to impress!
5) Don’t go overboard on brand mentions in an interview…
Everyone aside from the genuinely naïve or sanctimonious employee of a licence fee funded broadcaster, expect that a spokesperson will be instructed to brand mention. But less is more and could be the difference between being asked to appear again or being struck off a producer’s Christmas card list altogether.
“It’s annoying when interviewees have clearly been briefed to name drop their company name, campaign, but go overboard. It’s always noticed, and rarely goes down well, according to a sub editor at a TV channel.
And finally as a bonus, if you are actually friends with a journalist, after a hard day’s work they don’t want to be pitched to, over half a mild and a café crème.
As one of my favourite journalist friends puts it: “PR friends are actually quite annoying – you meet up with them for a drink, completely non-work related, and before you know it they’re trying to pitch something to you or set up a meeting between you and their latest client. It just makes things awkward.”
I will remember that next time…

*phoning 30 seconds after sending a press release to ask ‘have you got my press release’

By Christine Smart, Senior Consultant, Smarts

While it’s not something I do everyday, our company’s growth plans, combined with some recent client wins mean we are in the market once again for an experienced account manager.

We’re not looking for just any account manager; we want one who knows the media, can handle clients well, enjoys multi-tasking and has the drive and enthusiasm to inspire people internally and lead winning teams. We like to think we’re not expecting much, but accept that we probably are.

For anyone thinking of applying for this or other PR posts, here are Smarts’ top five tips for making a good first impression:

• Smile and offer a confident handshake. This is essential but a surprising number of candidates fail to deliver.

• Be prepared to talk about yourself. Some of us find this difficult and it is a good idea to practice. Just be honest, tell the interviewer about your achievements and why they worked well. This is no time for false modesty but on the other hand, remember to play the team card too, after all it’s unlikely that it was all down to you.

• How rounded are you? Prospective employers want to know what kind of person you are in your personal life too, so be prepared to share information about what you like doing in your spare time, while avoiding the clichés that you can’t back up – eg. ‘I like reading, but can’t remember the last book I read.’

• Tell the interviewer what you know and ask questions. Candidates are often so geared up to talk about themselves that they forget to tell the interviewer what they know about the company and the reason why the job appeals. Don’t forget to listen too.

• Be prepared for the wacky question – what is your favourite dinosaur and why? Or which biscuit would you choose to be and why? Difficult to prepare for these, which is why interviewers love asking them. Take a few seconds to think about your answer.

PS Just in case you were wondering. Mine’s a flapjack because I’m packed full of good ideas and a Tyrannosaurus Rex because I may not have all the answers, but I’m pretty much guaranteed to get there first.

by Neil Williams

It’s fair to say that when I first took up my Account Executive position just under a year ago I only had a vague idea about day to day Public Relations agency life having spent the previous seven and a half years in the public sector so finding my feet was a challenge. I had a completely new way of working to adapt to and it could also be argued that compared to my previous employer I would now actually have to earn my money.

Over time I settled into my new working routine with the PR agency, punctuated by a few bumps in the road, until I arrived at the point I find myself now: used to my environment and with almost a year’s experience under my belt.

Here are the dos and don’ts to starting out your PR career within a communications agency that got me here:

Do

1) Find a method of organisation that works for you

This is something that I have only found recently after cribbing a technique from my colleague Katie but is vitally important. Having the right system of managing your workload reduces your stress considerably – there’s no worse feeling than being asked for a piece of work and realising you’ve forgotten because your working method has let you down.

2) Immerse yourself in your clients and their target media

The background knowledge that you develop from reading up on clients and target media is invaluable in helping you spot potential opportunities and ways in for your client. Any positive relationship you can build up over time also makes it more likely you will pick up the coverage and get the return on investment for your clients’ fee…

3) Write EVERYTHING down!

Become a compulsive scribbler. Anything you hear in a meeting or telephone, even down to the merest detail, is valuable. One of the most frustrating feelings you can have as an agency PR account executive is realising that you have taken down every bit of info apart from the bit you need. Comprehensive notes also act as a memory aid which is a huge help when it comes to writing releases after having taken a brief for example.

