Auteur : Brendon Craigie

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Content Featured Insights PR industry

Thinking like engineers: how public relations can help businesses win in the ‘era of less’

According to Gartner’s Annual CMO Spend Survey released in May, marketing budgets have fallen on average by 15%. Budgets in 2024 now represent 7.7% of overall company revenue, compared to 9.1% in 2023. Cuts have hit spend on martech, labour and agencies the hardest while spend on paid media has grown. “CMOs are living in an ‘era of less’,” argues Ewan McIntyre, VP Analyst and the Chief of Research for the Gartner Marketing Practice. Nothing in the economic outlook suggests this is a short-term challenge for marketing departments to wrestle with.

None of this will come as a surprise to those working in the PR industry who will have no doubt experienced first-hand the budget cuts and their impact on in-house teams and agencies. Cuts are painful and frustrating, but they can also be the inspiration we need to critically evaluate what we are doing, to innovate, and ultimately build better more effective programmes.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that less means less when in fact if we think like engineers trying to build a faster and more efficient car, less can in fact mean more. More power, more speed and more agility. Here are four ways public relations can help marketing departments win in an “Era of Less”.

Break down marketing silos

Marketing departments have fallen victim to a bolt-on culture. New questions often result in new hires, new departments, new strategies and new lines in budgets. Over time these silos calcify and become entrenched so that budgets feed the marketing machine rather than the objectives of the business.

The power to break down these silos lies with CMOs but PR leaders can do their bit by reaching out across departmental lines to help identify synergies, reduce waste and maximise the impact of marketing spend. To win in the “Era of Less” marketing departments will need to become more integrated and less siloed.

Bridging awareness and demand

One of the greatest benefits that a more integrated approach to marketing can yield is bridging awareness and demand creation. CMOs are not in place to maintain the status quo, they are charged with driving growth. Awareness is essential to achieving that because it ensures you are on the radar of potential buyers. But the buyer journey, especially in a business-to-business environment, has never been more complex with on average 15 people in the process of a major investment decision.

Public relations can be a powerful weapon because it offers one of the most efficient means to address your total addressable market. However, to have the greatest impact awareness building must work in tandem with demand creation.

At their core, awareness and demand campaigns can harness common messaging and storytelling. Businesses that integrate awareness building and demand creation will not only be operationally more efficient they will also combine outreach to your total addressable market with targeted one-to-many and one-to-few sales outreach.

We call our model for achieving this Awareness2Demand™. I believe driving awareness and demand in tandem to be the best way to generate greatest sales impact. To win in the “Era of Less” marketing departments will have to have to bridge awareness and demand creation.

Embrace new agency models

Agencies are essential extensions to resource constrained marketing departments, but for businesses seeking international growth traditional agency models need to evolve. Today there are very few businesses that think about growth along narrow national lines. Often, modern businesses think of themselves as a global business from day one, yet most agencies, even those that purport to be global, are structured and operate in country silos.

By adopting a borderless model for public relations, which we call PRWithoutBorders™, Tyto has been able to help clients operating across Europe extract 30% more value from their agency investments. This was achieved by streamlining the structure of European client teams at the strategic and administrative level.

Once established, this model has proven much more efficient and impactful, but it required a root to branch reimagination of how a European PR agency should be structured, managed and operate. To win in the “Era of Less” marketing departments will need agencies that are adept and efficient at building reputations on an international scale.

Harness AI

We are in the early days of AI rollout and adoption, but the signs are encouraging. In the “Era of Less”, CMOs must find ways of achieving more with less. Cutting waste is a part of this, but marketing departments seeking growth will also need to find ways to be more efficient and increase output.

Harnessed responsibly and appropriately, AI will allow us to do this. This is not about substituting human creativity and originality; it is about giving our people superpowers so that they can be even more productive.

Freeing up our teams from unnecessary admin and accelerating the speed with which they can research and process tasks, will engender much needed time for innovation and creativity. To win in an “Era of Less” marketing departments will have to embrace AI responsibly.

