Public relations covers a range of activities which help organisations to communicate with key audiences – their ‘publics’ – in order to influence behaviour, to change perceptions or to sell products or services.

Public relations is often ‘pigeon holed’ as media relations and little else – but it can be considered to include a wide spectrum of disciplines and techniques that are often also called marketing communications or ‘marcomms’. However you define it, we have the skills to deliver it.

Public relations (PR) helps organisations reap many rewards and in a competitive environment it can help companies to ‘stand out’ in their marketplace.

Successful public relations consultancy starts with understanding clients’ needs and identifying effective ways to meet their objectives.

Industry experience is critical and our expertise in areas including social housing, economic development, building & construction, environment & waste management,  technology & engineering and food makes us stand out from the rest. We use our knowledge to implement public relations campaigns that generate measurable results. We set targets – and then we meet them.

We tailor our services to meet clients’ needs. No two campaigns are ever the same.

Media relations:
Effective use of the media is at the heart of many public relations campaigns. Our team includes former journalists who know how to present material to capture the attention of editors and producers.

Press releases, ‘ghost written’ features, media briefings, press conferences and photo-calls are just some of the techniques we use to gain positive publicity for our clients.

Sometimes, of course, our objective is to keep our clients out of the press or to minimise negative coverage and we have experience of doing just this across a wide range of markets and media.

Advertising:
Many of our clients have advertising budgets and it is most cost-effective for them to integrate their advertising activity with editorial media relations – because in the world of commercial publishing, the two are increasingly linked.

We manage advertising for a number of clients, leveraging their advertising expenditure to maximise editorial coverage.

Literature:
Well designed, planned and written marketing materials are key promotional tools for any business. We provide a full range of creative marketing communications solutions that help to generate and drive sales, communicate key messages and promote services.

Working with our designers we ensure that we fully understand our clients’ needs before we start work on a project, helping us to produce distinctive and memorable marketing materials that create long lasting impressions. We can manage the entire marketing communications process, from developing initial concepts to copywriting and design, ensuring that clients receive a one-stop service.

We extend the service to include, where required, the purchase and management of mailing lists to create effective direct mail campaigns – traditionally on paper but increasingly by e-mail. Newsletters, too, are increasingly being delivered electronically rather than on paper. We have the writing and design management skills to tailor the communication to the chosen medium of delivery.

Outside the strictly commercial sector, we have a great deal of experience of producing such things as newsletters for housing association tenants and communications materials to support public consultation in support of planning applications.

Websites:
We provide a complete website design and development service. We make sure that websites operate to their full potential by optimising them for search engines, creating user-friendly navigation and writing copy to communicate with key audiences.

Events and conferences:
Public relations also encompasses events and exhibitions which give clients the opportunity to showcase their services or products.

Professional event management is critical to success. Our highly competent and experienced team organises a range of events from official openings to product launches and conferences.

Consultation and lobbying:
Regeneration and development frequently involves 'difficult' sites which have planning problems. We have considerable experience of working with developers to consult and communicate with communities affected by planning proposals and to persuade local people and decision-makers of the merits of a particular scheme.

We work as part of a development team to plan and implement realistic and effective community relations and lobbying campaigns.

We successfully combine all these PR activities – and more – into integrated campaigns. Where appropriate we also integrate other marketing communications activities to meet our clients’ objectives.