Public Relations – Making the most of yourself

Creating and managing the public appearance of an organisation or event to the outside world is a crucial part of the creative process. Lucy Wilson explains the value of strategic PR.

It?s always exciting when someone travels miles to an exhibition after seeing a tiny picture in a magazine, or when a feature in a newspaper introduces someone to an idea they?d never considered before. As a specialist arts PR agency, our main aim is to place such features in the media for our clients, though our work is about more than just getting press coverage. We also work to increase audiences for events, by teaming up with a client?s marketing department, creating opportunities for clients to meet potential collaborators, organising visitor groups to come to events and approaching spokespeople to represent a project. However, finding stories and approaching the press is often the bulk of a PR campaign.

Finding the right media

There are limited column inches in the papers or airtime on the radio specifically for the arts, so it?s important to know those places (and their authors or producers) inside out, as well as thinking laterally and making other opportunities for coverage in the myriad non-arts media that still reach potential audiences ? like talk shows, glossy magazines and weekend sections of broadsheets. After deciding which audiences we want to reach, we tailor stories about a project to target relevant journalists. Keeping track of current trends, conversations with project organisers and drawing on contacts within other arts, lifestyle and business organisations help to promote ideas that may not be immediately obvious. Finding the news within a project and proactively creating stories to fit particular columns is what makes the difference between getting listings and substantial articles ? and it always helps to talk to journalists directly rather than simply sending out hundreds of press releases.

In the case of Moscow Breakthrough, a season of Russian contemporary art in London in November 2005, we found examples to show that there?s a current trend for Russian style in fashion and interior design, plus a growing interest in the Russian art market. As a result, we?ve secured features in glossy magazines as well as the arts sections of broadsheets.

Providing information

Just as we need to research a project, journalists need their information too. Press releases, photo-call notices and information sheets are good at one level, but to visit an artist?s studio or to be taken around the site of a new building is much more inspiring. For the recent Coniston Water Festival, organised by Grizedale Arts, we persuaded journalists to come to the Lake District to experience the festival first hand (encouraged by the promise of an interview with film director Ken Russell, who was taking part) and as a result, Grizedale was described as ?one of the most important arts organisations in Europe? in a large feature in The Guardian. It?s unlikely that the festival would have been given more than a small mention had we not taken the journalists. Of course for us, getting to know journalists on these trips means that it?s easier to approach them in future. Stories are also told through images: press releases sent with pictures spark more interest than those without. There are slots in the media that are completely image-led, and eye-catching pictures can make the difference between being featured and not. Magnum photographer Steve McCurry?s exhibition at Asia House?s new building (opening 7 November) has attracted interest from the picture desks on national newspapers as well as feature editors in the specialist photography press, simply on the strength of the images.

Putting clients into a context

In a climate of celebrity-driven press coverage, seeking high-profile spokespeople can be an effective way of securing coverage and creating recognition through association. Research into the Wallace Collection?s upcoming exhibition ?Dancing to the Music of Time: the Life and Work of Anthony Powell? revealed a number of celebrity supporters of Powell?s work, such as Simon Russell Beale, star of the eponymous television series. He was approached to open the exhibition and as a result, we?ll get press interest from diary and social columns as well as the arts and literary press, much as we did when we worked with Vivienne Westwood at the opening of the museum?s Boucher exhibition. Pictures of her with Michael Heseltine in the Evening Standard were picked up by international broadsheets.

Instigating collaborations with like-minded organisations is also an effective way of aligning clients amongst their peers and reaching new audiences. For the Wallace Collection?s Boucher exhibition we initiated a collaboration with the museum?s neighbour Selfridges, who staged a Boucher-inspired womenswear display using banners from the Wallace Collection and offering shoppers reduced ticket prices for the exhibition. Thus we were able to make a more trend-driven story for the fashion pages of national papers.

Positive and negative

When we know that a project is immediately topical and will generate interest, we prioritise where coverage should appear according to relevance of readership and circulation. Recently, the celebrated American cartoonist Robert Crumb created a T-shirt with Stella McCartney whilst concurrently exhibiting at the Whitechapel Gallery and Bonhams, screening films at the NFT and launching a book, so we needed to prioritise coverage. The Guardian was granted a five-day exclusive in return for major features about the art and book projects, so to reach other media we made other exclusives such as interviews with Stella McCartney (for Interview and Another Magazine) and with Robert Crumb?s wife Aline (for BBC Radio 3 Nightwaves).

It?s to be expected that some projects generate controversy as well as positive interest ? most frequently for us, public art projects in deprived areas where locals believe that public money should be spent on anything but art. This antagonism can be managed by anticipating crises before they happen and making sure that clients know how to respond. The Corporation of London has commissioned a winter lighting scheme in the City, where, amongst others, the artist Susan Collins is lighting the drains underfoot so that they appear to glow. Headlines about ?money being poured down the drain? can be limited by briefing journalists before they react to potential public complaint.

Using this variety of approaches, our work is all about creating interest through a strategic PR campaign with carefully managed announcements about exhibitions, venue developments and celebrity support. Well-managed PR can make the difference between a project being ignored completely, or visited, accepted and celebrated.

Lucy Wilson works as a PR Account Manager at Theresa Simon Communications
t: 020 7629 9645;
w: http://www.theresasimon.com