Thriving in times of constraint

We live in exciting times. Public relations professionals are some of the most flexible, imaginative and performance orientated professionals on the planet. We embrace and adapt to change in the same way we do fast-moving news cycles. We’re going to need to call upon these strengths as we seek to help CMOs navigate the “Era of Less”.

PR professionals often rue PR’s absence from the top table of business decision making. The “Era of Less” is an opening for the PR industry to demonstrate its value as solution finders and game changers. Let’s embrace it and show how we can help achieve more in the “Era of Less”.

This article was originally published on IPRA.

Catégories
Content PR industry

Six ways business leaders can be inspired by Jurgen Klopp’s management of Liverpool Football Club

The football world was recently in shock when Jurgen Klopp announced his intention to step down as manager of Liverpool Football Club. The news comes after a nine-year reign during which he turned fans from “doubters into believers” reinvigorating a failing Liverpool team to become champions of England’s Premier League for the first time in 30 years as well as winners of Europe’s biggest competition, the Champions League.

Sport can provide us with a healthy distraction from the stresses of work, but our sporting passions can also give us points of reference to make sense of the challenges we face as leaders. Sometimes, sport can even provide the inspiration to find the solutions we need in our day job.

A life-long Liverpool fan, and an avid student of Klopp’s management style, here are six Kloppism’s that have inspired my leadership outlook.

Use your full bench.

In work, as in football, teams often become reliant on a few key players or in football terms, a first eleven. Klopp has demonstrated his faith in his full squad ensuring that even fringe players feel important and make vital contributions. This season Klopp’s use of in game substitutions has been rewarded with 30 goal contributions across all competitions which is at least 12 more than any other club in the English Premier League.  

Find people who want to “Push the train”.

It is perfectly fine if you as an employee want to jump aboard a successful venture rather than really graft to get one going. But Klopp has built his success on finding and nurturing talent that would rather “push the train” than jump on a moving one. Klopp has also spoken about seeking out individuals who have had to really fight for success rather than had it handed to them on a plate, once describing this as the difference between people who have had to take the stairs rather than the elevator.

Training, not signings.

Far too often leaders jump to the conclusion that the solution to their problems lie with people outside their business and team. Whether it is new hires or management consultants, it is often easier to highlight what’s missing versus making the most of what you have got in your team. Klopp has shied away from signing star players, focusing instead on the coaching and training needed to turn youth players into stars. Klopp understands that not only is this more financially sustainable, but it also creates a very powerful culture if people think they will be given the support and opportunities to take the next steps in their careers.  

Be “the normal one”.

Great leaders are exceptional, but Klopp tirelessly communicates around the importance of every member of the team behind the football club down to the staff in the canteen feeding the players every day. On his first day as manager he was found drinking with fans, and when he introduced himself, he said “I am the normal one” – a quip in reference to another competing manager who referred to himself once as “the special one.” Klopp united a dysfunctional team with a clear purpose and by being humble about himself, and downplaying his own role, he was able to ensure everyone felt important and empowered.  

Not jumping ship at the first sign of trouble.

Such is Klopp’s track record and aura that he became almost un-sackable. He earned this status  through his ability to adapt and respond to challenges rather than throw in the towel. During his nine years with Liverpool he had two incredibly draining seasons where performances dropped off a cliff due a team ravaged by  injuries (2020/2) and ageing squad on running out of steam (2022/23). However, on both occasions he didn’t quit and instead worked with his management team and the owners to fix the problems and get performances back on track mid-season and then setting up a swift ramp up in performances the following season.

Leave things better than you find them. 

Often when leaders leave roles, they leave repair jobs. But Klopp has announced his upcoming departure with a young team on the up, on the cusp of winning multiple competitions, and the foundations in place for another decade of success.  When he first joined Liverpool he talked about leaving the club in a better place than he found it, and he has been true to his word. Wouldn’t it be great if all leaders made this a guiding principle of their appointments. 

     Getting some inspiration from Klopp at Anfield

 

Catégories
Content PR industry

Why self-interest is hurting client service for pan-European clients and how Tyto is pushing back against this

Economists, like Adam Smith, believe that the pursuit of self-interest is a good thing. That the cumulative impact of everyone pursuing self-interest leads to the most efficient use of resources and the best outcome for society overall.

