Keeping the spark in your client relationships

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As with any relationship, the one you have with your client will no doubt have its ups and downs. At the start of a working relationship both parties experience the usual emotions – apprehension, anticipation, excitement. Will the agency do a good job now you’ve committed to six months with them? Will the client always be this nice?

At Ignite we’ve had long-standing relationships with many of our clients. We’ve been Poolwerx’s exclusive PR partner for five years and looked after Hire A Hubby’s PR program for more than two years. The average tenure with our clients is three years. So, what is the key to a great working relationship?

Keeping things fresh is an obvious, yet important, factor. If you’ve been working with a company for several years it can be all too easy to settle into a ‘routine’ – and you run the risk of falling out of love with each other.

Mutual respect is also critical to a successful relationship, as is understanding each other’s needs. If you lose sight of the bigger picture you won’t be helping your client achieve their long-term goals – and you might find yourself getting dumped for a newer model.

We’ve listed out our top five tips for keeping the spark in your client relationships below.

1) Call regularly – while email is the preferred choice of communication for many these days, nothing beats the courtesy of a quick phone call once a week. It will remind both of you that there’s a real, live human being on the other end of those correspondences, encouraging a better relationship. We have a service promise of at least three contacts a week.

2) Have a date night – take your clients out for dinner/lunch/coffee when you can. It’s a chance to get out of the corporate environment and for you to both get to know each other a bit better. Many will attest to the benefits of a social outing when it comes to fostering a stronger personal and, ultimately, working relationship with clients.

3) Role play – if you’re feeling disenchanted with your client, put yourself in their shoes for a while. Imagine the workload and consider any pressure points you might know of. Are you aware of any personal issues? Be understanding and be an adult – if the problem doesn’t seem to be going away, talk about it. It’s much better to clear the air than let a relationship run into distress.

4) Show an interest – don’t just ‘do the job’. Flag items of interest you’ve seen in the news or heard through the grapevine that’s relevant to their industry. Not only will this show your commitment to understanding the industry landscape and where your client fits, it’ll show that you’re continuously on the pulse of industry news and issues. This kind of assurance is critical to engaging your clients beyond the regular day-to-day activity.

5) Make them feel special – agency PR people will know all too well the juggling skills required to manage multiple clients. However, the number one rule in client relations is to never, ever make your client feel like they are anything less than your number one priority – regardless of how busy you are.

Paying for brand ambassadors: worth it or not?

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In our last blog post we touched upon how your employees were your best brand ambassadors. However, many brands also pay high profile celebrities to endorse their products and/or services such as Brumby’s, who has recently announced its partnership with Matthew Hayden.

While many brands have successfully leveraged a celebrity relationship to their benefit, a large number have failed to engage their core consumer with the new ‘face’ of their business.

Why so?

Brand ambassadors must be picked carefully. Just because someone is famous doesn’t mean your target consumer will instantly warm to them. What’s key here is to ensure your brand ambassador is relevant to your products and services and, in turn, your customer.

The main aim of having a celebrity brand ambassador on board is to transfer the equity of said person to your business, resulting in enhanced preference and a heightened perceived credibility for your brand. They should be instantly recognisable and aligned with your proposition.

Target has recently demonstrated a great re-positioning campaign using the services of fashion guru, Gok Wan. This has worked brilliantly for them as Gok is well-known – and, importantly, liked – by consumers from all walks of life. He is neither too ‘fashion-forward’ nor hyper-critical, meaning the average Target customer feels assured that he – and therefore Target  –  really does have their best fashion interests at heart.

Linking with a public figure who is known for their brilliant charity or community work can also be an effective way to ‘piggy-back’ your messaging. Our client, Poolwerx, recently did exactly that, joining forces with Kids Alive founder, Laurie Lawrence, to promote swimming pool safety this summer. You can see more about that here.

Of course, it can go horribly wrong. Affiliating yourself fully with a celebrity means that if they fall from a great height, so do you. Think Kate Moss and the cocaine scandal – hugely embarrassing for the likes of Chanel and Burberry.

On the flipside, some great crisis PR can rescue your brand and even turn a disaster into a success. Rimmel stuck by Moss and some have argued that it actually boosted its profile and helped Moss obtain even greater international appeal. Her rock ‘n’ roll goddess status certainly didn’t take a hit – it just added to her ‘bad girl’ persona, which Rimmel evidently thrived upon.

