Rostrum Communications is a successful B2B PR agency based in the heart of central London. The agency develops and implements highly effective, creative PR campaigns in order to deliver measureable results for its clients. Rostrum’s senior directors work alongside the rest of the PR team on every account in industries including financial services, professional services, IT/outsourcing, HR/recruitment and support services.
The agency’s ‘fully outsourced’ approach means that it takes care of all the PR essentials – including press releases, articles, market research and case studies – whilst also ghost-writing blogs, organising webinars, arranging speaking opportunities, entering clients for awards, and harnessing the power of social media to make sure that its clients reap the full commercial benefits of these activities. By applying its creative thinking across all these outlets, Rostrum ensures that its clients stand out from the crowd.
Contribution to clients’ business
Rostrum aims to provide highly effective client management, with its senior directors working alongside the rest of the PR team on every single account. This senior-level input has enabled the agency to handle sensitive issues like crisis and reputation management for its clients with both professionalism and sensitivity, and has also contributed to a number of highly effective B2B product launches. For example, after a double-page spread appeared in The Daily Telegraph following a product launch for a client called Concrete Group, Rostrum’s client received a call from a prospect within hours, and soon converted this into a £250,000 software sale.
Financial performance and stability
Turnover of £1.1m (2011) compared to £670K (2010), tight financial controls, healthy cash reserves and a strong balance sheet is evidence of Rostrum’s clear focus on an aggressive yet sustainable growth strategy, enabling them to better exploit future opportunities as an international PR agency.
Staff and commercial community engagement
Rostrum offers comprehensive training for its entire staff, ranging from initial thre month immersion programmes to sales, social media, specific industry sectors, and blogging training. Each employee has a bespoke personal development plan and a mentor, weekly feedback sessions are held and regular team weekends away are organised. Training is then tested in a ‘real world’ setting, since employees are encouraged to use new skills when working on client accounts. Senior managers then provide feedback accordingly in regular one-to-one sessions.
The agency has also taken on charity work by offering its PR services on a pro bono basis. For example, Rostrum handled the media promotion for a number of Real Fight Club charity events, which raises money for vulnerable children’s charity Kids Company. The agency has also worked to raise the profile of Broadway, the London-based homeless charity, on a pro bono basis as well.
Key initiatives and achievements
Between April 2010 and April 2011, Rostrum achieved record growth by exceeding £1m in turnover. At the same time, the agency moved into larger offices in Covent Garden, and hired four new full time members of staff. Its international presence also continued to grow, with associates now based in New York, Frankfurt, Benelux and Paris.
The agency has also continued to improve, develop and expand its B2B social media offering for its clients, and has raised its own profile in the industry by creating its own blog, and by making greater use of both Twitter and LinkedIn for promoting its PR successes alongside its clients’ services.
Client testimonial
Lisa Tye, marketing manager at FusionExperience, commented, “We have found Rostrum to be both dynamic and flexible, and able to transfer our key business-to-business messages to the press at a very high level. The standard of service that they provide, along with their creative approach to PR, really helps them to stand out from other agencies, and I would not hesitate to recommend them to others.”
Tristan Rogers, managing director of Concrete Group, said, “The first piece of press coverage that Rostrum achieved for us was a double page spread in the Daily Telegraph. This article directly resulted in phone calls from companies that we actively wanted to engage with, and we won business as a direct result. PR can stand for personal relations as much as press relations, and the Rostrum team really invested their time to understand what we are doing as a business. In my view, that investment in time really makes them stand out from other PR agencies.”
Case study: Northdoor – ‘Solvency II’
Rostrum worked with Northdoor to develop a “Solvency II” checklist that could give its clients an accurate picture of what they needed to do in order to achieve compliance with new financial regulations. From a PR point of view, the checklist served a dual purpose. On the one hand, the checklist helped to raise Northdoor’s profile with the press by presenting the key issues related to Solvency II in an easily digestible format, and yet it also worked as a B2B sales/marketing tool for Northdoor, as the company received 27 calls from prospective customers as a direct result of this campaign.
Rostrum also designed and distributed an independent survey amongst the attendees at the Insurance Day Technology Forum in London, and then used these results to gain additional media attention for Northdoor. With creative models like these, Rostrum is able to use PR to support its clients’ overall marketing efforts, so that any PR successes can be used as collateral for its clients’ sales and marketing departments as well.
Following Rostrum’s highly successful Solvency II campaign for Northdoor, Rob Stavrou, director of consultancy at Northdoor, commented: “One of the most impressive things about Rostrum’s Solvency II PR campaign was the quality of both the press coverage and the sales leads that came out of it. Everyone at Rostrum really understood what we were trying to achieve with Solvency II, and I think that fact was reflected in the extraordinary results that they achieved for us. By providing us with 27 high-quality sales leads as a direct result of this campaign, Rostrum has proved how powerful PR can be when it is conducted with skill, creativity and professionalism,” commented Rob Stavrou, director of consultancy at Northdoor.