4) Learn when to say ‘I’m stacked’

A hard lesson to learn without doubt. When you start in a new role in PR you want to impress and consequently it’s an easy habit to say yes to everything. I certainly did but there is absolutely no point in taking on so much work that you can’t complete it well and to deadline. Once you do say ‘sorry I’ve got too much on’ and illustrate how big your workload is confidence in you actually increases as those allocating you work know that it will get done on time.

5) Contribute your thoughts in meetings, catch-ups and brainstorms – they are just as valuable as anyone else’s.

Again it’s easy to let meetings and brainstorms pass you by in your early days as you wonder ‘what do I know?’ but offering up your opinion is a great way of integrating yourself into agency life and you never know your idea might just become the basis for a client campaign.

Don’t

• Take changes to your written work personally, treat it as a learning experience

It can be a disheartening experience as an account executive when a draft piece of work is returned to you with all kinds of changes written all over it but don’t let it get to you. It’s all part of learning the PR styles and individual client requirements that you need to incorporate into your writing and remember too that the company is charged with producing the best work it can, if input from above can improve the final piece then that is exactly what should happen.

• Keep it to yourself if you’re feeling under pressure

Another classic mistake for the PR newbie. Without exception we all suffer periods of pressure every few weeks or months and the worst thing you can do is bottle it up and keep it to yourself. All that happens then is the pressure builds and eventually something has to give.

Tell someone. The support network the agency has in place is there to do exactly that – support you. But one thing you managers are not is mind readers; something can only be done to help if you voice your concerns.

• Get frustrated if the goalposts for a project or photo shoot are moved at short notice by clients or media – it’s the nature of the PR industry

So you’ve worked hard making phone calls and arranging convenient times for photographers, clients and models but at the last minute a spanner is well and truly thrown into the works laying waste to those best laid plans. Don’t fret, it happens in PR. A lot. Fixing it is awkward but it must be done and none of the need for change is a reflection on your initial work, it’s just part of the game so do it with a smile.

• Lose your personality when dealing with clients, be yourself – it’s your most valuable asset

First of all don’t misunderstand this one and go bouncing into client meetings as if it’s a night out in the pub with your mates – it isn’t. There is some decorum required, especially early on in an agency-client relationship, but it is important not to stifle who you are to fit in with a certain perception. You talk most naturally and freely when you are being yourself so that is the way to go wherever possible, there are exceptions to this but take the steer on that from the client themselves.

• Let the news pass you by, opportunities come along all the time. Even if you don’t identify how valuable it is someone else in your team might.

A crucial skill to develop and one that shouldn’t be too difficult to do given some application as, let’s face it, if you wanted to get in to PR in the first place you’re interested in the news. Keeping on top of the news agenda allows you to get, maybe not a whole step ahead, but gives you the chance to react quickly to anything that might work well for a client. If you happen upon the story too late then the opportunity is gone so stay proactive.

by Rebecca Scully

Finding a good agency can be a bit like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. Agencies are very good at convincing you of their credentials and promising the world, but it is the minority that actually go on to deliver really good work.
So how do you find a good agency? The trick is to ask questions that really get to the crux of their experience and capabilities:
1. Do you know how to reach my target market?
Many businesses make the mistake of thinking that sector-specific experience is essential. However, it is target-market experience that is the key. In the last 5 years, Smarts has worked in 28 different industry sectors. At least half of those represent our first foray into a new industry and yet activity for clients in new sectors was just as successful as activity for clients in sectors where we had previous experience.

It is surprisingly quick and easy for an agency to get to grips with a new industry, but learning what makes a specific audience tick takes much longer. For example, knowing and understanding that using traditional online communication to reach jobbing builders and farmers is pointless as they are not desk based, but that mobile communications are on the rise, can mean the difference between success and failure of a campaign. Similarly, understanding that an average consumer is a fickle beast and needs to be targeted using multiple channels to have any chance of a key message sticking is vital.

