We believe that every company should have an agency like that up their sleeve – an agency that wants to help your company fly – and if you don’t, maybe we can help.

In terms of the techniques we employ and the mechanics we utilise, we create campaigns that use media relations, marketing, event management, crisis management, internal engagement, online PR for search engine optimisation, celebrity liaison and placement – the list goes on… We know time is precious, but if you have got a moment, you can read more about each of these below.

However, what we’ve found is that our total offering is just as important to our clients as the tactics we pull on, so in a nutshell:

• We listen to your needs and objectives
• We deliver unique ideas that we believe will add value to your business
• We offer a completely honest and transparent service
• We work on a retainer basis through to a one-off project – whatever route most suits your business needs.
• We tailor projects to your budget, whatever that may be.
• We work with you and your team – we are no ‘long distance’ agency

Find out more about our approach

Cream has the expereince in both off line and online PR, enabling the team to offer your brand a complete PR offering. The team has also worked with celebrities to spearhead campaigns, and used the media agenda to catapult client’s news stories into the national media.

And, to ensure that PR campaigns are nothing but successful for our clients we apply our 360 degree ruling which ensures that all the crucial elements are included in a winning campaign.

If you have a product to launch or a story to tell, and you want to maximise the word of mouth potential through PR, then you should tell us about it.

‘Marketing’ – it’s such a broad term, covering off a mass of activities and mechanics.

Cream have got experience across the whole marketing mix, but we’ve chosen to focus where you have a strong group of people you want to target – whether that’s by a demographic, location, an attitude or a common interest.

Although we know that traditional methods such as advertising can still work, with the fragmentation of the media, cut-through is getting ever more difficult.

We believe that your loyal customers are your biggest potential, if you can harness them to be advocates for your brand, so relationship marketing both on and offline will generally feature strongly in our marketing campaigns.

Bring us your business problem and we will create you a marketing solution, using what we consider to be the optimum mix of marketing ‘ingredients’.

Read more about the marketing launch for lingerie retailer Leia or why not find out what we think is the best marketing campaign of 2009 so far.

• 65% of people research products online before they ever enter a shop?
• 80% of people only ever use results from the first page of a search engine and of them 70% only ever click on the top 3 results?
• Mums (some of the most time-poor people) spend an average of 18 hours per week online?
• 40% of people Google a news story once they’ve heard the initial headline?
• 53% of journalists admit to looking online for inspiration for stories?

Online PR can:

• Help you to build new conversations and relationships with consumers
• Seed positive brand messages around the web, to the places where your customers are spending time.
• Help make your customers your strongest advocates.
• Be incredibly powerful as part of a crisis management strategy

However, that’s not all – when it’s used in the right way, online PR can also help drive your website up the search engine rankings, making it visible to those 80% who only ever look at the first page of search results.

So, if you want to connect with your customers in a new, different and engaging way, then it might help you to find out what Boots said about the work Cream did for them using online PR.

It might not always be possible to suppress a negative story, but in the event that one does appear, whether it be online or offline, through the media or a consumer-led story, a crisis management plan can:

• Ensure the internal communication chain is in place – keeps everyone informed and gives clarity to roles
• Keep the exposure to a minimum
• Let you put forward your message and point-of-view
• Influence opinion to a more positive footing

Throughout their careers, the crisis management team at Cream have worked on a multitude of issues;  from deliberately-contaminated products to celebrity scandal;  efficacy issues on healthcare products through to customer dissatisfaction stories.

If you believe that your company could be exposed to negative publicity, then Cream can help you in a variety of ways – from consultancy sessions to help you plan for any eventuality, through to handling your crisis management on your behalf from beginning to end.

Alternatively, you might wish to train your team so that you can deal with issues internally, in which case we offer a PR training course specifically on crisis management.

Why not contact us for a confidential discussion on your crisis management requirements – call us on 0845 388 9584 today and ask for either Rachel or Carrie.

Read our thoughts on the recent BMW crisis that hit the media.

It’s a bit like our swan here – everything is beautifully serene, but beneath the surface there is a great team effort ‘paddling away’ to make it appear such plain sailing!
Cream Communications has managed a whole host of events, from press shows for high street retailers such as Boots and Wilkinson, through to customer opening events for smaller boutique chains, such as Leia Lingerie.

Cream’s ethos behind event management is to create an event that perfectly meets the brief, brings the event in within the budget irrespective of size, but perhaps most importantly, creates a memorable experience both for you and your customers that helps cement your relationships.

Recent event management projects

When launching Cheshire-based premium kitchen showroom Blackthorn Interiors, what better way to showcase the kitchens than by asking local up & coming celebrity chef John Quilter to demonstrate how you can cook up a storm?

Christmas comes early in the world of retail – July to be precise. Cream has worked on a plethora of Christmas events for nationwide retailers such as Boots and Wilkinson.

The Wilkinson show in 2008 was the first Christmas show the retailer had ever held – it was a massive success and kick-started a campaign that generated coverage of Wilkinson products alongside the likes of Dolce & Gabanna in publications such as Sunday Times Style, InStyle and Cosmpolitan.

Boots can cater for most people on your shopping list at Christmas- they have Gifts for Him, Gifts for Her, Gifts for Kids, Gifts for Teens …. so their Christmas press shows are always huge and always busy. Take a look at a Christmas press show organised by Rachel Benton that helped put Boots products on the pages of most magazines and newspapers in the run up to Christmas, as well as a plethora of online coverage.

Your people are your biggest ambassadors, so for a truly successful campaign your entire team needs to know about it, to understand it and to have bought into it, so that at every touchpoint your customers are having experiencing the campaign, and your values first hand. I

This is what we call ‘internal engagement’ and as well as working fantastically well for your customers, it’s also incredibly empowering for your teams.

Cream have got vast experience of communicating external campaigns to internal audiences, so if you want to learn more about how you can bring your whole team along on the journey, then give us a call.

Consultancy can be at a topline strategic level, when you’re looking for a fresh approach or a new direction, or it can be very hands-on, when you simply haven’t got the internal manpower available to complete a project. Or it can be both.

For us, consultancy is about flexibility – the ability to react to the current situation or task, and apply whatever level of detail is required. We believe that an excellent consultant can work at the top level but is also capable of dipping down into the detail to ensure that the thinking can be brought into reality, delivering real and tangible results.

Cream has worked as consultants on a variety of projects, for both big companies and small, short and long term. Find out more about our recent consultancy work for boots.com or listen to what the management team at Leia said about us

Does your brand need some help to grow, or could your team do with an extra pair of hands? If so, please contact us for an informal chat as to how we could help.

We believe that word-of-mouth is the best PR tool, but be it via the web, printed media, brochures or advertising there’s no denying that the written word is still crucial and can actually be the key to driving the viral endorsement.

It’s not just what you say, but how you say it – your audience is bombarded every day with messages from different companies and it is harder than ever to stand out, to cut through the general ‘noise’.

Wherever your words appear, it’s imperative to create and maintain a strong brand tone of voice, so that wherever your customer finds your copy – a press release, a company brochure, a blog, a website or an e-alert, your personality always shines through. We think to achieve this is a bit of an art form.

Your words can appear in so many different formats and places, so, when copywriting, there are different techniques you need to employ – for example, people tend to scan a website rather than read every word. We think to get this element of copywriting cracked is a bit of a science.

So, whether you need a whole tone of voice creating for your brand, a series of articles or a one-off brochure, our experienced team of ‘word churners’ are poised, fingers at the ready…..

Read copy written for boots.com about Florence Boot, a thoroughly modern woman or look at examples of a brand booklet created for lingerie retailer Leia