PRG Marketing Communications 40th Anniversary

1. Tell us about PRG Marketing Communications – how did it start?

PRG was started in 1980 by my father, Ray Groves. He was working in London as a journalist, commuting every day back when the trains had slam doors and buffet cars, but no phones, iPads or laptops. Writing press releases on his notepad, he started quietly building a small client base through his contacts in the gas industry. Eventually, he decided to take the plunge and start up PRG Publicity, with my mother getting involved and running the finances.

PRG started life purely as a PR agency, with Ray working from the spare bedroom of our home in Eastbourne. Over time, it took over the dining room, followed by the garage as the team grew. Eventually, a move to an office in town beckoned and so did the transition to becoming full marketing services as PRG’s graphic design studio was born.

Over the years, the business has grown and evolved to meet the needs of our clients and the market. It was a natural step to move into website development and then digital marketing, as increasingly the website formed the starting point for any conversation around marketing. We have, for many years now, operated as a complete full-service agency and we believe this is one of our strongest USPs. Clients can come to us and know that we will handle all aspects of their marketing, using our in-house team, ensuring that all of their inward and outbound communications are delivered to the same high standards.

The business has always worked with clients across the length and breadth of the country, as well as in a variety of countries across Europe and even some clients in Oman and Africa. My memory as a child is of Ray having to jump in his car and head off to see clients up in Manchester one day, then heading down to the West Country a day or two later. I’m hugely thankful for email and Zoom, that’s for sure!

2. 40 Years in business is an incredible accolade, when did you take over at the helm? Was it always the  plan for you to take over the family business?

I actually joined PRG in 2000 when I got back from completing my business degree at University. I came back strapped for cash and returned to my part time job working in a record shop (remember those?) I’d enjoyed the marketing aspects of my business degree the most, as well as the modules on very early website design, so was thinking I’d like to perhaps pursue this further. I was offered some ‘work experience’ at PRG, which I tried for a few months, found I enjoyed, then never left! My first client was a company that made character licenced phone covers, back in the days of the Nokia 3110. They had the Harry Potter licence, which was hot property back then so I managed to secure them a load of national press exposure.

It had never been the plan to join the business, but I’d grown up around it as you do when it is a family business. I worked my way up through the company, developing my skills and knowledge on all aspects of the marketing mix. I began driving the website development and digital marketing sides of the business, as they very quickly became essential parts of what we do.

I took over the business in 2013, just after we moved offices back into the town centre of Eastbourne. It was a bit of a whirlwind, due to Ray having to step away from work for health reasons (he is fine now you’ll be pleased to know). Since then, I’ve been focused on ensuring that we’ve kept the values that PRG was built on, but developed our offering to keep pace with the needs of our clients.

3. What values and services have you continued with and what have you changed?

I’ve tried hard to keep PRG moving forwards and keeping in touch with what the market and our clients are looking for, whilst maintaining the core PRG values. We have always been about ‘family’, which is hugely important to me. We’re a second generation Eastbourne-based family business, but we’re also one big family. My wife, Jo, recently took over running the finances of the business and together we now work very closely on the strategic direction of the business with the rest of the management team. This is something that’s really important to me and I truly love sharing the ups and downs that running a business brings with her.

Over the years, PRG had a strong track record in magazine publishing. We produced several trade magazines for various parts of the gas industry, as well as a hugely popular arts magazine for the Eastbourne arts and theatre scene, Cultural Quarterly. Unfortunately, this is something that I finally took the decision to retire a few years ago, due to the difficulty in generating advertising revenue as well as it being more Ray’s background than mine. Now I leave it to the professionals like you Sam!

For many years now, we’ve worked with the LTA (Lawn Tennis Association) to handle the corporate hospitality promotion for the Nature Valley International Tennis Tournament here in Eastbourne (sadly cancelled this year like every other sporting event). This started off as a small sideline for us, but in the last five years we’ve really grown it and worked with the LTA to turn it into a far bigger offering across several hospitality suites. 