It’s open to debate if the widespread pursuit of self-interest has worked on a societal level, but one area that it is failing is in the way European PR agency networks operate and how it doesn’t meet the demands of today’s modern European PR buyer. A buyer that must increasingly manage a shrinking budget to deliver the maximum results across a highly complex multilingual region, all while being able to adapt and pivot at the drop of the hat.

European PR agency networks take two forms.   

First, you have branded wholly owned networks that are all part of the same ownership group, but that are comprised of multiple national operating subsidiaries each with their own boss with their own financial targets to hit. Edelman, Weber Shandwick, BCW and Fleishman Hillard are four of the big ones.

Second, you have curated networks comprising independent self-governing agencies that have been built by a hub agency or by a client. Like the wholly owned networks, the bosses of the different country agencies have their own financial targets to hit.

The common illusion of both network models is that they are client centric when in fact, they are primarily driven by the self-interest of the different agencies and agency subsidiaries in the network and the financial objectives their bosses are driven by.

These self-interested models are the enemies of true client service and here’s three common scenarios where this is revealed:

First, these traditional self-interested networks inhibit flexibility. If you need to move some of your budget from one focus country to another, or you need to support a launch in a new country previously not covered by your scope by reallocating budget, then you as a client, will have a fight on your hands. The cogs of financial self-interest across the network clog up and stifle flexibility because no one wants to give up their share of your budget pie even if it is the right thing to do for your business’s success. This is the first example of where self-interest corrupts a client service ethos.

Second, these traditional self-interested models distort strategic thinking. If you have an international European programme that is managed out of the UK, take a wild guess which country they will suggest putting the most of your budget? If you have different countries leads motivated by financial self-interest, how do you ensure budget is being allocated based upon your business priorities rather than self-interested internal agency network priorities. The answer is that it is difficult to do when self-interest is at play. This is the second example of where self-interest corrupts a client service ethos.

Finally, these self-interested models fracture how we think and feel about a client relationship. When your European agency network values you according to how much you spend in each country, rather than how much you spend overall, you receive a qualitatively different client experience. The reason this happens is because as a client you might sign one contract for a vast amount of money, but as soon as the contract is signed and your budget is carved up among the different country teams the service you receive, like your budget, is fractured into smaller pieces.

This broken self-interested model drove Tyto to invent its PRWithoutBorders™ model for multi-country pan-European PR and communications. In Tyto’s borderless model we service clients through a multi-national team working as one across borders in the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Sweden, and the Netherlands. We work in one single structure to represent and serve our clients without any competing self-interests.  

If you need to move budget around to support new priorities, we will flex to meet your needs. We will provide you with an impartial view of how you should allocate budget without any bias to a particular country. And we will deliver activities for you using the most appropriate team from across Europe irrespective of where that resource is located.

European clients have had enough. They have enough challenges to deal with, without battling with their own agency networks. We all need to be focused on the bigger picture, minus the country self-interest, so that we can ensure true uncorrupted client service and help our clients to adapt, transform and grow. 

Catégories
Content PR industry

Why efficiency shouldn’t be a dirty word for PR and comms agencies

Yesterday Sir Martin Sorrell’s S4 Capital issued its second profit warning blaming weaking economic conditions in Europe. “Clients don’t see the revenue growth opportunities in Europe,” the ad agency head said, “they see it as a cost reduction exercise.” If clients are trying to save costs and be more efficient, then agencies need to react by finding their own efficiencies. Sorrell acknowledged that S4 Capital has been behind the curve on this: “We clearly have not been as focused on efficiency as we should be.”

But what exactly does it mean to become more focused on efficiency within an agency context? And why is it too often seen as a euphemism for cuts?

The definition of efficiency according to the Oxford English Language dictionary is the “ratio of the useful work performed by a machine or in a process to the total energy expended”. At its most basic in an agency environment, this is about maximising the profit margin you make from your investments in people and technology. For agencies like Sorrell’s S4 Capital, the goal is to hit or exceed a 20% profit margin.

