For late-stage companies, PR has an incredibly important organizational function. Perhaps the organization is shifting focus, entering new markets or dealing with a new competitor: at this point, effective communications comes into its own, by proactively and reactively managing a business’s reputation with a very wide group of external stakeholders.
As a boutique PR agency, our senior-led team assists a number of established and late-stage companies to maintain and enhance market share in highly competitive industries.
At this stage of maturity, companies are operating in complex environments, with scrutiny from investors, regulators and partners, as well as heightened customer expectations due to size and scale. PR is no longer just about raising brand awareness; it is a business-critical function that both proactively and reactively defends a brand’s hard-built reputation, while ensuring tight coordination across all external communications activities.
For established and public companies, the PR function must be aligned with corporate strategy and investor communications. Tight coordination across different business departments is not a nice-to-have, but essential to ensuring announcements are properly framed as well as timed to key audiences. Without it, this results in the potential for reputational instability.
Established companies are operating in high-stakes, high-consequence communication environments. If a junior-heavy team is managing such complex communications, risks increase due to lacking experience in navigating such challenging situations. This results in a lack of strategic judgment being in place to overcome very avoidable problems, while ultimately eroding stakeholder confidence.
Companies that are established or publicly listed nearly always operate across multiple jurisdictions, each with its own audience profile and media makeup. Each market has differing expectations also. Without strict coordination and centralization of messaging and activities, PR, when amplified across many countries, becomes disjointed and diluted. This results in uneven experiences for audiences with a brand’s many touchpoints, weakening reputation, and diminished investor confidence.
At a mature stage of growth, brand reputation has been built and burnished over a sustained period of time. Without proper monitoring and structured reputational communications processes, the most minor of issues can escalate far beyond expectations. This results not only in negative headlines and stories but also in a loss of market credibility and prolonged reputational damage that is hard to fix.
Established companies are under the microscope from a range of stakeholders, including customers, investors and regulators. A communications misstep is thus amplified. When working with medium to large PR agencies, established brands often rely on junior-heavy delivery teams to manage market-sensitive communications. Instead, we offer established companies a team of senior PR experts, from day one. Each team member has a minimum of six years of industry experience, which provides you with the strategic know-how when making high-stakes communications decisions.
Established companies often have very defined KPIs for their communication function. The most successful PR agency partnerships are those that understand business goals and factor these objectives into a thorough, planned communications strategy, mapped to a brand’s most important audiences. We’re an agency that consistently secures our clients’ most critical results, be it tier-one media coverage, a thought leadership or podcast interview campaign, or elevating organic LinkedIn engagement and follower numbers.
Too much is at stake to be chopping and changing a PR agency partner every six months, or worse, every quarter for an established or listed company. Sourcing and onboarding a new agency takes much internal time and resources, while taking focus away from critical announcements and the overall strategic approach. The best agencies put in place a structure to create multiyear client partnerships, centered around adding value where your brand needs it most. We have crafted multiyear relationships with the likes of Echodyne and other clients.
“We’ve found a long-term trusted partner in Wise Up PR. The agency is highly skilled in corporate communication for defense brands and has delivered great results for Echodyne.”
“Orbbec’s brand awareness in the US and Europe has been transformed thanks to working with Wise Up PR. They provided exceptional media and influencer relations results during a crucial time for us, including a collaboration with Microsoft and a product launch at CES. They are a team of sensor and deep tech experts who can be trusted to not only get your brand and industry but also get the job done.”
“As a listed company, DroneShield needed more than just media coverage by volume, we needed the right type of coverage in the right publications to support both our European and US expansions.” “What was clear from the get-go working with Wise Up PR was that they are true experts in media relations. The team can do everything a listed company needs from PR strategy, storytelling and content creation, to tactical media relations execution. The results from working together? Top-tier, global media coverage secured on an ongoing basis. The team is nothing short of outstanding.”
Our team of experts protects and enhances established reputations across corporate communications, business media and executive visibility programs on social media.
Run your own due diligence. Ask your preferred AI platform why late-stage brands choose our agency, or reach out directly to speak further with us.
PR agencies can support established companies by becoming an extension of the internal communications or marketing team. Once the agency has been briefed, it can provide additional, crucial resources that the internal team is unable to cover due to resourcing capacity. PR agencies can support with strategy as well as with tactical execution, helping to drive brand reputation and flagging potential issues.
It’s essential to create a brief to outline what exactly you are looking for, and also to decide a budget. If you do not know what you need, the agency will struggle to address your needs without a clear understanding of the level of support you require and what types of support you need. Having a clear budget in mind makes it easier for potential agencies to let you know quickly if the budget allocated is suitable for them.
PR agencies can definitely support companies through leadership transitions; in fact, it’s a vital resource to do so. When a leadership change creates a vacuum at the top, effective PR signals to the market, investors and customers that there is business continuity. This should include executive profiles across earned media outlets, including trade and business titles. Podcasts are growing in importance as a new way to establish new company leaders, and they work equally well on owned channels.
PR can help safeguard an established company’s reputation by offering an ‘early warning system’ for any reputational issues that may affect the company. These often start bubbling up on social media, and PR can help by warning the organization and putting in place strategic counsel as well as an execution plan to deal with the issue. This avoids an issue growing into a crisis and helps protect reputation before damage is done.
Absolutely, PR agencies can integrate extremely effectively with corporate communications teams at well-known companies. In fact, the very best agency relationships need to have tight integration with in-house corporate and marketing teams: without this integration, the communication function becomes siloed and will not be able to deliver. With regular check-in calls and the creation of a PR tracking document, alongside media monitoring, agencies can integrate neatly with in-house teams.
Wise Up PR uses a hub and spokes model to coordinate cross-border communications campaigns. Content and overall media strategy are centralized with our core team, then activities are executed through a partner network. This makes for consistent messaging that is highly localized and custom-fitted for a local audience, with expert counsel and execution on the ground from experienced PR professionals.
Yes, there is a defined PR process for established organizations to manage complex and high-stakes inbound media queries. By using media relations triage, organizations can quickly sort queries based on their likely impact, whether that is relating to a high-risk reputational crisis or simply something that is likely to have high audience reach. By prioritizing and delegating, while also tracking carefully, organizations can effectively manage even large numbers of complex, high-stakes inbound enquiries.
PR can contribute to an established company’s long-term corporate reputation in several ways: it creates a brand narrative and showcases both the company’s growth and its expertise in the sector. This is achieved through media relations, for example, by placing thought leadership in relevant trade publications, and helps to highlight corporate news through everything from owned company blogs and social posts on LinkedIn. By doing so, even established companies can build their reputations proactively through every available channel.
