Challenge:

Public relations needed to play a significant role in helping Sanlam Investment Management become a competitive player in the financial services industry, rather than just the manager of Sanlam Group policy money. It needed to help SIM attract top investment experts and build its own strong brand.

Solution:

Our strategy was to use a focused, layered media relations campaign to change perceptions and build reputation. As we were dealing with some 20 individual spokespeople within the investment division, it was imperative that we structured our campaign into a number of distinct categories so that we were able to deliver results on all levels. The approach we took was to work within four distinct categories.

1. Bread-and-butter public relations:

Initially: Media training, media collateral, pen portraits, media office
Ongoing: News releases, media interviews, features and surveys

2. Thought leadership

- Opinion pieces
- Proactive issues commentary

3. Spokesperson profiling

- Media meetings
- Media contact book
- Story placement

4. High visibility platforms

- Thought leadership events
- Indexes

Results

The campaign was awarded the overall 2009 PRISA PRISM Gold Award, it delivered 350 pieces of on-message media coverage totalling R 5,609,741(AVE 1:1) and sparked the following comments:

SIM head of marketing: “He (the CEO) was a big PR supporter in the budget yesterday, he agreed that we would shut down everything else in marketing before PR. A true convert!”

Editor, trade publication: “Atmosphere provides a seamless connection for Money Marketing with SIM and it offers relevant editorial that meets our readers’ needs, with an appropriate mix of original editorial and general releases. They are fast and accurate and a pleasure to work with.”

Cape Argus “Don’t Panic”
Financial Mail on SIM
Finweek on SIM