Another day, another media visit. Today we had two visits with two different PR agencies, Battenhall and Burston, Cohn, and Wolfe.
First we walked to Battenhall. It was raining and the walk there was slightly disheartening, but my mood quickly improved once we got there. First of all, the office space was decorated in a way that I really enjoyed. Lots of exposed brick and plants and big windows. Secondly, the media visit itself was a lot more interesting than I anticipated. I really don’t know much about PR and whenever it did come up in classes it really didn’t interest me at all. However, the way that Battenhall operates is really interesting. Their entire business model is basically based around social media and using that as a tool to help businesses with their public image. They allowed people from many of the different departments speak and it was really interesting to hear all of the aspects of one business that only has around 50 employees.
The first person that we heard from was Drew Benvie, the founder of Battenhall. He talked about how the agency is a communications agency for the social media age, social media as a “specialism” for the company, employee benefits, and how Battenhall got its name. The most interesting thing about what Drew said in my opinion was how employees get 20 percent of their time on the clock as free time that isn’t accounted for. This time is used by employees in order to learn new skills, work on new projects, or collaborate with other employees. I think that this is really innovative and interesting because I feel like if companies allowed their employees to have more free time and more holidays in order to improve themselves, they would make themselves into better workers in the long run and genuinely enjoy the work that they do.
Next, we heard from Stephanie Bennett from the social media team. She talked about social media audits they do on business they work with, which is basically when they stalk their social media accounts and make notes on things that could be improved in order to best represent their company, and also monitor the analytics on their posts in order to come up with a social media strategy. I think it was interesting to hear more about how an agency like this would assess a brand’s social media presence, because I feel like that is still a relatively new practice.
Alice Simpson and Shannon Leahy then came in to discuss their public relations team. Something that they discussed that I had never heard of before was “newsjacking,” which is basically when the PR team will monitor stories about their clients, and when a negative story is about to be published because of something that happened, they attempt to intercept it before being published in an attempt to put a more positive spin on the subject. They also talked about the relationship between the PR team and journalists and how essential it is.
We then heard from someone from the data and insights team. They discussed using analytics in order to come up with communications strategies for clients that they work with. Analytics was something that came up quite frequently in this visit and it emphasized the huge role that they play in digital media.
Next, we heard from Meg Edwards and Leah Domenet about working with influencers. This was a really interesting part of the visit because I don’t think I’ve ever been to a visit like this where they discussed the actual logistics of using a social media influencer as a legitimate PR move for a business.
Lastly, we heard from Charlie Gregory about the design team that only consisted of three people but produced amazing content. He talked about how important it is to come up with drafts before you start making a final project, because if you rely on one idea from beginning to end without allowing revisions from your client, it will really put you behind if the client doesn’t like the only idea that you had.
Overall, Battenhall was really enjoyable for me and I would be really interested in learning more about them. After this visit, we had some free time in which I got a sandwich from Pret a Manger and attempted to stay out of the rain. We then took a walk to Burston, Cohn, and Wolfe.
This visit was slightly less enjoyable for me, because it was more of a traditional PR agency, and I guess that stuff just genuinely does not interest me. However, it was still interesting to hear from them about brainstorming and working with a brief. At the end of this visit we did activity where we had to write a brief for a PR move for a brand of butter in the UK. Once we finished the brief, we switched briefs with another group and had to write a plan on how to execute the PR move. It was an interesting exercise and it was really hard for me personally.
After this visit, we had free time where Maddy King and I went to a cute little Italian restaurant down the street from our hotel. There was someone playing live piano inside and the ravioli ai funghi (ravioli filled with ricotta and spinach with a mushroom sauce) was amazing. Then we went into Primark and decided that it was too much to take in at once, and to try again tomorrow. Another very busy day in the hustle and bustle of London.