For many agencies the binary way to respond to a drop in revenues is to cut costs, and in a people-focused PR and communications business where staff costs will make up anywhere between 50-65% of your overhead, the obvious way to do this is to reduce headcount and extract more work from the headcount that you retain. There’s nothing wrong with this classic reaction to a shrinking business and in many ways, it’s the responsible thing to do in order to safeguard the long term health of a business, but this classic response can damage morale and agency reputations, weaken overall capability that’s been hard fought to build in the first place, and ultimately mean you are less well placed to respond to an upturn in the market when it occurs.

This response tends to place additional strain on employees and can make efficiency a dirty word within agencies because it becomes a code word for cuts.

This therefore begs the question of whether there are any more positive and expansive ways to think about the drive for efficiency? At the heart of this question for me is whether there are ways that you can engineer a “less is more” outcome rather than a “less is less” outcome. There are four potential ways to achieve this more desirable “less is more” outcome.

First, if you are seeing revenues decline in one area of your agency, is there the potential to grow your scope in other ways by helping clients to consolidate their agency relationships and provide them with a higher, more holistic level of service? This way you might be able to redeploy valuable talent to other service lines in your business, avoiding the costly process of downsizing while making client relationships more strategic, stickier and more valuable.

To achieve this, you need to help solve more of your client’s communication challenges by offering a broader range of services. One way to do this is if your client base is weighted heavily to traditional PR services, for example, is to sell more integrated packages. Content sits at the axis of most PR and marketing and is the obvious area to invest in and focus on. This is strategic to the agency and empowering for our clients, which is why we have placed the Tyto Content Studio at the heart of our business.

A second way to help clients to be more efficient while growing your strategic role is to consider whether you can help clients address a wider number of countries with the campaigns you are developing and running for them. During the good times clients often employ multiple agencies across Europe, leading to duplications of strategies and creative plans. This can get out of control and leave clients exhausted trying to hold things together trying to drive a cohesive strategy.

During the leaner times clients become more strategic about what they want to communicate and become focused on telling one clear powerful story. Greater discipline and focus can often yield significant strategic as well as financial benefits. If you can help clients to consolidate their creative and strategic plans, and streamline their multi-national execution, then you can help them to be more efficient and impactful without compromising markets reached. This also grows and strengthens your client partnerships.

A third possibility, which might take longer to realise efficiency gains, is to think about how you can deploy technologies to help your team to be more efficient. We’ve always invested big agency size budgets in tech, despite being only a small agency, because we’ve always believed that we want our team to be doing the highest value creative work, not draining resources on time-intensive admin.

A fourth and more all-encompassing way to think about efficiency is to consider whether there is room for even more significant structural innovation in your agency model. Our interpretation and response to this challenge was to build a fully integrated pan-European agency model with one management structure and one pan-European agency account structure for clients which we call PRWithoutBorders™️.

Your willingness to entertain these different, and I would argue more positive and expansive efficiency strategies, will depend upon your overall financial health and ability to ride out a storm. If you can make a long term strategic plan to address efficiency, rather than short term cuts, then I’d argue that it’s worth bearing temporary pain for the inevitable future gain it will deliver to your clients, your team, and ultimately your overall business.

Catégories
Content PR industry

Five reasons why Europe is more open to tech growth and investment than ever before

The increasingly virtual nature of business, sales and marketing mean that expanding your tech business into and across Europe has never been easier. So much so that the opportunity cost of not doing so, should concern you far more than the potential cost of doing so. 

There are five reasons for this increasingly accessible European marketplace for tech businesses.

First, the cloud delivery of business products and services means that often no physical fulfilment is required. Even those businesses shipping a physical product can usually always support onboarding and set up remotely. The ability to deliver your product and service remotely from another part of the world removes a significant cost barrier to entry for overseas expansion.

Second, the cultural acceptance of global business means that at almost every level of society we have become used to buying products and services from throughout the globe. Do you know where your various apps are developed, do you really care? At a privacy and security level you might, but the reality today is we are all much more trusting than we were even 10 years ago. Most businesses will not think anything of buying a product or service from a company they have heard about and trust irrespective of where that company develops and distributes its product from.

