Happy Birthday to The Right Agency

5th May

To celebrate The Right Agency’s fifth birthday, our in-house reporter Sam P sits down with co-founders Eloise and Sarah…

What have been the biggest changes in the last five years?

EG: One of the key changes – and long overdue – has been the renewed focus on meaningful evaluation. Clinging to AVE and counting clippings was doing nobody any favours and cheapened PR’s role as part of the marketing mix.

Today, PR strategies should be devised to meet specific and measurable business objectives, whether it’s increasing engagement with key audiences, driving traffic to a website or supporting the sales process. Evaluation should not just be saved until the end – by then it’s often too late to make a small tweak that could change the direction of a campaign. Evaluate regularly to ensure the PR and messaging is still relevant and on target.

SG: In the last five years agencies have had to work much harder to win and retain business as budgets were reduced and the process became much longer. While things are definitely looking up now, I think the past five years has taught clients to take their time when appointing an agency and taught agencies to be more creative and ensure they even more integral to the clients’ business.

What has been your proudest moment?

EG: For me, it would be winning Small Consultancy on a regional level and then being shortlisted for Best Small Consultancy on a national level. The majority of our clients are based in the manufacturing sector, heavily involved in process industries and therefore invisible to most, so to some people what we do is not sexy or exciting, but we achieve exciting results, and being recognised for that was fantastic.

SG: Winning awards for The Right Agency are clearly proud moments but I think helping our clients win awards for their work in diverse sectors – from physiotherapy to electrical retailing, packaging to theatre drapes – is also a great achievement. I also think writing an award-winning book on the history of Belling was a high point.

What’s been the secret to being not just a successful PR agency but a business too?

EG: You could argue that we’ve carved out a niche for ourselves, as there aren’t many agencies around who do true B2B PR. However, there’s definitely no secret formula. From the beginning we’ve focused on the basics, such as providing an excellent service so that our client retention is high. We’ve taken our time over recruitment to ensure the people we’ve appointed share our vision and values and we’ve delivered thoughtful, targeted campaigns which have achieved results for our clients.

SG: Some people thought we were mad to launch a new business in the midst of the financial crisis but we did it anyway because we knew things couldn’t get much worse! We had to self-fund the business due to the lack of bank lending at the time, so learnt to be frugal and make careful decisions – something which has stood us in good stead ever since. Plus we have had the courage of our convictions and walked away from some opportunities that were not a right fit for our business – a brave thing to do but one we believe helps us retain our identity and the enjoyment we have in running the agency.

What’s next? Where do you see the agency in five years?

EG: We will be the best small consultancy in the UK.

SG: Still going strong! In five years I’d like to think we will have grown organically but not wildly, still have a stable and talented team working with good brands and clients who appreciate what we achieve for them.

Funniest story?

EG: Is the Stringfellows story appropriate? If not, I think Sarah forgetting my name in an early pitch figures quite highly!

SG: Eloise will no doubt say it was when I forgot her name in a very early pitch. Other than that most ‘funny’ moments have come in the aftermath of celebrating award wins – so I couldn’t possibly comment…