When participants were asked, How would you say you uphold a positive impression of your clients? Their responses varied, no two agencies upheld positive impressions of their clients in the same way.
"I think the one thing we're really good at is, we have a broad spectrum of net-works and clients. So also what we do often is if we hear that one of our brand
clients has an event and we have a personal influencer who we also manage that would fit, we bring them together. We’re big on brand collaborations.”
Agency A
"My gosh, where to start? Uh… I think for a lot of my clients, for them it’s about making sure that they are top of mind within their industries. Whoever it is… if somebody thinks security, they must think XX Security. So it's about looking at all aspects of their business and highlighting all of that. So for example, if XX Security sponsors the soccer club in the upper highway area, to make sure that they get coverage in the local paper…so people know about it. So it’s always looking for the positives in their businesses that they might not necessarily think is a big deal then highlighting it.”
*XX security is a fictitious name created to protect the agencies client.
Agency B
"It’s essential that you do. So for instance, I won’t buy a competitor brand. I have a luggage client, I only buy their luggage, I only buy their handbags. I would never be seen with a competitor product. Why would anybody believe me if I’m not supporting my own client? So with my property client, we recently just sold our house using that client. My daughter is now gonna be using them, my mothering in law is gonna be using them so…you have to… if you don’t believe in who you’re working for and don’t wanna work with them yourself then you shouldn’t be working with them. So I’m very particular about that. I will only support my clients, so I don’t ever buy competitor brands."
Agency C
“It’s so difficult but it’s so important. We (are) monitoring, particularly on social media. We use some of the analytics, we use things that can keep tabs on all levels of social media, things like Hootsuite. We try and convince as many of our clients as possible to spend money on active monitoring. One of our biggest issues is that they don’t but into it, they see it as an expense they can do with-out. It’s a nightmare…but it’s so important, you cannot physically monitor all things at the same time. Digital and social is fairly easy to do, you can check
online and you can go search for it…but you actually want that proactively done. And a lot of the good monitoring like your Newsclip and rebook and that sort of thing, they’ll actually get it pre-publication. I’ll get a clip in my email a day before publication …so you’re ahead of the game but it’s one of those things that guys (clients) are dropping.”
Agency D
“The content is obviously different across our client but we... majority of it is brand story telling. So it’s not necessarily, (like anything in particular). It’s put-ting out what our clients stand for and putput-ting through that messaging across all platforms.”
Agency E
“Ok so as an example, once a year, they (one of my clients) in Johannesburg for a competition that they sponsor and in the morning of that competition, I set up business interviews with various business journos. So we’re not talking about the competition. The media are invited to the competition in the evening but I set up business interviews and I keep following up until…(I secure public-ity).”
Agency F
"Well, I think the objectives that are set at the beginning of each year, are…we monitor them very closely. So some clients want ROI on AVE, I mean we all know that AVE is no longer a benchmark but I’ve got two clients that only want AVE so we will give them that AVE. Ok? Those clients have actually set KPIs for us that we need to target to achieve certain KPIs in AVE. So as much as we try and change that to reach (for example), it just doesn’t work. They want the AVE so we apply to that. We have clients that want proof on footfall ok so we report on, well they report back to us on footfall. We have a client that, well is suppose it’s the same as footfall. They want table covers. So how many people sit and eat in their restaurant, same as footfall. So each client is very different.
So what we try and do is every month in our monthly report, we report back onto the objectives. So we are very target driven. So whatever the target is set at, that’s what we will do to achieve…and we have never not achieved.
We also do events, so some of the clients require events or parties so that would be considered as upholding the image of the client. Uh, it’s also media liaison… being able to… for them to be able to talk to the right media and stake-holders…stakeholder engagement.”
Agency G
“I think because I’ve been working on the brand for so long, they are… they feel like my own brands so I’ve got a personal connection with the brands…
and people often associate me with the brands too because it’s been so long.
So I think that whatever I do, I uphold, you know those brands. Whether I’m dealing with media or regular consumers…I always uphold those brands posi-tively."
Agency H
5.3.2.2. Follow up question: What kind of activities do you do to maintain a good image of your clients?
Participants were asked to select activities which they do to maintain a positive image of their clients. The results of this question have been presented below:
Figure 5.1: Activities to maintain a good image
The key finding is that monitoring conversations and publicity is a large part of ensuring that the client’s good image is maintained.
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Social Media Monitoring Advice on Branding Media Monitoring Staff Training Media Training
Activities to maintain a good image
No.of selections