4. What has been your biggest business challenge over the years?

Over 40 years and indeed my 20 years in the business, we’ve faced our fair share of challenges. PRG has been through several recessions, in times where we’ve seen clients both cut their spend on marketing and others when they’ve known they need to invest in marketing during a downturn.

I look back at 2018 as being the biggest challenge I’ve faced since running the business. We faced a ‘perfect storm’ of challenges – some difficult projects, a few poor decisions, a couple of larger clients dropping off through no fault of our own but that were tough to replace and toughest of all was when we lost a member of the PRG family to cancer. Martyn was a wonderful chap and anyone who knows us will be able to tell you how hard it was for us all.

You learn from adversity though and we are stronger for it. There is the small matter of a worldwide pandemic and global economic crisis, but I think everyone is sick of hearing about that one! 

5. What has been your biggest highlight/achievement in business?

Wow, there’s been quite a few over the years and talking to Ray there were so many in the preceding 20 years that some of our older clients in the construction and building services sector will still remember and talk about now.

For me though, I’m very proud of a lot of things that PRG has accomplished over the years. A few that stand out though include delivering a big client acquisition campaign across the UK, France, Germany and Poland for Johnson Controls last year. We’ve worked with various parts of the company for almost 30 years, but this is by far the biggest campaign to date and utilising several of the partner agencies in our network across Europe. We created a specific web presence, promotional videos in four languages which were used on social and in some really fantastic video direct mailers, backed up by some PR and a strong campaign using LinkedIn.

We’ve worked with our friends at the Let’s Do Business Group for many years now, but a highlight of working with them was when we jointly promoted and ran the Let’s Do Business Exhibitions at the Amex Stadium in 2018 and 2019. This became a real PRG team effort and to be involved in putting on a large event like this, at such a high profile venue, was really exciting. Sadly, COVID put paid to the Expo for 2020, but who knows what the future holds.

PRG is proud to be an Eastbourne business, so it gave us great pleasure to create and run a marketing campaign to promote our town in 2006. The Eastbourne Change Your View campaign gained national exposure and challenged the stereotype that Eastbourne is full of blue-rinse pensioners. In my opinion, nothing has ever quite been as successful in subsequent years and it is something we are hugely proud of. We’re very passionate about our town and I’m heavily involved in the Eastbourne Business Improvement District (BID), as well as being a Parent Governor up at Pashley Down Infant School. Most of the PRG team live in the town, so we love seeing our work on show – from the theatre promotional artwork to the branding of Cavendish School, for example.

A final and more personal one for me, as the second generation running the business, I spent years meeting people and hearing “ah, you’re Ray’s son”. Lovely compliment and always a positive, but it takes time to build your own network and identity. It was a wonderful moment for me when, at one of Maxine Reid-Robert’s pre-festive drink events, Ray was introduced to someone who responded “ah, you’re Simon’s father”.  

6. Tell us about some of the clients you have worked with?

One of PRG’s core values is the long-term relationships that we build with our clients. We want to grow and develop with our clients, to build on each other’s success. I’ve already mentioned the work we’ve done with Johnson Controls and the Let’s Do Business Group over many years, which still continues now. Our clients are spread across a host of different sectors, although we have particular specialism in building services, construction and logistics.

We have worked with Eastbourne-based business GoPlasticPallets for over 12 years now, a relationship we value immensely and that is based on continued success and ensuring that we work closely with the team to understand their goals and challenges.

I’m really proud to say that we have been successful in winning the PR account for a leading provider of fire safety and security solutions and services in the UK. This is a huge opportunity for us and one that I’m really excited about, but I can’t say too much more at this stage.

Throughout most of PRG’s 40 years in business, we’ve worked with clients in the heating and ventilation sector, from boiler manufacturers like Vaillant and Ideal Commercial, to the trade associations and sector skills councils in the sector.

