Best 15+ Public Relations Agencies in Kelowna

The top five PR agencies in the world are as follows:

• Edelman

Edelman, the world's largest PR firm with more than 6,000 employees and a revenue of $984.9 million in 2021, is an American PR and marketing consulting firm founded in 1952 by Daniel Edelman. It is currently managed by Daniel Edelman's son, Richard Edelman.

• Weber Shandwick

Weber Shandwick is an American PR firm founded in 2001 by the merger of Weber Group, Shandwick International and BSMG. In 2021, it took the second place in the ranking of the world's largest PR agencies with a revenue of 860 million dollars.

• BCW (Burson Cohn & Wolfe)

Burson Cohn & Wolfe, which put $772 million into its coffers last year, is a New York-based multinational PR and communications firm. In February 2018, parent WPP Group PLC announced that it had merged its subsidiaries, Cohn & Wolfe, with Burson-Marsteller. The combined agency is now known as Burson Cohn & Wolfe.

• Fleishman Hillard

Fleishman Hillard St. Louis, Missouri is a PR and marketing agency. The company, which generated $680 million in revenue in 2021, was founded in 1946 by Alfred Fleishman and Robert E. Hillard. It is currently headquartered in Missouri, USA.

• Ketchum

Ketchum; is a global public relations firm that provides marketing, branding and corporate communications services in the corporate, healthcare, food & beverage and technology industries. Ketchum, which is on the list of the five largest PR agencies in the world with its revenue of $ 550 million in 2021, was founded by George Ketchum in 1923 as a Pittsburgh-based advertising company. Its headquarters are now located in New York.

Every company that wants to reach its potential customers needs to introduce itself to people and establish healthy relations with the public. For this, the right thing to do is to work with a PR agency that is specialized in its business. But choosing the right PR agency is not an easy task. People or institutions that want to cooperate with the right PR agency should consider the following items, which will have very beneficial results for their choice.

 If you have friends or colleagues who have worked with PR agencies before, you can ask them for advice and benefit from their experience.

Decide how much money you want to spend on the PR job and how you want to spend it. Before you start looking for PR agencies, make decisions such as working on a flat wage or performance-based pay basis.

Decide on the size of the PR agency you will be working with. Although big PR agencies may be more attractive to you, remember that they may force you financially and make your choice accordingly. Smaller PR agencies don't have to strain on the budget, and they may be hungrier for advancement in the industry.

If you have an idea about what kind of PR agency you will work with, find a website where you can list the PR agencies that are suitable for you and list the potential companies you can work with.

After creating this list, contact PR agencies and get information on how they can find solutions to your needs. In which media channels can they be successfully featured? Will they be able to help you with events, reactions, social media, and content? Look for answers to these questions. Ask which companies they have worked with before and what services they offer them. See if they are excited to collaborate with you. If they're not interested in what you're trying to achieve, the partnership probably won't work, but if they show your passion for your work, it could be a good partnership for you.

The way to understand the difference between PR agencies and advertising agencies is to make the right distinction between the concepts of PR and advertising.

While PR serves the purpose of increasing the prestige, image and recognition of an institution or person, advertising aims to increase the sales of a good or service or to spread an idea. Therefore, these two concepts are separated from each other in terms of basic purposes.

Another important point that distinguishes the concepts of PR and advertising is the target audience. In PR, the target audience of the institution is the public, but in advertising, the target audience includes a limited audience in line with the area of ​​​​the goods or services to be sold.

The third difference between PR and advertising is their working time. Since there is a long-term image work or communication of an institution in PR, the studies are continuous and uninterrupted because creating the perception always requires a long process. On the contrary, in advertising, the work is intermittent and periodic due to certain periods when products or services come to the fore.

• A good PR agency in the business will help you with PR and communication by working closely with your company to get the right message, content, and tone of voice.
• PR firms not only use their expertise to generate a variety of new ideas but also build relationships with the media and specific journalists. They tailor the best content for each platform and broadcast t on your behalf.
• A specialist PR agency will help you focus your energy where it is most effective and contributes to your overall business and marketing goals.
• PR agencies know how to get the most bang for your buck within your budget, how to leverage timing, and how to structure and target campaigns. They know what works and what doesn't, because they have tried-and-tested formulas that have proven successful, and are open to telling you if an idea is worth pursuing.
• Collaborating with a PR agency means that your company is safe in case of crisis. Since PR agencies have prepared a crisis plan in advance, they will be with you to prepare all kinds of explanations and present them to the media in the event of a crisis.

To help you choose the right PR agency for your business, you can follow these steps:

• Before researching potential PR agencies that fit your needs, list your key goals and expectations that you want the agency to help you achieve. Detail specific goals such as the markets you want to reach, the key messages you want to convey, and the number of media engagements that need to be achieved. When you present these goals to the PR agency during your interviews, they will explain how they will help you.

• List companies you have the potential to work with through a website where you can view the PR agencies available to you, such as the PR Agency Network.