Thirdly, in terms of promoting your product or service, the cost of experimenting with selling your products and service in a new territory has never been easier or more affordable to do. If you don’t need to set up offices across Europe or recruit an army of employees, the market entry costs for expanding into Europe have been slashed to a fraction of what they used to be. You are essentially looking at the cost of promoting your product through PR and marketing, and you can partner flexibly with an agency to achieve this. 

Fourth, if the upfront sales and marketing costs have been slashed, I would argue that the opportunity cost of not testing the European market outweighs the cost of doing so. Just imagine how silly would you feel if you found out that there was a burgeoning market for your product and service in Europe, but you didn’t know that because you hadn’t even tested the waters. Doing PR and marketing around your products and services is possibly one of the cheapest and most effective forms of market research you can do.

Finally, new agency models like Tyto’s PRWithoutBorders™ model are providing businesses with the opportunity to set up and run fully fledged pan-European multi language PR and marketing programmes at a fraction of the costs of traditional agency models with expensive offices and bloated management strictures. 

So pack your bags and come and test the water, Europe is bursting with opportunity. Just think of what you might learn and what you are missing out on in terms of addressable market.

Featured photo by Suzy Hazelwood

Catégories
Content Culture

Navigating economic and political headwinds to help drive change

I’ve always had a healthy impatience with the status quo. It’s what drew me to PR in the first place, due to the speed with which a well communicated idea can shift opinions and catalyse change.  

When you are facing as many political and economic headwinds as we are today, it can feel like history is shaping us, rather than we are shaping history. But it’s crucial we don’t lose sight of our own individual agency as communicators and our critical role in supporting the agency of our clients.  

It’s at difficult times like these that the stories we tell on behalf of change makers and disruptors are needed most. For it’s the momentum and positive glow that we create through our storytelling that provides the optimum environment for innovators to flourish. After all, if we don’t accept this challenge, who will?  

As we’ve grown in headcount and capabilities, I’ve witnessed how we’ve become even better at helping clients shape and disseminate their change narratives. Although we’ve never aspired to be a large agency, we’ve always known that we needed to achieve certain scale to help clients realise their full potential across multiple European geographies.  

Reaching further: a year of growth and turning points  

2022 was our fifth full year of operating and it was a breakout year for us in achieving that desired scale with several notable milestones: 

  • We surpassed 60 consultants across the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands working as one team through our proprietary PRWithoutBorders™ operating model. 
  • We grew our senior team to 20 strong at associate director, director and partner level with the addition of notable new joiners in Nick Taylor (Senior Partner, Head of Corporate), former Motorola Solutions communications lead, Liz Mead, and our UK media strategist Sophie Banda. These external appointments have been complemented by growth from within with the promotion of our German colleague Silke Rossman to Senior Partner, Head of Client Operations; our creative planning expert Dave Turnbull to Partner; our savvy comms pros Lavinia Haane and Lauren Armour to Director; German and French media experts Bastian Meger and Morad Salehi to Associate Director; and our brilliant Bulgarian and French PR superstars Lucy Marinova and Shamina Peerboccus to Associate Director. As the appetite for more efficient European outreach grows, it is crucial to have a strong team. I am amazed to see the capabilities we currently have in our team and how some of our senior members have been growing professionally with us almost since our founding. The year of growth as an agency has been reflected in the growth of the team: we had a total of 17 new hires joining Tyto in 2022 and 17 promotions across the team.
  • We strengthened our capability across content, digital, SEO and paid media activation with the notable boost of our acquisition of CubanEight. While their existing clients are already reaping the benefits of Tyto’s scale and European footprint, this acquisition also opens the door to a full-service communications offering, strengthening the existing capabilities of the Digital Marketing Hub, our specialist data, insights, design and social unit.
  • To help nurture the next generation of change agents, we launched the Tyto Accelerator Programme, an innovative programme designed to accelerate the PR careers of brand new entrants to the PR industry. We are very proud to be supporting the development of our new joiners and it is very satisfying to see the impact they are already having on our work for clients.
  • We launched our own proprietary data-powered creative planning tool in the Tyto Relevance Index, to provide Europe’s first monthly view of the conversations dominating the European tech industry landscape. The Tyto Relevance Index reveals the technology and socioeconomic topics that dominate the public discourse of Europe’s technology community.
  • We provided £66k of pro bono support to not-for-profit organisations in Reporters Without Borders, Tech Talent Charter and Micro:bit through the Tyto Foundation. Through the Tyto Foundation we commit resources equal to 20% of our annual profit to pro bono projects that seek to promote equality of opportunity, address injustice or support inclusion within the tech, media or communications industries. As our pro bono customer Debbie Forster MBE (CEO of Tech Talent Charter) puts it “Tyto has transformed our communications approach and media results. The team is energetic, determined and enthusiastic and we’ve really reaped the rewards.”
  • We launched our sixth annual Tyto Tech 500 to recognise and share lessons from the European tech industry’s most influential thought leaders. The Tech 500 has already established itself as a reference report on the most influential personalities in the technology sector in Europe to the point that many of the influencers echo the report on their channels every year.
  • We rolled out across the agency the DISC, a behavioural assessment tool that has helped us build even stronger relationships within the agency and encourage empathy and enhanced communication 