Recently, we’ve begun working for a former client again – London-based financial services firm Generation Financial Services. I place the utmost importance on maintaining strong client relationships, even when they cease being clients. We’ve just helped them adjust their brand proposition, launched a new website and are now embarking on an extensive marketing campaign.

Over the years we’ve launched bars and restaurants, run numerous high profile events, had our clients featured in trade and national press in the UK and in multiple countries across the world, developed and marketed websites from small brochure sites to large scale e-commerce and job portals, produced brand identities that are well recognised on a local and regional level and we even launched a range of sex toys on This Morning! Throughout the last 40 years, we’ve proved that we are pretty versatile, but it is a testament to the strength of the PRG team that we have so many exciting and successful clients to look back on.

7. In a competitive market how do you differentiate from other Marketing Agencies?

PR has always been the cornerstone of what we do and I’ve ensured that we’ve maintained this as our service offering has grown. It’s also something that a lot of other full-service agencies don’t tend to offer, or have to reach for outside help, so we really feel this is a big differentiator for us.

We offer all of our core marketing services using our in-house team, so we genuinely do offer a completely integrated service. When servicing a large client, it gives us the flexibility to bring whoever we need onto a Zoom meeting, for example, to get the brief from the client and to deliver a swift turnaround. But there is a high level of accountability for ensuring the quality of delivery, which our clients value immensely.

As mentioned, we’re part of a network of similar agencies across Europe, which gives our clients a broader reach if they wish to stretch the promotion into other territories. Couple that with some translation support from our client Albion Languages and we have all the tools to help our clients tackle new markets.

PRG’s broad range of clients is by design, not accident, and it is due in part to our cost-effective pricing structure. Being based in Eastbourne means that we can compete favourably with London agencies when it comes to pricing, but that we can equally service our valued local clients.

Lastly, I can’t give enough praise to the team at PRG. Their professionalism and levels of creativity really are some of the best and I’m very proud of what they all achieve for us and our clients.

8. Can you give me your top 3 Marketing Tips or advice for our readers?

Without going down to the specifics of a particular marketing service, I would say:

•  Know what you are trying to achieve before you start and understand what success looks like. Have metrics in place to gauge this (such as Google Analytics). If you’ve got no idea, then how will you measure the results or indeed learn what to do differently next time?

•  Consistency is key! Make sure your messaging is consistent throughout all of your communications, and never assume people know who you are and what you do.

•  There are loads of ways to reach your potential customers, so do some research into which channels are likely to reach them. Plenty of people (and agencies) will send you down one path because it either worked for them or it’s what they offer, but you need to know if it’s going to be right for you or if you need an integrated approach.  

9. What does the future hold for PRG?

If you’d asked me this at the start of the year before COVID struck and the world locked down, I’d have rattled off an ambitious plan for growing the business (we’re still doing that actually), engaging with some big blue chip clients (we’ve just done that too) and looking to expand the team (we’re just about to do that). We’re pushing on aggressively but with an air of caution, of course, given we don’t know what is around the corner. But with 40 years’ experience behind us, we are ready for whatever challenges come our way.

Sadly, what we won’t be doing is having a big 40th anniversary party for all of our team and clients, but you can blame Boris for that one! 

10. To finish, as a family man would you like to see your children continue the family business and become the third generation of owners?

I asked my nine year old son Jenson only the other day what he wanted to do when he was older he replied “I want to come and work with you at your office Daddy”. I then asked my seven year old daughter Lara the same question and she replied “a doctor”, or at least that is what she wants to be today; tomorrow it could be a mermaid and him a professional wrestler.

I’d never had a grand plan to take over the family business and my parents never pushed me towards it. But I get a huge amount of pleasure out of running the business with Jo and seeing the PRG family working so hard for the company and our clients. I want my kids to be happy and successful in whatever they choose to do with their lives. I’d tell them that running PRG Marketing Communications can often be hard, challenging and exhausting, but it can also be incredibly rewarding and, more than anything, a lot of fun!

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