2. What experience do you have of delivering integrated campaigns?
A good agency will treat every new brief as if it is the first it has ever seen, analysing the task and thinking strategically about how best to achieve the client’s business objectives using a range of communications channels and techniques. For this reason a good agency will have a wealth of experience in delivering integrated campaigns. They should be able to show examples of where they have integrated communications techniques to maximise the chances of message uptake and where they have integrated a communications programme with the sales and marketing process to maximise return on investment.

A good agency should, in its response, challenge your ideas but be able to show the rationale for its proposals and how they will benefit you clearly and succinctly.

A bad agency will be formulaic in its approach, possibly sticking to traditional media relations and definitely not push the boundaries of your thinking.

3. Will you guarantee delivery?
All agencies should be able to guarantee delivery as every idea and approach recommended to you should have been developed with implementation in mind. If they won’t guarantee delivery, how can you be sure they know what they are talking about? Chances are they will let you down.

4. Will it cost me more if I need a senior team working on my business?
Senior team at pitch, junior team delivering work… It is a common scenario. Ask potential agencies up front how much senior involvement there will be on your account and what the implications are if you request or need senior involvement – will it cost you more?

Smarts works on the basis that in order to guarantee delivery (see point 3…) you need to service an account with the skills and experience it needs. That generally means a nice mix of experience and personalities, but almost always means at least some senior involvement. Sometimes, for example with professional services clients, that might mean a team made up entirely of senior individuals. A flat rate fee for all clients also means no one ever gets penalised if they need to up the level of senior consultancy on their account.

Finally, make sure that you have a sensible level of Director or Managing Director time built into the consultancy you receive. I am involved (perhaps slightly more than my account directors would like) on all accounts at Smarts. It is incredibly valuable. It means I can offer support to clients in their own roles and also spot and solve problems before the client even realises they exist.

5. Give me examples of where you have successfully tackled a communications objective similar to mine
This is perhaps the most important of all of the questions and will help you get to grips with how an agency might actually be able to assist you. What is it that you actually need to do? Increase sales of a product? Engage a certain audience group? Inform the masses? By asking this question, and asking for evidence that the examples given delivered tangible results, you will get a very good idea about the effectiveness of the communications delivered by an agency and how well their proposed activity will address your business objectives.

By Christine Smart

Thought leadership is a tried and tested method of helping businesses to stand out in their chosen markets. Put simply, it works by developing content that offers genuine insights into issues affecting the markets in which the business operates.

But simply to practice thought leadership is not enough. With so many professional services companies doing similar, it is important that your activity succeeds in grabbing interest, where others fail.

So what will help your thought leadership campaigns stand out?

• Create an ideas-gathering culture

Too many professional services organisations pay lip service to thought leadership but don’t put in place a process to help bring creative thinking to the fore. By setting up an expert panel, supported by a senior representative of the firm, you will be well placed to generate ideas and insights that could help the firm to build brand awareness and initiate business conversations.

• Set clear objectives

Be clear about the results you are expecting to see from the start. You will be able to measure the benefit in terms of raised profile by tracking and measuring the media results over time. But are you planning to use the insights and content generated in other ways? Could you be using it to help to develop your prospect database or could it help to start conversations with clients or prospects?

• Grab interest

Thought leadership content must be compelling and draw the reader in. Genuine market insight can be hard to come by but when you find it, treat it like a golden nugget – make the most of it across all relevant communications channels. Sometimes, experts need a little help in drawing out their insights in a way that is going to grab interest.

• Work it

When you uncover a ‘golden nugget’, make good use of it and apply multi-channel thinking. Could it form the basis of a report or piece of collateral that could be used in your business development activities? Is there a social media dimension? Could it inspire an advertising campaign or provide the focus for an industry event?

• Aim to set the agenda

Real insight is about setting the agenda, not just reacting to it. The novelty of what you have to say and its perceived value to the marketplace is what defines a well-considered thought leadership campaign.

Christine Smart is a Senior Consultant at Smarts, with expertise in developing thought leadership campaigns for clients in the professional services sector for Withers & Rogers and PwC. For more information contact Christine.Smart@smarts.co.uk.