Julius Duncan, Director, Remarkable Content talks through how in the last two years Remarkable has evolved from a PR agency focused primarily on media relations to a full service agency with storytelling, creative and content at its core.
Profile: content marketing and public relations agency
Insight: every organisation needs to tell its story in a creative way across different forms of media
In 2014 Remarkable Group brought together a range of different communications specialists to create content marketing and PR agency, Remarkable Content.
A core skill set in the team remains public relations but focusing on creative solutions that drive media coverage, prompt direct public engagement, and protect reputation.
This storytelling core has been strengthened by the integration of a creative director, digital strategists, social media managers, content marketing strategists, designers, coders, videographers, copywriters, animators and sound engineers.
The decision to create Remarkable Content was in response to the market’s demand for a smarter and more measurable type of content-led communications.
Moving on from media relations
The number of clients that will accept the vanity metric of media coverage as proof of value is shrinking rapidly. Smart and progressive clients want integrated, cross channel campaigns built around long-lived creative ideas that can tell a story over time.
They also require a clear and measurable link from this activity back to improved business results.
Building content and production skills in-house
Running an integrated agency model like this and keeping the team well utilised is a more involved challenge than feeding a simple public relations model. One thing you have to get right is a business development approach that creates the profile of work where all specialists can be well utilised. Of course many agencies manage this utilisation challenge by taking the freelance route.
However, we believe it is important to have core skills amongst the full time team. This not only provides assurance on quality but creates a team with real skin in the game, and builds an environment where knowledge sharing and inspiration can thrive.
Managing a project with a blend of digital production, social media management, design and media relations takes more rigour in the planning and project management phase. To achieve success it’s important to have experienced, broadly skilled people who are experts in project management.
The benefits for clients are content-led campaigns that reach and then influence the behaviour of audiences across multiple touch points - social, print and broadcast, digital and real-world. Without a broader skill set, and broad mind-set, this cannot be achieved.
For one of our clients, a London based property developer, the benefits are stacking up. This company had the foresight to seek a content-focused communications agency that could get a splash in the Evening Standard but also thinks more broadly. A content strategy workshop at the outset of the campaign created a consistent customer journey across the website, social channels, paid media, earned media, and at events.
By creating this joined up customer experience we are achieving greater engagement rates and Google Analytics show that visitors to the developer’s website from social media are converting into enquiring customers at a higher rate than any other traffic source.
This type of measurable return on investment (ROI) is possibly the greatest benefit of running a fully integrated model. It enables us to prove to clients that taking a progressive approach to communications creates business value, and drives their commercial results.