We believe in mindful growth rather than growth for growth’s sake. But when you do the right for the future, more often than not, the results follow and 2022 saw us grew our revenues 52% over 2021, which is something we’re really proud of. 

What we’re especially pleased by is that we managed to achieve all of this and not lose a single Tyto employee through the whole of 2022 which is something I have never witnessed in all my 23 years of working in PR agencies. 

As we start another year, I feel concerned about what lies ahead with the recessionary clouds gathering, but I feel confident that we have never been in stronger shape to support and guide our clients through this challenging environment. And with our unique PRWithoutBorders™ model, we believe we have a model that is both highly efficient and optimised for creating problem solving that the world needs now more than ever. Tyto’s PRWithoutBordersTM model is helping clients to adapt and transform their communications, helping them to be 30% more efficient, more flexible, more integrated and, in the process, more relevant with their creative outputs.

Catégories
Content Culture PR industry

Why being the best PR team trumps having the best PR team

You wouldn’t wish a recession on anyone, but if there is any consolation to be drawn from the pain, it is that the pressure to respond can be one of the most galvanising and transformative growth phases for teams and the people in them. This is especially true for leaner and more agile teams, driven by a clear common purpose. Ultimately, if I’ve learnt anything as I enter my fourth recession it’s that “being the best team” in practice is far more important than “having the best team” if that team doesn’t perform as well as an integrated unit.

I have always been a student of teamwork and have long marvelled at the ability of smaller, innovative teams in all walks of life to outperform much larger and better resourced teams “on the pitch”. It’s no different in the world of PR and reputation building where we frequently observe brands underperforming relative to their PR spend due to fragmented strategies and teams. Nowhere is this more prevalent than on the pan-European stage where, due to the multi-country environment, you often find local under performance is compounded on a pan-European level, with inefficiency layered upon even more inefficiency.

Nothing beats a fully integrated, pan-European team 

The drive to build the best team was the vision behind Tyto’s PRWithoutBorders™ operating model which is our unique way of constructing client teams for brands that need pan-European support. The full European integration our model enables means that we can build multi-country client teams that are typically 30% leaner, but also 30% more impactful with the resources that they have at their disposal. There are four main reasons for this:

  1. Remove silos, realise inefficiencies

One fully integrated multinational pan-European team is much more flexible and efficient as a unit than three or more separate teams working side by side. In legacy agency environments, pan-European teams operate in silos that inhibit speed, unnecessarily duplicate work and layers of management, and burden teams with pointless admin and bureaucracy, all of which lead to waste, inefficiency, and a lack of flexibility. 

      2. Get a birdseye view of every market’s needs

Our team operates as one across multi-country European campaigns. Like an owl with its ability to turn its head by 270 degrees, this means the Tyto team gives you a much wider field of view of what is going on among your target audiences. This in turn ensures that your campaigns are better targeted, more relevant, and more impactful. Traditional legacy European models are often overly reliant on the narrow view of a hub agency, usually in London, that can make brands blind to country and regional differences. Now is not the time to be firing blanks, with resources so stretched. 

