Why sometimes I've believed
as many as six impossible things
before breakfast!
Lewis Carroll
Making an impression – that’s what Footprint is all about. And we’re not talking your dodgy David Brent impression at the Christmas Party!
It's about making a sustained positive impression with your stakeholders - your customers, your future customers, your suppliers, staff and neighbouring businesses... That's what will drive you, your business and your products forward.
But you know that already. Perhaps you don't have the time or resources. Maybe it's just not your specialist area. No problem!
Whether business to business or business to consumer; at a corporate, brand or product specific level; for a one-off project or ongoing support - we can help with strategic thinking, efficient implementation and personal attention at all times. Here are some of the ways that we could work together...
Media Relations
Building good working relationships with journalists representing the media that matter to your business is vital business practice for promoting your activities and helping to protect your reputation in the event of an issue arising. We can help develop that relationship on your behalf; write and issue press materials and provide a press office service for you to handle media enquiries on an ongoing basis.
Events
From press shows to staff conferences, from corporate exhibitions to client hospitality, events can play a beneficial role in any public relations programme by giving you an opportunity to communicate or reinforce what your business is all about. They can be very useful tools to secure media coverage and create new business opportunities. We can help you develop your ideas and act as a ‘one stop shop’ to source everything you’ll need – from venues to invites, from catering to speech writing, from balloons to discos...
Sponsorship
Associating your business with a third party (an event or a media property, for example) can speak volumes to your clients about your brand values, offer excellent hospitality opportunities and provide newsworthy PR angles to work with for a fully integrated campaign. We can help you find the right opportunity and devise ways to exploit and maximise your return on investment.
Copywriting
Appreciating that your materials need to read well as well as look good! And, if words aren’t your thing, then we can help by producing text for your internal and external marketing materials – brochures, newsletters, staff materials and websites, for example. Just help us understand who your audience is and a little about your organisation’s services and culture, and steam will be coming out of our keyboards in no time!
Publications
Copywriting plus! With Vanessa’s publishing background, we have a sound knowledge of print, production and photography so we’ll happily take responsibility for project managing your marketing materials for you – that means taking your brief, researching suppliers such as website designers, graphic designers, printers, photographers, potentially even other writers, and then pulling the whole thing together for you.
Crisis Management
Think Shell and Greenpeace over Brent Spa, think London Underground on 7/7, think Enron, think Arthur Anderson, think Gerald Ratner.... What’s the worst that could happen to your organisation? A product contamination? An environmental disaster? A customer having an accident on your premises? A ‘crisis’ can happen to any business, no matter how stringent your operational procedures. One of the most critical aspects of dealing with any crisis is the organisation’s approach to communication, especially in the first few days, so pulling a plan together as the crisis is unfolding is not a good idea! Having a plan of action in advance and ensuring that key members of staff are fully briefed is an excellent one. We can help you think through all of this in advance, and be on call to assist if something does go wrong.
Internal Communications
Engaging and motivating employees is, of course, paramount to company performance and providing excellence in customer service – and key to this of course, is effective communication throughout all levels of the organisation. We can help you audit current staff thinking, help you think through the most effective route for your organisation, and help you implement systems to achieve this – be it a simple newsletter or an intranet.