Situation
Whether you are thinking about a sale in the short term or looking at a long term exit strategy there is considerable value in coming up with a strategic communications plan, to ensure potential investors or buyers perceive you as a company worth their time and money.
Strategy
The PR work around preparing your company for a sale cannot start early enough. Ensuring you are being positioned well within your market, raising awareness of your key successes and establishing the full extent of your capabilities are all important in setting up fruitful conversations with potential investors. When it comes to the actual sale, it is important that the announcement is handled delicately, ensuring that news reaches the market as well as your own stakeholders in the right way, at the right time will help to achieve a seamless sale.
Result
When Darlow Smithson approached us two years before their exit to IMG, we were tasked with changing the perception of the company from a predominantly UK producer, to one of the most well-known producers in the world. We worked closely with the senior management team to advise on a press strategy which communicated key areas of the business and its output, from high quality factual to drama and recently a push into mainstream factual. Coverage was widespread, Being named one of RealScreen’s top international producers was coupled with a slew of international awards. Franklin Rae also helped guide them through a sale to IMG in 2006 and to Endemol in 2009 - ensuring the company's messages remained consistent throughout.
Building Flame TV’s profile in advance of sale, we worked closely to reposition the company following an internal restructure that saw Roger Bolton Productions become integrated fully into Flame TV. Our goal was to raise its profile in broadcasting trades, both in the UK and internationally, and communicate the company's key business objectives in order to help them grow. Following Flame TV's sale to Avalon in 2009, we adapted our strategy to concentrate on communicating the company’s individual brand identity to ensure the perception of Flame did not change - taking a ‘business as usual’ approach to maintain a high profile for the company.
Our work with Pioneer Productions built their status as a leading producer of content around the world. This was done through a sustained campaign of company profile pieces in key domestic and international trades, as well as positioning them as industry experts and commentators with opinion pieces in the media pages of a national newspaper and online pieces for trade publications. Another strategy we employed was to raise awareness of the company’s growth into new genres of factual production, which we achieved through placement in genre-focused features as well as making sure to secure press opportunities around the transmission of their programming. Pioneer Productions was sold to Tinopolis in 2009.
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