Lansons Communications

Describe your agency in five words

Getting better all the time

How would you sum up 2010 for your agency?

Challenging but ultimately rewarding for us and our clients. We invested in making ourselves a stronger and more integrated communications consultancy.

What was your agency’s high point of 2010?

We are the UK's best large PR agency! We won the PRCA award in November for the second year in a row.

What was the low point of 2010?

Ending our 21st year in business with recession still holding down the financial services sector.

Please give an overview of your staffing through 2010, including significant hires and internal promotions.

• We beefed up our Public Affairs team by acquiring The Foresight Consultancy set up by Mark Adams OBE, former Private Secretary to Prime Ministers John Major and Tony Blair, who joined the Lansons board.-   In January 2011 we recruited ex-BBC journalist Louise Cooper as Head of Lansons Live to relaunch our broadcast offering.
• Richard Hobbs, one of the UK’s best known FSA and regulatory experts, joined Lansons in 2010, along with fellow Beachcroft Director Mark Penton.
• Internally we promoted 5 people to partner meaning a total of 33 of 101 people are owners of our business.

What were your three best campaigns of 2010?

• We launched Metro Bank, the first new High Street bank in over 100 years. The launch relied on PR as the only communications driver and saw brand awareness  amongst Londoners increase by 350%, from 8% in July 2010 to 36% in October 2010, according to YouGov research
• Launching Pay YOUR way: a multi-channel public education campaign to raise awareness of modern payment options, partnering with a range of stakeholders including traditional media, consumer websites, corporates and other consumer-facing NGOs.
• Another amazing year for the 20 years plus offline and online PR campaign for unbiased.co.uk, keeping the importance of independent financial advice on the consumer agenda. We have helped further cement its position as the most referred to professional advice online search in the UK. Our work with IFAs and high value media websites generated over 13,000 items of online and offline coverage in 2010 and 450,000 consumer searches via unbiased.co.uk.

What were your most exciting client wins of 2010?

Artemis
Arle Capital Partners (formerly Candover)
Association of the Luxemburg Fund Industry
AVON
First Direct
Friends Provident
Friends Reunited
IMA
Investec
Invisible Hand
MetroBank
M&S Money
Payments Council
Selftrade
The Pension Trust
Zolfo Cooper

Of which achievement in 2010 are you most proud?

By winning new clients like Friends Reunited and Invisible Hand, plus adding to long term clients like moneysupermarket.com and uSwitch.com, we cemented our position as the leading UK PR agency working with online brands.

What trends did you notice throughout the year in the industry i.e. Clients taking longer to sign off budgets?

The flight to quality specialists and the continued decline of smaller agencies.

How has digital changed the agency landscape in 2010?

The phrase ‘everything connects’ has never been more true and digital has accelerated the convergence of all forms of communication as well as increasing the focus on building brand advocacy. Agencies need to offer integrated communications consultancy more than ever before, and that's what we're doing.

What are your plans for 2011?

We continue to grow our digital capability through the hire of Louise Cooper as Head of Lansons Live (see above) and by taking a 25% stake in strategic social media consultancy cubaka.com headed by former Toyota head of social media Simon Rutherford. In the rest of the year we expect to be able to pick up significant business in the two areas we lead the UK: strategic financial services consultancy and online brands.