“If I was down to my last dollar, I would spend it on public relations”.

You may have seen this quote from Bill Gates. Most PR professionals will have it tattooed somewhere on their person, so sacrosanct is it to the entire industry.

Yes, admittedly, there is a slight question over whether Gates ever actually uttered the words. But there is also the question of why he would say such a thing… Why should a business commit to PR even if it’s in the financial doldrums? Or why should a startup invest in PR while on tight, bootstrapping budgets? Or why should PR come before other forms of marketing? 

Buy a newer car

At the heart of Gates’ purported quote is the sense that PR hold immense value to a business – that it should be the first and last thing that an organisation invests in. Why? Perception. 

Let’s take another famous quote, this time from a businessperson of lesser repute: David Brent. In one episode of The Office, Brent says: “Does a struggling salesman start turning up on a bicycle? No, he turns up in a newer car. Perception, yeah?”

I’m being completely serious. There is the crux of a very sensible point in there: perception is everything. 

PR is fundamentally about building and maintaining a positive image of an individual or organisation. When it comes to liaising with media, effective PR will improve both the awareness and reputation of a brand in front its desired audience.

Now, one of the most common mistakes that business leaders make – and, in my experience, this is particularly true among tech startup founders (those who become engrossed in the inner mechanics of the tech they have developed) – is to assume the quality of their proposition will be directly proportional to the quality, and quantity, of the media coverage they will get. That is rarely the case. 

Very, very few businesses are talked about due to the genuine inventiveness of their product or service. No, the prominence of a brand and number of articles featuring a business will almost always be the result of its PR strategy. 

Put another way, why invest in any other part of the company if there is no PR strategy to ensure the right people have the right perception of you. And that, in my opinion at least, is what we should take from Gates’ quote.  

Sharing your story

Whether to support customer acquisition, build the profiles of the leadership team, attract and retain talent, or elicit interest among investors, PR is essential. It will help tell your business’ story – who you exist for and why. It ensures people are aware of all the values you champion and perceptions you challenge. It will establish your brand’s tone of voice. It will keep the world abreast of your latest news. And it will maintain the desired, favourable image of your business. 

Bill Gates knows this (apparently). So does David Brent (definitely). And while you might not choose to spend your last dollar on it, any business not actively engaged in PR – in-house or with an agency – is undoubtedly overlooking one of the most singular ingredients for business success. 

Read more:

• PR for a startup: Two key tips for achieving success
• Why work with a PR agency?
• How to choose the right PR agency

Dominic Pollard

Communications Director

About the author

With a history degree, journalism Master’s, and several years’ experience writing about business and technology for both the national and trade press, Dominic moved into the world of content marketing and comms in 2014. He joined City Road Comms in 2016, becoming the agency’s director of comms two years later. Dominic now oversees clients’ strategies and the overall operations of the agency.

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A fifth birthday party typically conjures thoughts of hyperactive children, jelly and clowns.

City Road Comms’ recent fifth birthday celebrations, thankfully, had none of those things… well, some may say there were a few clowns in the room, but not in the truest sense of the word.

It was a lovely evening: a chance to spend time with clients – some of whom we’ve worked with for a couple of years without ever meeting in person (thanks, Covid) – in a more relaxed setting. And a chance to bring together all our team, including a few former employees who played important roles in our journey to date.

The event was also a rare opportunity to reflect on everything CRC has achieved since November 2017. After all, how often in businesses do we take a step back and celebrate our own successes?

The nature of being a smaller agency dictates that day-to-day life tends to be busy. Planning, pitching, writing, monitoring, reporting, liaising with clients; you are driven by a to-do list of what needs to be achieved for each client, and ensuring the results consistently meet, if not exceed, expectations.

But from time-to-time, it’s important to put aside busyness and bashfulness. So, having been a director of the agency since day one, I thought I’d share the five things that I am most proud of from CRC’s first five years…

1. Long-term client relationships

During the early months of City Road Comms, as the agency was finding its feet, we had just two retained clients on the books. Fast forward five years, those two clients are still with us.

But it’s not just those two clients that have stuck with us. We enjoy very little churn; the vast majority of businesses we work with remain with CRC for the long haul.

In fact, we’ve worked with 80% of our current clients for longer than 12 months – a little over half have been with us since 2020 or earlier. It’s a clear indication that we deliver value for clients, not to mention the quality of the relationships we have built with those businesses and the people within them.

2. The bigger picture

Over the years, as the agency grew in numbers and our client-base became more stable, we have managed to gain perspective on the bigger picture.

There is an ever-greater focus on purpose within business, often through the lens of ESG and CSR policies. And at CRC, we have taken action in the past three years to ensure we’re influencing positive change.

For one, we have done away with the traditional PR agency model of sending gifts to clients at Christmas – we swapped luxury hampers for charitable donations. Namely, each year since 2020 we have back the Crisis at Christmas campaign, offering homeless people food and shelter over the festive period. We will do the same again this year.

