Southern Focus Trust
"LCM are very caring people,” says Nicola Youern, Chief Executive of Southern Focus Trust. “They don't just do PR and go away again: they’ve invested in our work and it feels like they’re part of the team."
Being sympathetic to the Trust's goals and ethos is crucial to helping Southern Focus Trust fulfil its mission of providing care, support and advice services to its service users. Their clients include people from all walks of life and adopting and communicating the right message is essential.
"I’ve met service users and talked to them about the issues facing their lives and how SFT have helped and supported them,” says LCM Account Manager, George Roberts. "A few weeks later, I saw some of them singing in SFT’s Christmas panto. You could see just how their confidence had grown and how SFT had helped them."
How the partnership began
SFT is aware that there can sometimes be prejudice, stigma and misunderstanding around the work that it does or the service users it works with. Sensitive and accurate reporting is key to ensuring the Trust is fairly represented in the media, particularly when it provides care, support and advice to people who can be vulnerable, lack confidence or are unable to represent themselves.
“We agreed that it would be beneficial to employ a PR and Media company in 2001 following a story that had been unfairly reported in a newspaper,” says Nicola Youern. “The situation had occurred on a Sunday, journalists had been unable to contact me to check facts and an incident was reported in a way that could have been detrimental to the Trust. I spoke to the board and we met with LCM. We were very impressed with what they could offer.”
Having interviewed LCM, Nicola says, “It was clear that LCM offered a far broader range of skills than we could provide by simply recruiting someone in house. Apart from PR response management, the LCM team now handles proactive press and public relations as well as working with us to develop recruitment advertising, branding and designing signs for new vehicles and buildings.
"In the first place, in order to get press messages right, LCM worked with us to review our branding. We changed our logo to something stronger and more up-to-date whilst maintaining the essential aspects that people had come to associate with SFT. LCM also helped develop a set of standard descriptions of the Trust in a way that both SFT and LCM could use in press releases and on publicity material.”
A cornerstone of the Trust's communication strategy has been to transform its annual report. Rather than being a dry financial document, LCM has worked with staff, service users and Trustees to create a lively, informative and themed 'Impact Report' which reviews the successes and stories of the past year and looks to what lies ahead for the organisation. “It’s been a great opportunity,” says George Roberts, “working with an Impact Report Team has created opportunities for marketing, reporting and producing something that captures the work of the Trust. I’m proud to say that the Impact Reports we’ve created have been very sharp and professional.”
Stakeholders are also kept up-to-date by the Trust's quarterly Changing Lives newsletter which focuses on the many positive outcomes and successes of the Trust. And things don’t stop here: "we’re making the website more of a central communication tool. Podcasts and other technical advancements will enable us to offer content in easily accessible ways which is particularly important for service users with different access requirements. We’re also working to make SFT a reference point,” says George, “we’re providing a wealth of relevant material for people, such as journalists, who can turn to Southern Focus Trust when they want to find out more about the issues it deals with."
The Trust is also pro-active about recognising the things that will help boost its profile. "LCM helped us get into the mindset of thinking 'can this appear in the paper?’" says Nicola. One particularly inventive bit of creative thinking was when Nicola and her PA, Nick, were approached and interviewed by The Guardian for a feature about female bosses and male PAs. It also provided an opportunity to challenge outdated perceptions and promote equality, something the Trust is keen to do.
"From being a large but relatively unknown charity on south coast, we’ve worked hard with LCM to raise our profile and the profile of the work we do,” says Nicola, “we’re a constantly growing business and have recently opened up services in Dorset. Ensuring we have a reliable, professional marketing team behind us has been indispensable. Bringing LCM on board was one of the best things we ever did.”