But in truth, does anyone really want their brand to be associated with such negative connotations, regardless of the outcome?

In summary, there is certainly a place for celebrities in marketing and PR campaigns. Just be sure to choose someone who will reflect your company’s ethos and values, and who will bring more than just their name to your brand.

Internal Communications: Getting it Right

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While marketing, advertising and PR are all great vehicles for getting your key messages out to the wider world, many CEOs forget one simple fact – that the best word-of-mouth for any business comes from those closest to it: the employees.

Your employees are your most important stakeholders – and your greatest brand ambassadors. Ensuring regular, consistent communication to everyone within the business is essential if you are to engage them, whether they are part of the executive management team or work the shop floor.

And internal engagement is critical. Without it you cannot expect your team to be working towards your company’s common goals – especially if they are not even clear on what those goals are. Equally, it’s important to have strong business values.  If you don’t make the company culture visible, you can’t expect your employees to behave in line with your brand’s ethos.

Transparency is integral to internal communications. Many CEOs have felt the backlash when they have made a big decision that impacts the whole business, but haven’t communicated it well (or at all) to those who matter most. Hearing about it through a public news announcement is never going to ingratiate staff towards head office.

Another essential point to remember is that although internal communications are never intended to be seen outside of the business, as much care should be taken with the linguistic style and tone as a media release, for example. You are still conveying key messages to a core audience, so take as much time and care as you would any other piece of written collateral.

Finally, don’t ever circulate anything you wouldn’t want talked about or published outside of the four walls you work within. As demonstrated by Deane Priest of Brumby’s early last year, nothing is ever ‘off the record’. Read morehere.

Top tips for getting internal communications right:

1) Ensure a consistent voice – make sure that any written materials (memos, emails, blogs etc.) are all written in the same tone and with the same language. Consistency will ensure you are talking as ‘one company, one voice’.

2) Involve your employees – if something big is happening with the business, ask your employees for their opinions/feedback on how this should be communicated. Hearing from them how best to approach the situation will help you get it right.

3) Communicate little and often – short, snappy communication done on a regular basis is likely to be more engaging that long, complicated emails/letters that go unread because of lack of time (or attention).

4) Encourage internal social networks – this will allow all employees on all levels to interact, removing any ‘them and us’ feelings.

5) Respond quickly to negative news – if murmurings are afoot that there is something wrong with the business, respond quickly and honestly. This is far better than allowing the rumour mill to get out of control and will reassure employees that their employer is looking out for them.

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Media relations: what they don’t teach you at uni

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For the past three and a half years, I have been studying public relations at university. While I thought I knew everything I needed to know to start my career as a public relations practitioner, my time spent interning at Ignite PR has made me realise there is much more to PR than what we learn in the classroom.

‘Media relations’, for example, was a term chucked around in lectures but we were never taught what was really involved. At uni I was never taught as such the idea of ‘pitching’ a media release to a journalist and it was a completely foreign concept to me. Media relations isn’t even considered a unit of study yet most graduates from university will start out as juniors who need to know what media relations encompasses.

During my time studying at university, media relations was described at best as sending an email to a journalist and presuming that they would publish the attached media release. I was quick to learn that there was a whole lot more involved with media relations than met the eye and that it makes up a large component of the work we do as PR practitioners.

I was always under the impression that once you emailed a journalist with a media release that it would miraculously appear in the paper. I was soon to find out that this was not the case at all. Media relations is a skill in its own right. It isn’t a case of just picking up a phone and asking for coverage – you must ‘sell’ a story to a journalist, convincing them to cover it.

The idea of talking to a journalist was indeed a daunting task at first and I wished I had learnt how to do this at university. However, I came to the realisation that it would be very difficult for universities to assess students on the art of’ pitching’ and ‘following up’ – it is something that is best learnt in a working environment with real clients and real journalists to pitch to.

This is where the value of a work experience opportunity comes into play, as here you can apply what you have learned in your studies into practice.

I’m surprised Australian universities can’t include a media relations subject as a unit of study, considering it is such an essential part of PR. Saying this, it is something that is learnt over time and you do eventually become more confident and better at it with practice.

University students wanting to get a career in public relations should seriously consider taking up as much internship experience as possible before they graduate. It is not only a good GPA that lands students into getting full time paid position jobs, there are some things that can only be learnt in a work experience environment, one of them being media relations.