• Ask to speak with past and current customers when you meet with the companies you have listed and learn more about the services they offer. This allows you to understand their strengths and weaknesses and helps you learn firsthand how well they work with other clients.

• After doing research and comparing the prices of different companies, decide which one is the best fit for your budget. If you find that an agency you like is way out of your price range, see if there's room in your budget to adjust their prices. In case there are some companies that you have a hard time choosing between, choose the one that fits your budget while continuing to provide quality service.

The tactics used by public relations departments in many parts of the world have traditionally been limited to media relations and event planning, and social media has become more popular lately. The aim is to win potential customers and try to protect the public image of the company.

Kelowna has some different aspects from other places. Here, public relations are not limited to just providing visibility and helping to market products. It also includes strategies for building and improving a company's reputation.

Where PR agency staff are mostly confined to helping market products, PR professionals have a significantly lower status than Kelowna, which has a broader role that includes corporate reputation strategy and management.

The top public relations position is usually an executive position that reports directly to the CEO Kelowna.

There are different types of PR agencies, depending on the services they offer and the audiences they serve. While PR agencies provide general services, there are also PR agencies working in specific areas specialized in their fields. We have listed the types of PR agencies below for you.

1. General Communication

PR agencies that offer general services are there for companies in all matters related to their public relations strategy. They provide you with every support in building your reputation and brand awareness using many tactics including social media, media relations, internal communication, and more. For businesses that need help with more than one public relations, it would make more sense to get services from a general PR agency.

1. Press communication

PR agencies that focus on media access, writing sales pitches, being actively involved in the media, and interviewing journalists or influencers specialize in press communications. If the PR service that companies need is to improve their media coverage, it would be wise to get services from a PR agency specialized in this field.

1. Crisis Communication

PR agencies, which provide support to their customers in the field of crisis management, stand by them by preparing appropriate plans in times of crisis.

1. Internal communication

PR agencies specialized in the field of internal communication provide services foe institutions to inform their employees and make employee communication very easy.

1. Community Communication

PR agencies, which help companies maintain healthy communication with their customer communities, are experts in areas such as social media communication.

The amount required to set up a PR agency and provide public relations support to individuals and businesses will of course vary depending on the type of PR agency, the services the agency intends to offer, and the location where the agency will be established. The initial cost of a PR agency considers equipment and materials expenses, fees to start a business, software expenses, office space expenses, employee and freelancer expenses, website costs, and advertising and marketing costs. It ranges from $20,000 to $50,000.

Social Media Manager: Responsibilities of social media managers; promoting the brand, interacting with audiences across various social media channels, as well as coordinating and developing unique brand voices for each channel. Their day-to-day duties may include creating a social media content calendar aligned with the overall PR strategy, engaging with audiences across all channels through brand-voiced comments and posts, and monitoring various data points to track the success of specific campaigns and strategies.

Publicist: This is the position that works with the client and works with the client to develop a unique PR strategy. They then use this strategy to find specific campaigns, events, and outreach that will most effectively execute this strategy. The most challenging part of their job is undoubtedly managing crises. When there is negative press about a client, the PR professional has to quickly find the best way for the client's brand to recover.

Copywriter: Copywriters in PR agencies execute promotional strategies by writing press releases, speeches, blog posts, social media posts, and other materials. They must be versatile enough to write in a variety of brand voices and adapt that voice to suit a variety of campaigns or PR content.

PR Specialist: PR specialists are an essential part of PR agencies, whose main responsibility is to maintain good relationships with journalists and other media contacts who can help them produce press releases, appear on TV, broadcast speeches, and other promotional media strategies.

Spokesperson: Spokespersons, whose responsibility it is to act as the face of the brand by representing the company in public, in speeches, and on TV, often work in-house for the company. They must also have the strength to respond to criticism and bear the brunt of negative press when crises occur.

As in every organization, there are many specialists with different abilities and job descriptions working in PR agencies. The teams of PR agencies are generally as follows:

Strategy Team: This team usually monitors the work, when a new client comes to the agency, this team examines the structure of the client company and creates appropriate strategies accordingly, and shares them with the relevant teams. They form a kind of roadmap.

Editorial Team: This team, which is responsible for the creation of texts to be used in relations with the press, has a good command of the rules of journalism. They produce the best texts by working meticulously on the reflectance of the brand language of the messages, their compliance with the language of journalism, spelling mistakes and expression disorders.

Media and Press Relations Team: This team, whose most important task is to establish strong relations with the press, ensures that the press releases from the editorial team are published in the right channels and reach the widest media organs it can reach. It is also the responsibility of this team to organize press lists and make updates when necessary.

Creative Team: This team, which manages the design part of the business, takes on creative roles such as supporting the projects with visuals. It is the duty of this team to make the designs to be shared with the press the most creative and interesting.

Customer Relations Team: It is the team that manages the relations of the agency with the companies and individuals it cooperates with, prepares studies taking into account the feedback received from the customers, and shares these studies with the relevant people.

Reporting Team: As every agency does, PR agencies present the results of their work to their clients through reports. The work of the reporting team guides the development of new strategies.