BackCreative Talk With Kelly Bennett
This month’s Creative Talk is with Kelly Bennett, the Founder and Managing Director of One Plus One Communications. We talk to Kelly about the interchangeable relationship between advertising, experiential, digital and PR.
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Who is One Plus One Communications, and who is your main clientele?
One Plus One Communications was launched in 2013 because we wanted to provide a more relevant PR offer for New Zealand and Australian businesses. Having run agencies and networks throughout Asia Pacific, we recognised a gap in the market for a creative, corporate communications consultancy, and we now work with clients in the financial services, broadcast, recruitment, retail, architecture and advertising industries, on both sides of the Tasman.
You work with a lot of New Zealand ad agencies, how exactly do you help them?
We use the things that differentiate the agencies we work with to help them improve their share of voice and reputation. Sometimes that involves promoting and publicising new campaigns, award and account wins, the talent within the agency, or the proprietary tools they have and ways they work. We specialise in earned media but not at the expense of other relevant forms of communication.
Creativity is a crucial part of promoting brands and businesses, how do you successfully combine creativity with the PR business model?
These days, the best advertising agency creative work features ideas that work well beyond bought media, and more often than not are conversational. The days of ‘transmit’ were replaced long ago by ‘two way’. The challenge for PR firms, both large and small, is to harness and replicate the thinking and scale embodied in the best sort of creative campaigns (e.g. Dumb Ways to Die, World’s Best Job, etc.) which are ostensibly PR ideas brought to life by ad agencies and their partners.
Do you have an internal creative team?
No we don’t – most PR practitioners are jack-of-all-trades and have to be able to plan, suit, create and design. There isn’t the same level of specialisation inside PR or communications companies that there is inside ad agency environments. Having said that, the boundaries are blurring all the time, with most ad agencies asking, right at the beginning of the campaign process, “what’s the headline” and “how can we start a conversation about this?,” which were traditionally the exclusive domain of the PR agency.
How important is creative collaboration between advertising, experiential and PR?
Imperative, but that depends on which agency you’re collaborating with!
In a recent article you wrote that traditional PR model is eroding, with the digital landscape, SEO and social media playing a more important part in the future of the PR industry. Is that still the case?
Yes it is. I was fortunate enough to attend the Hyper Island Master Class earlier this year and one of the key learning’s from that experience was that the impact of digital technology permeates everything to do with business, whether it’s organisational culture, change or commercial performance.
Do you see PR as the final after thought or will most clients talk to you before a project has begun?
It used to be quite commonplace for ad agencies to develop campaigns in complete isolation of any contribution from the PR arm of the business, then bring them in right at the end and say “can you get us some coverage?”. That’s changed now, to a greater or lesser extent: most of the large ad agencies and media companies all have PR businesses.
From your extensive experience in the PR industry, what has been the most significant shift you’ve seen?
The current rate of change is truly remarkable. One obvious consequence is there are fewer traditional routes to help businesses and brands tell their stories and an explosion of digital options opening up which are replacing them. The PR consultancies (and in-house teams) that can deliver with equal aplomb in both, are the ones that will prosper.
Do you think the New Zealand PR industry sits well in comparison with the international market?
Australian work was dominating at the international awards ceremonies that matter until a recent shift that saw Japan producing some really cool work, particularly Dentsu Y&R’s campaign for fruit brand Dole, which won the 2014 PR Grand Prix at Spikes Asia. But PR is a broad church and awards are just a small component of measuring output and quality. The New Zealand industry is full of really talented PR people doing amazing things, week in and week out, the vast majority of which you’ll never hear about.
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