PR is a commitment, not a short-term fling!
Shraddha Barot Amariei, Founder and Chief Inspiration Officer at White Label Media Group, talks about the benefits of growing an agency in the Middle East and how long-term partnerships help the client…
I started White Label Media as a passion project, back in 2012 and has purely grown based on referrals. Humble beginnings with no office and a one woman show to 15 people. I have been working in this region for over a decade and passionately built my networks from the ground up.
“Working in PR is a tricky thing. To the public view it’s a quick snapshot, a brief story, one off event, flash of a product placement or a clever co-marketing opportunity. Internally, those relationships took months, even years to build in order to offer communications strategies, PR operations and marketing services to our clients that will provide a magical moment of exposure.”
I realised early on that this is a long-term game. Respect is earned from your peers and clients when you don’t buy into the short cuts and when your company’s culture is built on a genuine vision, and the grueling practice of trial and error. To truly build a successful business is hard work and requires tremendous sacrifice. Regardless of what industry you’re in, there is no such thing as a fast solution to staying in business. Our job is to understand the struggles that clients face and identify them on a human level before we make a positive impact on their business. Working in PR is a tricky thing. To the public view it’s a quick snapshot, a brief story, one off event, flash of a product placement or a clever co-marketing opportunity. Internally, those relationships took months, even years to build in order to offer communications strategies, PR operations and marketing services to our clients that will provide a magical moment of exposure.
The trick is in order to identify those magical opportunities you have to know the brand inside and out. It’s completely in the client’s best interest to work hand-in-hand with an agency so they can fully understand the ethos of the brand, the heartbeat, the vision, the voice and the destination. Being an insider, gives the PR agency competitive advantage to seek out creative ways to use PR successfully. At White Label Media, we work as part of the team. We don’t believe in a rigid contract because we know that PR is a lot more then just a task list, it’s a relationship. PR is a back and forth exchange that needs support, love and guidance, all directed towards the same goal.
The struggle lies in getting clients to understand the long-term game, not to mention the variety of what PR is aside from press releases, social media and the occasional launch event. It’s a common theme for clients to switch agencies for every little project, starting from scratch each time. This likely leads to the client being unsatisfied with the work and wanting more. They don’t understand how the fee equals the product or the value of the network that the agency has. As the saying goes, your network is your net worth. The days, months and years of endless meetings, conversations, parties and networking that it took to build a powerful network that you can use to navigate success for your clients is invaluable. In order for it to be used properly the agency needs to know the brand from A to Z.
Our job as agencies is to educate the market, help them understand the benefits of a committed relationship, a lot like our personal lives! You get out, what you put in. By putting time, effort and dedication in PR, we become committed on a long-term basis and not just for the short term, which earns loyalty – and loyalty buys you opportunities that are endless.
