Client close-up: John O’Brien, PoolWerx

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Welcome to our new regular feature talking to our clients to find out about their experiences of business, good and bad, and any advice they might have for other business leaders and owners.

Name: John O’Brien

Job title and company: Founder and CEO, PoolWerx

Pitch your company and what it does in a sentence: Swimming pool and spa mobile service and retail supply to both domestic and commercial pools across Australia

How did you get to where you are now? By a very long route of consistency and persistence in pursuit of a vision for success in this industry.

What has been your worst moment in business so far? Losing my business partner, who was also my brother and best mate, in a terrible car accident. It was hard to regroup from this.

What has been your best moment in business so far? Being recognised by my peers, PoolWerx winning best Franchise in Australia.

Have you had any business mentors and what did they teach you? Sure have. One called Ray Hill, former CEO of Parmalat and PoolWerx Board member, taught me the importance of being thorough while you take your time.

How does PR help your business/ why is it important to you? We sponsor Royal Life Saving and PR helps us get some great leverage for our significant investment.

Why do you work with Ignite PR & Marketing? They are good people, easy to work with, fun and they get us results at the same time.

Wrap up 2010 with thoughtful presents to build your presence

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Christmas is known as a time of giving and showing goodwill. A fantastic way to show you care about the people you have worked with all year is by sending them a simple Christmas present or a Thank You card. In today’s world of cyberspace it’s rare we send a card or a gift to someone through traditional mail. E-cards, Facebook messages and even Christmas texts are sadly all too common.

Sending traditional ‘snail mail’ presents or cards are often overlooked as relationship builders, yet if  used wisely they can help retain clients and show your suppliers you care. Relationships go a long way in this business and while some will argue a client will never stay just because you sent them a gift, a client that feels valued, knows the agency cares and who has a personal relationship with the team will find it much harder to sever the ties.

Before you send anything you should conduct a little bit of research – notice what your clients or suppliers eat and drink at functions, listen to comments about interests outside the office and pay attention to how they react to criticism or compliments.

Our top presents for suppliers or clients:

Fruit can make a refreshing change

1)      Chocolates (you’ll know their favourites from your preliminary research)

2)      Well packaged alcohol (as above)

3)      Quality gourmet hampers or fruit baskets

4)      Gift vouchers

5)      Flowers (if they aren’t allergic – again find out their favourites before hand)

Stay away from:

1)      Heavily perfumed products

2)      Foul smelling food items such as blue cheese or items with garlic

3)      Anything that could smash or leak in the delivery process

4)      ‘Joke’ presents – any item that could be misconstrued and taken offensively

5)      Cheesy photos of your team

Source: Bad Humour articles

Think class not crass

As for choosing cards, our general rule is to stay away from comedy, flirtatious words or the cards with music or voiceovers inside.

Select cards that look professional but still have an element of style that matches your business personality.

You can also get creative with gifts and provide something memorable and different. We give boxes of cherries to clients because they are not typical and it is something they can share with their team or take home for the family.

Merry Christmas!

Treading the minefield of Xmas office functions: tips on how to party ‘professionally’ this silly season

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OK so it’s that time of year again – office parties and business networking events a plenty along with the flow of alcohol. Love them or hate them, corporate Christmas parties are an integrated part of business life and perfect for cementing relationships with your clients and associates, as well as being a chance to source new leads and expand your network. However, before you get into the reindeer outfits and knock back the egg-nog, there are a few (PR) partying rules you should follow. An alcohol-fuelled Christmas party is not a good enough reason to throw your professionalism out the window. So if you are serious about setting the bar and keeping your career alive, follow our top PR partying tips:

1) Drive to the party.This way you won’t be able to get drunk as you will have to drive home. You might also become the knight in shining armour as you will be able to drop off any drunk colleagues (or even clients) if necessary.

2) Eat before hand and at the event (if possible). Even if there is only mini-cocktail sausages or deep fried spring rolls, something is better than nothing. If you are running the event, don’t be a scrooge, supply some food!

3) View the party as a time to secure relationships and potentially network with suppliers or clients. Touch base with all of the key people but try not to hassle the boss or Managing Director too much as their job is to also network with their team.

4) Dress appropriately (no boobs, tank tops or thongs visible – and we are not just referring to footwear here).

5) Keep the business talk to a minimum. There’s nothing worse than someone pushing their products on you when all you want to do is enjoy a vino and have a laugh with your colleagues. Have a few topics on hand to make conversation and keep it light.ie. football scores, latest news that day, fun industry stories

6) Balance the timing – don’t leave too early and don’t be the last person there. You want to make an impression and have fun but at the same time you don’t want to be known as the drunk hanger-on. It’s easy to become known as a drinker and this can affect your professional reputation.

