Every PR department wants an agency that really understands its business needs. What better way than to actually integrate an employee of your agency into your own team?
When Wyeth Consumer Healthcare, which owns the Advil brand, began its title sponsorship of the Senior PGA Tour Championship in the late 1990s, the pharmaceutical company took
on a variety of new PR responsibilities, which it shared with agency Carter Ryley Thomas. (CRT has a 12-year history with many of the Wyeth brands.)
But when the company added title sponsorship of another golf championship, the Advil Western Open, in 2000, PR execs knew they needed more PR resources from CRT.
The solution: Ann-Tyler Sangston, a Carter Ryley Thomas associate, began working full-time, on-site at Advil's Madison, N.J., headquarters. "They had more responsibilities:
everything from working with the Western Golf Association to creating signage for the course to creating ads for the program," Sangston says. Wyeth and CRT recognized that because
the company is a large organization and requires a good deal of review and approval of any PR materials, it would be most efficient to have someone on-site handle those logistics.
And since the internal marketing communications team already carried a full load, it made sense to bring in someone from the agency to serve as an entrenched liaison with the PR
firm.
The biggest advantage, however, was that CRT was able to gain unprecedented insight on the client's needs. "You really get to know the personalities of your client," Sangston
says. "Being able to interact with people you wouldn't necessarily interact with on a daily basis [affords you] such a better understanding of their needs."
Sangston stayed on-site with Wyeth for 21 months over the course of Advil's two years of title sponsorship (she is now back in Richmond with CRT), and CRT now puts an employee
on-site at many client organizations for shorter-term project management. Before you call your agency and ask for a full-time staffer, however, do consider the cost: Sangston
would not share exact figures, but CRT charged Wyeth roughly the equivalent of an hourly rate for 40 hours a week. "Of course the bonus is that there's never a 40-hour week in
PR," Sangston says. (Sangston, 804/645-8135, [email protected])
CRT Stats
Practice Areas: Health Sciences, Technology & Telecommunications, Corporate, Sponsorship & Event Marketing, Consumer Products
Headquarters: Richmond, Va.
Clients Include: Advil, Capital One, Krispy Kreme, Pharmacia, Philip Morris