DOING THE BUSINESS - HOW TO ... RUN A PR EVENT

Emma Goss-Custard
Owner, Honeybuns

“We use an agency but also do PR in-house ourselves, because we like to mix things up and gain the benefit of working with professional PR people. Some journalists seem to like the fact that we are genuine, hands-on bakers and respond to our direct approach. Others like to deal with professionals they’ve worked with before.

Before finding our current agency, Positive PR, we visited lots of promising sounding companies, usually London based. They approach you at trade fairs and send an attractive proposition promising wondrous results. When you get down to brass tacks they are usually after a huge retainer, plus expenses, plus ‘management fees’.

We are delighted with the service, professionalisms and good value we get from our local PR firm. We pay on a project basis as we could not justify a retainer.

Our approach includes issuing press releases with photos on disk, sending samples to journalists, inviting them to the farm, holding tasting sessions and tours of the bakery and staging product launch parties. We also hold our own music, art and ale festival, the Bee Hop Festival, on the farm each year, and send VIP tickets to journalists.

We find samples sent with our own branded supporting material, such as postcards, loyalty cards for our café, little hampers, T-shirts and our own music festival VIP passes really are received with glee. I think it’s more important to be generous with samples and send them out more than once a year. We try to have contact with our top 20 journalistic contacts once every quarter.

We’ve achieved coverage in several national broadsheets including The Times and The Daily Telegraph, exposure in local media and product placement at high profile events like Wimbledon, The Princes Trust events, Live Aid and the latest Mr Bean movie!