7) Have fun. People are more relaxed at this time of year so it’s ok to have a laugh – just don’t make a joke at someone else’s expense. That’s a definite no-no.

Creating media magic – the importance of appropriate photographs

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One area I have discovered a lot of businesses will overlook is the way their company is visually represented in the print and online media. And I’m not talking about websites, design or logos – I’m referring to photographs.

It never fails to amaze me how much money companies will spend on improving their online presence, or various other aspects of their business, yet quality photographs of staff and products won’t get a second look.

Many regional newspapers, magazines and online sites will only have one or two photographers. These photographers are often freelance photographers (contract) who will only work at the media outlet part-time.

What this means when you are pitching to media is that the chances of a regional/small media outlet setting up a fresh photograph to go with your story, or product, is pretty slim. This doesn’t mean it won’t happen. It just means you are competing with the thousand or so other stories which also need photographs. Editors need to fill space. They also need to meet a quota of stories and have appropriate photographs to go with them.

If you are on a deadline – your photographer is already booked out – and you have a choice between a story with a photo versus a story with no photo the chances are the story with the photo will win out every time.

Of course saying that, the larger media outlets will always want to own copyright and have their own pictures…

If a company does have images for media a lot of the time these images will be old or outdated. You know the ones – the fresh faced CEO who looks about forty but when you meet them in person they are really sixty and look nothing like their official media photograph?

There is nothing the media hates more than a (pr) company sending them pictures to accompany stories which represent their clients -or products – in a falsified manner. Media outlets don’t want old images or ones which look dodgy and outdated. It reflects on the quality of their publication. Media outlets want a variety of quality images which accurately portray whoever or whatever it is they are writing about.

They also don’t want to print the same thing as all of the other media outlets you’ve sent your story to.

It is crucial your brand aligns with images which accurately represent the business products and which fit the overall brand strategy. If you are going to push products, staff and employees of your business in the media its important to make sure they are presented in a way which fits in with the overall marketing strategy of your business. Social media also needs to be addressed in this regard but that is a whole other topic altogether.

Depending on the size of your business and what is being promoted in the media realistically you should be looking at indulging in professional photography shoots at least once a year. If you can’t hire someone it is still easy to update your media images. All it involves is finding an amateur photographer and allocating time and resources to make it happen.

The best part about professional media shoots is that your company will own all of the images afterwards – you can reuse these images in marketing material, or online, as you choose.

Quality photographs are an excellent business tool and will always help to enhance your media coverage.

Claire Kelly – Media Relations Manager, Ignite PR and Marketing

Navigating the murky waters of professional PR measurement

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In 2010, we’re utterly obsessed with measurement. This obsession hasn’t been a quantum shift, a grand epiphany, or a light bulb moment, it’s been a slow build, a snowball culminating with the global financial crisis.

Today business owners must be able to produce proof at a moment’s notice to substantiate any spend.

Gone are the ‘good’ old days when a crisp suit, lunch on the agency and the whisper of expensive cologne were enough to reassure clients of campaign success (think Madmen).

Today, we’re pay-per-click, we’re analytics, we’re tangible results, we’re figures, reports and metrics, except of course when it comes to professional public relations. The reason for this is a fundamental lack of any uniform measurement platform for PR and marketing agencies in Australia to use, by which all can be judged.

The fact that such a system remains nonexistent in 2010 almost beggars belief.

The elephant in the room is highlighted all the more by PR agencies who flout this lack of regulation by presenting clients with reports boasting hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars worth of positive PR. These often ludicrous figures are reached by a not-so-clever multiplication of AVE figures.

AVE, meaning Advertising Value Equivalent is the closest thing PR and marketing agencies have to adequate measurement tools. AVE is calculated by PR professionals literally sitting down with media clippings, a ruler and a calculator and determining the size of any given media clipping. Based on the size we are able to establish what the equivalent advertising price for the space would be.

But here’s where it gets messy. Some agencies will then add a multiplier to the total value, on the assumption that editorial is more credible than advertising. Many agencies consider 3 times AVE to be acceptable, however some use 5 times AVE or, heaven forbid, even more.

It may be partly due to these measurement disparities that the Public Relations Institute of Australia actually discourages the use of AVE figures and also states in its code of ethics:

‘Members shall refrain from proposing or agreeing that their consultancy fees or other remuneration be contingent entirely on the achievement of specified results’.

