Blogger Spotlight: Rich Leigh, PRexamples

PRexamples is a PR and social media marketing blog, created by Rich Leigh in 2011 to document all of the creative stunts and campaigns that he came across. As well as running the blog, Rich is also the founder of two PR agencies and has worked on a variety of campaigns for high-profile brands. PRexamples welcomes content from contributors who provide a round-up and commentary on the best campaigns and experimental stunts. In this spotlight Rich Leigh, who made the number one spot on our top ten PR ranking chats to us about making his blog accessible, how he measures its success, and why he’s excited about his new book coming out. 

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what made you start writing your blog? My name’s Rich Leigh (well, it’s currently, quite genuinely and legally, Mr Public Relations – it’s a whole thing), and I’ve worked in PR for getting on for 10 years now.

I started PRexamples.com because I thought there needed to be a place where the best up-to-date PR stunts and campaigns from around the world were collated and searchable.

I read Mark Borkowski’s ‘The Fame Formula’ when I started as a bright-eyed PR man, which gives a great history of PR and touches on how stunts played a part, and have loved creative efforts ever since. As soon as I realised the brilliantly-executed Resident Evil 5 body part treasure hunt in 2009 was a PR thing, I was hooked on finding them – there was even an ‘issue’, entirely PR-led obviously though most wouldn’t have known it, where people panicked about missing body parts upsetting the public.

Why should people read your blog? What makes it different? It’s multi-contributor, so I can speak as a reader, too. In my mind, PRexamples.com is a quick, entertaining and potentially inspiring (not in THAT way) read. The aim is that everybody from students to people coming up with creative ideas for clients/their paymaster can find something that helps to guide their imagination.

How do you measure the success of your blog? It has got to the stage where I think it’s a part of the PR furniture now, but I do keep an eye on traffic through Google Analytics. On an average month, we still average 30k-ish unique visitors – on a very good month, that jumps to 60k-ish, which isn’t bad considering there aren’t many more UK-based PRs than that. I also send monthly newsletters, and keep an eye on the open and click through rates. If it ever got to the stage where people weren’t contributing, sharing or reading, I’d question its existence, but it still serves its purpose well!

What has been your blogging highlight? The first PRexamples ‘birthday’ party is my highlight from the five or so years of running the site, I think. I make next-to-no money from it, and it’s always been a bit of a labour of love, so to see a couple of hundred people come together to share a few drinks, from contributors and readers, was special.

What key trends do you think we will see in relation to how PRs create content in 2017? This will sound incredibly cynical, but the only trend we’ll see is, as ever, a reliance on whichever tech or tactics are in vogue. With my own PR agency, Radioactive PR, we’re doing a lot more in the way of creating content that pushes traffic to client sites, but there’s no set way to do that.

What strategies should PRs apply to create effective campaigns? I have a few key things I ask myself when coming up with ideas, and tend to consider these with campaigns I write about, too:

1. Is the idea relevant to the client?
2. Is it, or can it be, visual?
3. Is the campaign explainable in a sentence?
4. Are there clear and measurable objectives?

I’ve written fairly extensively on the process of coming up with creative campaigns here.

As you know strong relationships are at the heart of PR. So, what can PRs do in 2017 to build stronger relationships with their clients? Talk to them! We use WhatsApp groups for every single client, including everybody on both sides that needs to be in on it, and, to date, we haven’t had a single issue in terms of clients asking for better communication, despite this being a traditional area of contention in the industry. There are plenty of other options – Slack, Facebook for Business and others – but it’s never been easier to keep clients updated, there’s little excuse for comms agencies communicating badly to clients.

How do you keep your content fresh and up to date with current dating trends? There’s always something new to be talking about – and given a) the many site contributors and b) the fairly regular contact I have with the wider industry, good stunts and campaigns are often sent through. I always ask – if you’ve seen, or are working on, a great PR campaign or stunt, fire it over to [email protected] or tweet us @PRexamples!

What’s next for you? Will you be working on any exciting projects? I’ve actually just announced that my first-ever book, Myths of PR, is available to pre-order from Amazon (it got up to #2 in the best-selling PR books a few hours afterwards, which blew my tiny little mind!), so alongside the agency and PRexamples, that’s been taking up a lot of my time.

Beyond that, I’m having some great conversations with a potential partner in terms of getting PRexamples to its next (more globally influential) level, and just working on building a great agency filled with happy people doing great work, to be honest!