More recently still, we created The Forest of City Road Communications – a carbon offsetting tree-planting initiative that you can read more about here.

In 2023, we have plans to do much more when it comes to supporting charitable and ESG initiatives.

3. Consistency

One of the most common grievances I hear from founders and CEOs about their past experiences of working with PR agencies is the sheer inconsistency of the work, not to mention the results. Often this manifests itself in short bursts of media coverage, which the agency then dines off for weeks or months.

At CRC, we take pride in delivering great results week after week after week. For me, this is the true sign of quality; not being great once or twice, but doing it with unerring regularity.

How? Well, our campaigns are meticulously planned and mapped out in quarterly calendars, providing clients with a clear overview of all our deliverables in advance of each month – it is transparent and ensures complete accountability.

With the plans in place, there’s nowhere to hide from our expecting clients. They know what we are meant to deliver. So, we push ourselves to deliver great content and excellent media coverage every week. In my opinion, this consistency – compared to the complacency of some competitors – is one of our great strengths. Again, it underlines why clients stay with CRC for years.

4. People and culture

My favourite part of working with CRC is the people. Over the years we have assembled a wonderful team of people. Many join the agency as one of their first jobs in the world of PR and comms, and seeing their development is very rewarding.

Irrevocably linked to our people is our culture. It is something staff regularly highlight as the most appealing element of life at CRC.

The culture has evolved organically – we do not have slogans on the wall, we don’t do a lot in terms of team-building initiatives. Instead, we embrace open, honest communication between the team, combined with an ethos where everyone mucks in on the work that needs to be done. Doing away with strict, lineated hierarchies accelerates people’s development, giving them exposure to a greater range of tasks and responsibilities. Plus, I believe, it creates an environment where people have greater flexibility and can express themselves more freely.

5. Mentorship and founder support

Back in 2019, when the agency was just a couple of years old, we began working with London & Partners as a strategic partner on their Business Growth Programme (BGP). What that basically means is that for every cohort of start-ups that join the BGP, we provide a two-hour workshop to explain the value of PR for early-stage businesses, along with advice of how to do it well.

Three years on, we are still performing this role. A rough calculation would say that in this time we have run workshops with some 300 start-up founders and leaders. Often, after the session, CRC will provide further assistance to them, gratis, to help them during the formative stages of their business journey.

It’s really satisfying to meet with founders during those early months and years of their start-up stories. It has heightened our understanding of the challenges smaller businesses face when executing successful PR strategies and, in turn, how we can cater our offering to the start-up community.

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It has been an interesting, challenging and extremely rewarding journey to date. I’m excited to see how City Road Comms grows and develops over the next five years.

Want to know more about how CRC could help your organisation? Get in touch!

Dominic Pollard

Communications Director

About the author

With a history degree, journalism Master’s, and several years’ experience writing about business and technology for both the national and trade press, Dominic moved into the world of content marketing and comms in 2014. He joined City Road Comms in 2016, becoming the agency’s director of comms two years later. Dominic now oversees clients’ strategies and the overall operations of the agency.

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Between January and June 2022, more than 402,000 new businesses were registered in the UK. That equates to around 80 every hour, or one every 45 seconds.

Evidently, neither the pandemic nor the ensuing cost-of-living crisis have managed to dampen the country’s entrepreneurial spirit. In fact, the challenges spawned from both tumultuous events have, in turn, created opportunities for entrepreneurs, with innovative new solutions launched to help consumers and businesses through the crises. 

This is to be celebrated. What it does mean, however, is that fledgling businesses find themselves in a crowded startup space. That is not only problematic from a commercial perspective, but also for brand-building. 

When establishing an early-stage business – whether trying to secure customers, employees, investors or social media followers – the strength of the brand is of utmost importance. This extends far beyond a sharp logo, name and website; it is about having the right ‘digital footprint’. In other words, what would a person find if they searched for your company – what content have you created, what articles are you featured in and what overall impression are they left with.

Here, PR (particularly media relations) is king. After all, public relations is fundamentally about building and maintaining a favourable image of your brand. So, for a startup hoping to stand out from the crowd, achieving PR success is essential.

But how to do it. Well, here are two key pieces of advice.

1. 1. Focus on ‘why’

‘Build it and they will come’, as was the tagline of the 1989 Kevin Costner movie Field of Dreams. It is an apt concept when it comes to startup PR – there is a common assumption that if one builds an amazing product, then the media coverage will naturally follow.

It is rarely true. For the most part, journalists do not want to provide free advertising to a startup by providing an in-depth review of their business and how it works. Far more important is why your business exists.

As yourself: what pertinent issues are you tackling? How are you making people’s lives easier? Why does a particular market or sector need to be disrupted – what damage is being caused by the traditional ways of doing things?