  1. More diverse teams = more creative campaigns

We know that diversity of perspectives fuels creativity, and yet too often pan-European campaigns are creatively fuelled by the same blinkered and limited view of a hub agency team. Conversely, creativity driven by a fully integrated multinational pan-European team is far more likely to garner truly innovative and disruptive comms strategies, and often with a spirited ambition that only comes when you build ideas from a more international perspective. 

  1. Integrated comms thrives with integrated teams

Finally, a fully integrated multinational pan-European team also provides the most fertile ground for truly integrated communications programmes to thrive. This is because a holistic multi-channel outlook and approach can be baked into the team in the same way as a multinational outlook. All of which means that your campaigns are far more likely to fulfil their potential across paid, earned, shared and owned channels. 

So, while the constraints forced upon us by a recession may force us to make cuts, the pressure to reimagine and transform how we view and construct teams could ultimately be the key to unlocking the full potential of your PR programme. 

Catégories
Content Featured PR industry

PRWithoutBorders™: Reach Further

One of our favourite expressions at Tyto is ‘creativity loves constraint’. It stands for the idea that creativity is often inspired by a necessity to work with constraints. Sometimes, the creativity that is needed is not an idea but it is about finding a creative way of executing your communications programme that allows you to Reach Further. For many of our clients Reach Further means being able to address audiences in more countries. But, Reach Further can also mean extending the influence of a PR programme into broader demand generation activities. 

That ability to Reach Further is one of the main benefits of Tyto’s highly efficient PRWithoutBorders™ model for European PR campaigns. 

We recognise that Europe is a uniquely challenging environment to build and manage reputations due to its complex demands with multiple languages and countries. To address this we invented a new PR agency operating model, PRWithoutBorders™, and through this built one fully integrated multinational team that spans the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands. 

Through PRWithoutBorders™ we help today’s fastest growing enterprises scale faster and 25-30% more efficiently than traditional pan-European PR agency models that operate in separate country silos.

Without exception every new client at Tyto experiences the ability to ‘Reach Further’ with their budget than they would otherwise be able to with a traditional agency set up. Hypothetically, if you’ve got a single market programme, we can scale this into two countries for a small incremental cost. If you are already operating in two countries, we can probably scale this into three for the same investment you are making into two. 

To Reach Further is more exciting and rewarding because you get to see all your hard work on creative campaign planning reach more audiences in more countries. But to Reach Further is also about accelerating the growth of your reputation. Just like interest on a savings account, I believe there is a compound interest impact on your reputation. 

Although we all must work with constraints, don’t sell yourself short with your campaign execution when the creative execution model (PRWithoutBorders™) already exists for you to build and run your European communications programme much more efficiently so that you can Reach Further into more countries for the same investment. 

Catégories
Content Featured PR industry

Inflation busting European PR

I was at a friend’s BBQ recently and I couldn’t help but notice the huge pile of groceries stacked up in his garage. When I asked if he was prepping, they explained they were buying in bulk to offset inflation. Knowing the almost infinite appetites of my teenage children I’m not sure this would work for me, but there you go. 

Fortunately, in the world of European public relations there are alternative ways to finding efficiencies that do not depend on bulk buying. If fact, these strategies are all about achieving more with less. Just as greater speed and agility can be achieved through shedding unnecessary weight in a sports car, the same can be achieved through your PR programme in Europe if you take the right steps. 

One of our favourite expressions at Tyto is ‘creativity loves constraint’ and this is unquestionably true when it comes to how you structure your pan-European communications. If you run a pan-European PR campaign, you will immediately recognise some of the inherent inefficiencies in the traditional pan-European approach.

That traditional approach will usually centre around working with a traditional pan-European agency with offices in different countries or it will involve working with multiple local agencies that you coordinate. However, because even traditional pan-European agencies are structured and organised around separate country teams, what you will be experiencing in both cases is an unnecessarily rigid and siloed model that equates to waste, sluggishness, and lots of painful budget conversations. I should know, I spent 17 years creating one of the market leaders in the traditional international agency model. 

