Pinnacle Marketing Communications

Who’s in the hot seat?

Lewis Tonkinson, Director

Sum up your agency’s 2010 in less than 140 characters

Another great year. We continued to deliver high ROI for technology clients and we successfully executed a number of digital campaigns

Name your three best technology clients or account wins

We’ve got a broad base of interesting and innovative clients spanning a variety of technology areas so identifying just three is difficult. What I can say is that we are very pleased with the ongoing expansion of business from the electronics and industrial sectors in 2010 and we are particularly excited about the work we have done in evolving a number of client PR campaigns to encompass more digital activity. In addition 2010 saw some significant wins for us in the test and measurement arena.

What was the most exciting technology PR campaign you ran in 2010?

We ran many highly successful campaigns for clients in areas ranging from electronics and industrial engineering to telecoms and test and measurement. Among the most exciting was a global campaign for a large industrial engineering company that not only delivered very high levels of coverage in some highly technical printed and online media but also successfully integrated a variety of digital elements including Blogs, social media and search engine optimisation.

As well as significantly raising awareness for the client and its technologies this campaign enabled the company to engage in real conversations with a niche technology audience with the result that both web traffic and leads increased significantly.

Significant technology hires in 2010

Pinnacle’s aim has always been to motivate and reward its personnel to ensure good staff retention and to allow clients to build up long-term relationships with their account personnel. 2010 was another successful year in this respect. The key new hires we did make were focused around our growth in the digital arena, specifically adding account management resource to support the growing number of social media and SEO campaigns that the agency is running.

In 2011 we will continue to actively recruit high-calibre individuals at a variety of levels to support our ambitions growth plans.

Highlight of 2010

There were many highlights in 2010 but the evolution of client PR campaigns to take real and measurable advantage of digital and social media opportunities is something we are particularly proud of. Specifically we helped some very technology-orientated clients to take a strategic approach to digital opportunities, so that social media, SEO and other activities were integrated into their campaigns and could build on the success of PR activity with both printed and online media.

What do you think will be the key trends for technology PR in 2011

One key trend will be the need to ramp up content generation. Good technology PR campaigns have always relied on good content – indeed, one of the reasons for Pinnacle’s success has been the ability of our technology PR teams to create high-quality and often deeply technical content with the minimum of client input. However, the growth of online opportunities and the importance of good content for successful social media and SEO campaigns are set to make this more important than ever before.

Plans for 2011

We’ve got a variety of exciting things planned. We’ve already announced the opening of new offices in central London and we aim to announce expansion in Asia before the end of the year. We are also planning for the 2012 opening of a US office. 2011 will continue to see increased focus on global campaigns and growth of the support we offer in the digital arena.