However, like it or not, clients are increasingly asking for these figures and agencies which refuse to produce them may be seen as disreputable.

Recently the director of a large Sydney agency told us she was now being asked for AVE figures by clients for the first time, even though the practice has been commonplace in Queensland (at least for our agency) for many years.

So here’s the punch: When two different agencies can deliver the same level of media coverage, but value this coverage wildly differently, how can clients adequately compare ‘apples with apples’ when it comes to PR?

The establishment of a viable evaluation platform for professional public relations and marketing, which is accepted by a majority of service providers and backed by the PRIA, is one of the most vital steps in the maturation of the industry in Australia.

Agencies who consistently deliver strong results for their clients will welcome this new age of measurement and transparency.

Facebook: the fine line between fresh marketing and grand failure

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Picture the boardroom.

Overzealous agency in one corner, creative pitch in full swing, prospective client in the other corner, lost in the swathe of marketing acronyms: (PPC, AVE, ROI, SEO, USP.)

Then a word is uttered which everyone seems to understand: Facebook. That magical proper noun which we all know is the answer to life, the mysteries of the universe and everything online.

Suddenly all are in agreement: A Facebook campaign will make the unsexy – desirable, the boring- exciting and convert currently unsalable products into hotcakes. It is the veritable magic wand of the web.

Unfortunately, a few notable Facebook fails have shown everyone just what can happen when nearsighted profiteering is combined with an agency’s ill conceived Facebook campaign.

Consider the Westfield campaign of Christmas 2009. The retailer’s agency created a Facebook specific application which loaded the phrase “All I Want for Christmas is a Westfield Gift Card” into user’s status updates.  The app was initially wildly popular, with a whopping 200,000 users signing up to win the $10,000 gift card on offer.

But within hours of the competition going live there were hate groups popping up en masse slaying Westfield for taking over Facebook as well as accusations the application contravened Facebook’s own regulations which state:

“In the rules of the promotion, or otherwise, you will not condition entry to the promotion upon taking any action on Facebook, for example, updating a status, posting on a profile or Page, or uploading a photo.”

Post campaign the agency responsible surely presented Westfield’s Execs with a glowing array of numbers and ROI figures and proclaimed Facebook as the risen Christ, but there are no metrics Westfield can use to measure the damage done.

So is there hope for businesses eager to deliver their message on Facebook?  Fear not because the answer is yes. 

I was surprised when the mega promotion machine for Tooheys’ Five Seeds Cider rolled out with billboard advertising directing users to http://www.facebook.com/5Seeds.

I trawled the page, earnestly hoping to witness a consumer led backlash against Lion Nathan for pushing their dirty corporate agenda onto Facebook users while fostering dangerous attitudes about binge drinking among our youth.  But my hopes were quickly destroyed by waves of uber-positive comments on their fan page.

  • Such a good apple cider- good on you!!
  • Currently enjoying one… ahhh!!
  • Yay I love that there’s a fan club :)!
  • I love it, bring it to NZ!! I don’t want to wait 6 months till I can have another!!
  • This would have to be my favourite bevo of all time. LOVE IT!

The old adage ‘look before you leap’ gets wheeled out a great deal in relation to social media, but it continues to prove itself as worthwhile advice.  With this in mind, consider the tips below before jumping into your facebook campaign, and best of luck.

Identify Facebook’s Strengths

Facebook gives businesses the opportunity to reach their audience in a variety of ways, but some approaches are more effective than others. Direct sales, for example, are tough. The strength of Facebook advertising is in building an ongoing relationship with your customer. If you’re not interested in this then perhaps steer clear.

Set up a fan page

Since we’re building relationships with the Facebook audience, you’ll want to give them a way to reach out to you. Social advertising, after all, is a two-way street. Luckily, Facebook’s Fan Pages are built with these relationships in mind.

More Ads, Less People

Advertisers are used to creating an ad that targets everyone, then testing to create effective variations. While this tactic is fantastic for Google, it may be expensive and ineffective on Facebook.

Instead, consider creating highly targeted ads for your Facebook campaigns. Ad copy should speak directly to the audience, and each ad should take advantage of the variety of different targeting factors Facebook provides.

Write Engaging, Creative Ads

Make sure your ads are clear, concise and tell the audience exactly what to do. If you’re driving traffic to a fan page, your copy should appeal to the audience that shares relevant interests and entice them to find out more about you. If you’re driving traffic to a standard landing page, make sure your copy gives the audience a reason to leave Facebook, even temporarily.