Duplication in agency management, duplication in office infrastructure, duplication in campaign strategy, creative, project management and reporting are just some of the obvious inefficiencies in this legacy model. Duplication is bad in and of itself, but it also highlights a lack of collaboration. Finally, because agency leaders in these models are measured on local financial performance, their personal priorities will often run into conflict with your business needs. Which, when you think about it, is both irrational and a bit perverse given who is paying the bills.  

When we created Tyto we wanted to create a model that delivered greater results and output for the same budget for clients with pan-European agency needs. We achieved this through our proprietary PRWithoutBorders™ operating model which involved Tyto being built from the ground up as one fully integrated team working as one across borders. We have in-country experts, but we don’t have separate country teams. Tyto has only one team, enriched from all the people we employ from across Europe. 

The benefit of this model is that it means we can build fully integrated multinational account teams for clients spanning multiple countries. You need a PR team for UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands? No problem. 

In Tyto’s model, client accounts are led, planned and strategised by one leadership group working in tandem with our content, media and influencer experts in different countries. This integrated model not only means that we can deliver between 25-30% more value for the same investment, but it also means we are far more considered and nuanced in how we design campaigns with relevance to all target countries. This contrasts to the traditional agency model which is often very UK focused. 

When you build a business around countries you inevitably get siloed interests fuelled by local incentives structures. Unpicking these is difficult as a legacy agency. Fortunately, we have been able to build Tyto in a very mindful way so that our PRWithoutBorders™ is woven through everything we do. For example, we only work with clients who need multi market PR because then this helps to bind our team together and continually hone our pan-European expertise. The proof in our model is that we had 99% client retention in 2021, and the one client who parted ways with us in November returned to Tyto in February this year.

The financial pressures brought about by inflation and a potential recession will inevitably force us all to consider how we can accomplish more with less. I’m pleased to tell you that as far as multi market pan-European PR campaigns are concerned, less can in fact equate to even more value, results, creativity, and a richer agency partnership.

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Why fully remote work advocates have more in common with Elon Musk than you might think

Remote work Tesla

Elon Musk was in hot water again this week with the Twitterati after insisting that all Tesla’s employees must return to the office. He believes that Tesla’s employees should be in the office working alongside the factory workers who are fulfilling roles that cannot be done remotely.

This “we’re in it together” attitude to work has more in common with fully remote work advocates than you might think. Here’s why. Alignment is essential to any high performing team. Alignment comes from shared goals, a common culture, enabled through consistent lines of communication and mutual trust.  

A two-tier system with some people in ‘the office’ and some people working remotely does not foster aligned teams. I interview several employees working in hybrid environments every week. They all report that same thing. Communications are a mess. Vast amounts of time is wasted on administering hybrid systems. Managers are treating people like children taking the register to see how many days staff are in the office.

As a result, alignment in hybrid environments is down and the cost of implementing a hybrid model is increasing the cost on business both in time and admin. Wasting time and resources that could be spent on more productive things like generating more results for customers.

On the flip side, fully remote models are breeding similar levels of alignment as fully office-based teams with the added benefit of being able to draw talent from wider afield and no commute.

Like Musk we hold an absolute position but for us it is having a totally remote team. We have no office although all our employees have access to co-working spaces if they want it. Where our employees ultimately choose to work from is their business. But by taking this absolute position we end up with similar benefits of a fully office-based team. We are all in it together. There is no two-tier system. There are no outsiders. Or as I like to say, when everyone is remote, no one feels remote.

There is something intrinsically egalitarian about insisting all employees must work in the same way, whether that be in the office, or remotely. Mixed hybrid models have rudimentary shortcomings that are obvious to everyone working in them. Hybrid models are also credited with creating all manner of disadvantages for those less able to make it to the office. Out of sight, out of mind. 

No one, starting with a blank sheet of paper, would build a business around a hybrid model. Businesses who have moved to a hybrid model have done so out of pragmatism, to try to keep everyone happy, to make use of that office lease, or because they just don’t fully trust their employees to go to a fully remote model.

Those companies who insist on egalitarian models of work should be applauded not ridiculed. Whether they are fully office-based or fully remote. But at Tyto, we are team remote. 

 

Photo by Craig Adderley on Pexels