Accent Peerless
"Basically LCM is our outsourced marketing department," says Zoë Paine, business development and marketing manager at Accent Peerless, a social landlord based in Surrey.
"I probably speak to Colin about four times a day," Zoë says of her contact with LCM account manager Colin Bridgman. "He manages the input of other LCM staff or external professionals that LCM calls on to carry out something specialist, whatever it is," she says, who is convinced that working with LCM offers much more than could be offered in-house.
"They have helped with a whole range of marketing activity since we started working with them in 2001: Event management, design, placing advertisements, building our Website, writing and gaining editorial coverage and putting together our showcase Annual Reports. When we started a ‘Handyman’ service a few years ago, they helped us with the logo design," Zoë says.
LCM's main targets are now to help strengthen shared-ownership sales and refine the organisation's web presence.
"Right at the beginning they carried out a telephone survey on our behalf, to decide what people thought of us and our recent re-branding," Zoë says. "We were pleasantly surprised to find how well we were recognised. This provided us with a sound basis on which to move forward." The exercise also provided valuable evidence to ensure it maximised brand value after its merger in July 2006.
The organisation's principal stakeholders include tenants, local politicians, local government officials, builders, developers and those living near to its social housing development. "Local authorities provide us with funding and sites for new developments," explains Zoë. LCM also helps Accent Peerless to reach out and inform these important groups with events and with a tenants’ newsletter.
"The events that LCM helps us to stage are always really well-received, including the recent one announcing the merger, which brought together many of our most important stakeholders.
Colin Bridgman says, "We make sure Accent Peerless gets into the right press for each story. Some local newspapers stick very strictly to news pertaining to their own particular area, which is understandable, and it is our job to ensure that editors can see the relevance of what Accent Peerless is doing for their readers. A fair proportion of Accent Peerless’ PR is with the local press, where our main objective is to show benefits we bring to the community, but we also gain coverage for industry-specific messages that are carried in specialist trade titles, such as Inside Housing.”
An example of a press success story in 2006 was attracting widespread coverage for Accent Peerless' firm, and potentially controversial stance on anti-social behaviour. "People handed an ASBO can lose their tenancy if they are tenants of ours," Zoë says. “Getting this across was important in maintaining the support of local residents for our existing and new developments.”
“We have grown considerably since LCM started with us, and there is no doubt that the integrated way that we organise our marketing activity has enabled us to take market share,” concludes Zoë.
