PRspective: Romain Casella of MAY Concepts

MAY Concepts is a boutique creative and marketing consultancy with offices in London and Geneva. The agency helps its clients maintain and gain a positive brand reputation through creative communications via services such as strategic branding, integrated marketing, media relations, event management and trend scouting.

With a network of global clients that typically operate in the style, media and creative industries, the agency markets itself with the ability to provide a unique marketing strategy for each project to ensure local appeal while maintaining international standards.

Romain Casella, founder and director at MAY Concepts, talks to Cision about prominent trends in the PR industry, the critical role social media plays in marketing today and the inspiration he derives from his job.  

Romain Casella

Getting to know MAY Concepts:

What are some of the prominent trends in the PR business? Content is everything these days. PR specialists are expected to devise not only quality storytelling for the earned media (editorial), but also engaging content for the owned media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) helping to reinforce brand advocacy and amplify brand messages.

To create effective press material, the nature and content need to be better thought through given that stories are now distributed through numerous channels, to varying impacts. Looking at the popularity of visuals and videos on social platforms for instance, these need to stand out and impress for the message to come through. The same goes for editorial content – the essence of a story should be easily pitched, and catchy enough to be communicated in less than 140 characters.

How has communications within your business changed in recent years? How important is online media? Due to the growth in social media, blogs and other online media, the importance of strategic editorial planning has never been more critical.

With media fragmentation and the increasingly fast pace of information distribution, a clear vision of the overall marketing strategy is essential to better deal with unexpected events and to efficiently capitalise on new opportunities. Staying true to one’s brand values allows for the ability to embrace new opportunities without losing sight of one’s direction.

Online media now represents the most important part of the media landscape. Most media outlets offer a digital version of their print publications while bloggers have developed their own distinctive voices, playing an influential role within the saturated media sphere.

The online media complements print media very well. Where online brings immediacy, a wider reach and bigger publicity opportunities, print delivers in-depth contents, offering more profound impact and a sense of posterity for the brand.

How has the PR-client relationship changed in recent years? With the transformation of the media landscape, the emergence of new media and the constant evolution of technology, the PR function has shifted from an implementing role to an initiating strategic position – fully integrated within the overall marketing and communications plan. Clients therefore expect a more holistic approach to their marcoms challenges from PR specialists.

Through collaboration and/or integration, PR professionals need to think more like strategic planners and diversify their skill set by digging into the creative, digital and social marketing disciplines, as well as trend scouting.

What is the road ahead for May Concepts? The plan ahead for MAY falls into three main areas of focus: 

Strategy: assisting brands that want to develop their business organically.
Development: strengthening the ties within EMEA through collaborations with creatives, and specialised agencies based in the UK, Switzerland, France and the Middle East.
Vision: establishing long-term and quality relationships with our clients whilst adapting to new codes set by the ever changing marketing & communications field.

Getting to know Romain Casella:

The first thing I do when I come into work: I start checking my emails, catch up on the news and social media updates while sipping a large cup of coffee.

I would never: take anything for granted.

My biggest social media peeve is: over-sharing.

The best thing about my job is: that it gives me the ability to learn something new every day from the creative and talented people I meet and interact with.

Five years from now you can find me at: MAY. The agency is aiming to build up long-term collaborations with inspired and inspiring clients that trust us to be actively involved as an extension of their companies.