Journalists will focus on the topics that matter to them and their audience, whether that’s climate change or mental health, business management or diversity and inclusivity, personal finances or investment trends. And as a startup, you must talk about the issues people can relate to – for instance, a new fintech brand would be better served discussing the challenges of the cost-of-living crisis and rising inflation on consumers’ finances than they would the UI and UX of their product. 

When devising a holistic PR strategy that addresses the aforementioned questions, it is advisable to use both quantitative and qualitative insights. That is to say, it’s better to have insightful facts and figures – ideally ones gathered by the startups itself rather than widely available. Doing so will bolster communications significantly, turning what could be dismissed as rhetoric into solid context for the business and its offering

With 80 startups formed every hour, the ones which talk about the issues that matter will have their voices heard, not the ones that talk only about themselves. 

1. 2. Avoid a stop-start approach

One of the most common mistakes startups make when it comes to PR is that they only focus on it in short-burst. Specifically, the only think about PR at key times for the business: product launches and funding rounds are prime examples. 

This is understandable. Startups’ resources are limited and they may be managing their media relations and PR internally on a more ad hoc basis. But as much as possible it is advisable to view PR as an ongoing part of the business’ growth strategy.

Journalists must recognise that the business – or its leadership team – is available for comment or interview whenever they may require it. They must understand which topics, issues and trends your brand is keen to talk about.

Journalists do not only want to hear from a business when it is flogging its own news. 

Furthermore, when press coverage goes live, the business must be ready to capitalise on this exposure by engaging with more journalists. This enables a startup’s name to become known and for a solid pipeline of press coverage to be developed.

Flipping the switch on and off not only makes it harder to get positive responses from journalists in those small windows of time, but this approach will also mean that a startup only ever secures short bursts of coverage. This is ineffective. You want your brand to appearing in front of a desired audience on a regular basis, building awareness and trust over time. So, whether your startup is looking to attract the attention of consumers, employees, investors or other businesses, consistent and on-going PR is a far more effective and powerful path to success.

Knowing what makes for a killer PR strategy is not easy. Nor is cutting through the noise and grabbing the attention of journalists. But by focusing on the bigger issues at play, and ensuring your startup is constantly considering its PR, media relations and brand-building activities, you will stand a far better chance of emerging out of the crowded startup space ahead of your competitors. 

If you need help managing your PR and communications, creating great content, or getting amazing media coverage, get in touch.

Dominic Pollard

Communications Director

About the author

With a history degree, journalism Master’s, and several years’ experience writing about business and technology for both the national and trade press, Dominic moved into the world of content marketing and comms in 2014. He joined City Road Comms in 2016, becoming the agency’s director of comms two years later. Dominic now oversees clients’ strategies and the overall operations of the agency.

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You have probably heard some horror stories about PR agencies in the past – many businesses and entrepreneurs have, sadly, had poor experiences when working with a PR firm.

Common complaints are failure to place press releases as promised; weeks of inaction; not picking up on key stories in the media; poorly written content; messaging that is ‘off-brand’; and an inability to get a strong handle on the company, its service proposition and the sector it works in.

Importantly, these experiences should not deter businesses from working with a PR agency. They simply reaffirm the importance of choosing the right one. 

But how do you do that?

There are many important factors to consider. Here are six to mull over…

1. 1. Cost

Naturally, the agency’s fees will likely be the most immediate concern. And there will be huge swings in the amount agencies charge, from hundreds per month to thousands or tens of thousands. 

Going for the cheapest option can be a false economy – opt for a small retainer within a larger agency and it’ll likely mean you fall down the pecking order of their client list, as well as only receiving the attention of more junior members of staff.

Obtaining multiple quotes from different providers will give a sense of what’s on offer.

2. 2. Deliverables

When comparing quotes, you will likely be comparing apples and pears. That’s to say, it’s not just the prices that will vary notably, it will also be how the retainers or projects are assembled.

Are you paying for a guaranteed number of articles or pieces of content? Or is about a number of campaigns executed over a period of time?

Whichever way it is done, it is absolutely vital that businesses get crystal clear deliverables from an agency. They must know what they will get for their money.

Transparency and accountability are key watchwords for us here at City Road Comms. Our retainers are built on a list of clear deliverables – the campaigns we will run, the content we will create within them and the research we will commission. Yes, we offer a figure in terms of the anticipated media coverage that will be secured based on past case studies, but PR seldom offers an guarantees, so we find it far more effective to plan and execute our work based on an agreed timeline of activities, then setting out to achieve the very best results within that framework. 

3. 3. Strategic approach

PR agencies differ significantly in how they approach their work. Some specialise in outlandish stunts and events; others on video content and viral social media campaigns.

