When I launched Budgie PR as an independent PR consultancy in 2022, the first goal was to find a way to work in the PR industry without compromising my integrity. Unfortunately, our industry has quite a checkered reputation. Many PR firms make false promises to win new business, both in terms of media coverage and account management. On the initial sales call, PR firms present senior team members who will handle the accounts. In reality, they later assign junior staff members to work on those accounts to save costs. When they underdeliver, it can give the entire industry a tarnished reputation.
I deliberately wanted Budgie PR to be a transparent consultancy. While working for other small companies and agencies in the UAE, I was often forced to lie about the company’s headcount. Coming from a Danish background, this was something I struggled a lot with.
It made me very uncomfortable whenever I had to pretend and use fictional numbers in front of clients or prospects. While I understand why companies and agencies often employ these tactics to make them seem “bigger” than they are, it wasn’t something I wanted to do in my own business.
#HonestPRTalks
One of my employers at an agency once told me I was “too honest” to work in PR. When I started on my own, I was determined to prove that it is possible to combine honesty with my profession. Soon after the launch of Budgie PR, I coined the term #HonestPRTalks for my first social media posts. Transparency is the most important value in my business, and it plays a key role on so many levels – from client relations to reporting methodology and marketing efforts. The initial thought behind the hashtag was to address the many false promises and guarantees of media coverage we often see in the industry. You should have honest PR talks with your prospects from day one. Otherwise, it will be difficult to manage expectations and the client relationship later. I would much rather under-promise and over-deliver than the other way around.
The concept is not just about never guaranteeing coverage. If there is something I cannot do, I tell my clients directly. My first client under Budgie PR’s umbrella was a Dutch fashion-tech business. With a background in financial services B2B PR, fashion was outside of my wheelhouse, but the tech aspect of the company was very exciting to me. I made it very clear on the discovery call that I had never done fashion PR before, but the client signed up anyway. I am grateful they trusted me to launch the brand in the UAE.
Bye-bye, vanity metrics!
Honest PR talks are also about being transparent about tracking PR performance. I was trained at an old-school B2B PR agency where the main KPIs were print coverage and the number of press clippings generated from each press release. I knew I wanted Budgie PR to be much more digitally focused, so I tested a few software platforms that could help me track both online and offline campaign performance and share audited metrics and results with my clients.
It is crucial to follow best practices as a PR practitioner and use insightful and honest metrics that demonstrate the impact of the PR efforts. I have said goodbye to outdated reporting methods and vanity metrics. Instead, I invested in proper reporting software that saves me several hours every day and frees up more time for pitches and targeted media outreach. Using the best PR SaaS platforms in the market enables me to concentrate on digital PR efforts and report consistent results through clean and verified data. Clean data means that the data is accurate, complete, and consistent – without any sugarcoating.
Transparency as a differentiator
Budgie PR is the only agency in the UAE that shares all results and performance directly on the website. I didn’t realize that the way I share my media coverage results and reports could become a differentiator in the current market. Publishing all the cumulative results on the website was more of a pragmatic decision. I often shared those coverage reports with prospects to show them exactly what results I have landed for my clients.
I find media coverage reports much more transparent than using case studies on the website. You rarely see any timelines mentioned in case studies, and those case study results can be very vague and even misleading. Did it take your team three or six months to land those press wins? And what kind of quality was the coverage – was it just a brief mention or a full-page profile piece? I want to show exactly what press wins I have secured – with links to the published articles, Domain Authority Ranking, and other key metrics.
I hope that Budgie PR’s data-driven approach can inspire others and set a new benchmark for transparency in our industry. We owe our prospects and clients a better way of showing them how we work and how we can help them reach their goals.
