TruRead

A few years back we won the PR account for TruRead Ltd., a three-man technological innovation start-up based in Wilmslow, Cheshire. Managing director Simon Slater, whose background was in I.T. applied to the utilities sector, had developed a ‘smart metering’ product that used SMS technology to remotely monitor energy usage, whether water, gas or electricity, on commercial sites across sectors.

TruRead was a company in its infancy that hadn’t used PR in the past, but we had been recommended to them by mutual contacts who thought we would be able to raise TruRead’s profile in their industry.

The brief from TruRead was to help raise their profile in the relevant markets inthe UK, through editorial coverage (there was zero advertising budget) and within 12 months in the first instance.

 A New Sector for Smith &Smith

We’d never worked with the utilities trade press before, so before our initial pitch to TruRead we did initial research to establish the most widely-read publications and websites in the sector.

We also identified other media that would be familiar to TruRead’s target demographic, namely procurement officers within large organizations and energy management consultants or environmental consultants as well as the large utilities providers (water companies, oil and gas companies, and so on).

As soon as we’d won the TruRead account and the contract was signed, we set about contacting the relevant editors, news editors and feature editors to introduce our clients and their specialism, meeting the journalists face-to-face where required and subscribing to the key titles.

We also sent the first of our monthly e-mails to around 25 key journalists (the‘supporters’ club’) from the trade media and from the industrial pages of the nationals (mainly energy and environment correspondents) to let them know about TruRead and keep them up-to-date with their activities in an ‘at-a-glance’ bullet-point format.

 Barriers to the Campaign ...and the Solutions

Although TruRead were working with one major oil company as their main client, they weren’t allowed to mention it in publicity materials, which was a shame.

Press releases were barely an option either, because this wasn’t the kind of business where there was a new client win every month, or a technical development in the product every few months.

So we knew we needed to find an alternative route into the media. We found it very quickly, largely in the shape of informative feature articles for the trade press.

Although smart metering was a well-known and relatively widely-used concept in continental Europe, the UK market had been slow to understand and employ the technology. Therefore we decided to kick-start TruRead’s PR campaign with a series of feature articles in the relevant trade press that outlined what smart metering was and how it helped reduce organizations’ energy costs and lower their carbon footprint at the same time. We pitched synopses to the editors, secured agreements to run the pieces as editorial (i.e. no charge to TruRead or ourselves, as opposed to advertising), sat with the client to discuss the relevant content and then turned it into 1,500-word feature pieces at our offices, penned by us but using a client name (usually the MD) as the official author. Double-page pieces soon appeared in Water & Waste Management, The Engineer and Oil & Gas International amongst others.

Within three months TruRead were reporting that important industry contacts were calling them to say they’d seen good pieces from the company in key media.

Alongside feature articles, we offered TruRead’s MD as a ‘talking head’ on an ongoing basis to trade media, regional business media and national newspapers as well as radio, emphasizing his availability to give expert comment and insight on energy issues. When Alan Jones joined the company as CEO, we were also able to draw on his industry renown and expertise for talking heads slots. Pieces in the Financial Times and the Daily Telegraph ensued, as well as items in the important regional business glossies such as North West Business Insider.

We also began to regularly put TruRead forward for relevant awards, whether business awards or more specialized categories including ‘technological innovation’ and ‘environmental applications’. In 2007, thanks to our research and application, TruRead were winners in the prestigious Business Environment Awards.

 TruRead on the Radar: The Desired Outcome

Eight months into our campaign for TruRead, we were finding that journalists were approaching us for comments from the client around energy consumption and smart metering, which was the situation we’d been aiming to achieve; TruRead were firmly on the media radar, and were being approached for media enquiries before any of their competitors.

Acquisition by GazProm ... and Smith & Smith’s Retention Moving Forward

As a result of the profile that had been achieved by TruRead, they were approached by energy giant GazProm, who were interested in buying a stake in the company. In fact, it GazProm ended up with 80 per cent of the company and TruRead found themselves in the fortunate position of being able to continue their ambitious expansion plans in the UK and overseas with the financial backing of one of the energy industry’s biggest names.