At City Road Comms, we focus on using independently commissioned quantitative research and expertly-crafted content to deliver razor sharp insights into pertinent issues and trends. Using that, we develop brands and their leadership teams as expert commentators on the subjects that matter most to the audience they want to reach.

Not every approach will be right for every business or brand. So, it is important to pick an agency whose approach tallies with how you want to be perceived. 

4. 4. Industry expertise

Choosing an agency with a proven track-record in your particular field is important. It means the agency will not only understand the subject matter, but also have the contacts with relevant journalists. Combined, this ought to mean they have a sharp perception of what will and will not work when developing PR campaigns.

Ask to see case studies of relevant clients in a similar industry or market to yours, or at least businesses that are at the same point in their journey and seeking similar outcomes from their PR.

Head over to our case studies page for a sense of our own case studies – we specialist in finance, property and tech PR, but also have worked with many exciting clients in tangential industries. 

5. 5. Size

Small and large agencies will each have their own strengths and weaknesses. The former may be a little more dynamic, cost-effective and eager to prove their worth; the latter may have a wider range of services under one roof and a higher proportion of senior figures. 

More often than not, though, it makes sense for a business to work with an agency of a similar size. This should ensure better alignment between their ways of working and overall expectations

6. 6. Culture fit

Linked to size is culture. It is clichéd, but businesses need to find a culture fit when working with external partners. 

From the way their work is planned, how they report on it, how they present and communicate themselves, and the speed with which they go about things, businesses should seek out an agency that broadly thinks and acts like they do. No tow companies are the same, so an exact mirroring is not possible – but there should be a clear connection in the core culture of both organisations.

It is also worth considering values. ESG, CSR, diversity and inclusivity – do you and an agency share similar values when it comes to socio-political issues? If yes, the chances of forging a fruitful, long-term partnership are improved.

Lots to consider

There is undoubtedly a lot to consider. Businesses must take the time and carry out the necessary due diligence to find an agency that matches their requirements, vision, culture and budget.

And agencies must equally invest a great deal of time and effort into this process (businesses should expect to see this). Agencies must research any prospective client thoroughly and show they understand who they are, what they do and where they sit within their field. Multiple meetings can then help refine pitches and proposals, allowing the PR agency to prove their credentials.

With buy-in and professionalism from both sides, businesses and PR agencies can forge hugely successful partnerships. But there must remain acknowledge for each that sometimes the fit is not right – it’s best to be honest and focus efforts on the opportunities that can truly go somewhere. 

Dominic Pollard

Communications Director

About the author

With a history degree, journalism Master’s, and several years’ experience writing about business and technology for both the national and trade press, Dominic moved into the world of content marketing and comms in 2014. He joined City Road Comms in 2016, becoming the agency’s director of comms two years later. Dominic now oversees clients’ strategies and the overall operations of the agency.

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For any startup or scaleup, choosing the right service providers can have a strong bearing on the success or failure of their venture. Whether it’s tech, HR, finance or PR, selecting an external company to play a key role in your day-to-day business operations is a decision that takes time and consideration.

For instance, did you know that more than two fifths (42%) of UK business outsource some or all of their marketing? Of those, 36% listed PR as the element of their marketing and communications activities that they entrust to a third party. 

This raises some important questions.  

Why work with a PR agency over doing it yourself?

Choosing to work with a PR agency makes sense in many instances. For one, early-stage companies often lack the resources and skills internally to fully commit to a successful, long-term PR strategy. 

Do they have great copywriters, or people who know how to craft a press release that will get read? Do they have any existing contacts with the media, or know how to find them? Do they understand how to tailor content depending on whether it’s going to press, on their blog or onto social media? And if the answer to all those things is yes, there is still the issue of whether there is enough time for those people within your team to commit to doing them regularly.

More often than not, the answer to many of those key questions is “no”. Hence, many businesses turn to outside support. 

By going with an agency, they gain access to vital skills, experience, contacts and tools – such as media monitoring software, journalist databases, reporting platforms, and more. They will gain a team that – assuming they choose wisely (more on that here) – will be aligned with their own goals and ways of working, and will help build their brand proactively and in the right way. 

PR is an exercise in building and maintaining a positive image of your business. It requires a clear vision on how you want your brand to be seen – what are the values you stand for, what is your tone of voice, and what do you want to be seen championing across the media?

Finding the right partners who can shape and then achieve this vision will be crucial to the long-term commercial success of a business. After all, PR is the all-important opening to the sales funnel; it is typically how startups and scaleups can get their names in front of the most people, and it is how they build up the reputation of trust in their brand over time.

Dominic Pollard

Communications Director

About the author

With a history degree, journalism Master’s, and several years’ experience writing about business and technology for both the national and trade press, Dominic moved into the world of content marketing and comms in 2014. He joined City Road Comms in 2016, becoming the agency’s director of comms two years later. Dominic now oversees clients’ strategies and the overall operations of the agency.

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