To his surprise, when Benjamin announced his intention to depart, his assistant and two of his key clients had sufficient faith in his new venture to choose to follow him. One of the clients offered short-term office space within their London HQ, citing his presence on-site as beneficial to them, whilst fully accepting that he would have responsi- bilities to other clients.
With a significant portion of his start-up costs reduced through this provision of an office space, Benjamin borrowed money from family and friends to cover initial IT hardware costs. He had previously self- funded the incorporation of the firm and the registering of its domain name and setting up of e-mail accounts.
In an industry reliant upon regularity of communication and visibility of profile it was vital that the transition from old to new company did not lead to Benjamin appearing to have fallen off the radar screen.
Therefore, as soon as he was released from all contractual obligations to his previous firm and in spite of the stress and logistical nightmares that it entailed, Benjamin briefed his media and business contacts, providing an honest and precise clarification of what he was up to, and the ethos which underpinned his new venture. The supportive responses from journalists and would-be clients alike were his first clear indication that his new venture might have the substance to match its style.
However solid and popular the Deliberate PR business concept was proving, in the early days of the company the pressures of such a rapid set-up coupled with a professional (and personal) responsibility to service his two loyal clients meant that Benjamin found himself encountering potentially serious problems that are familiar to many setting up businesses from scratch. For reasons of financial expe- diency and limited research time, Benjamin appointed an accountant who performed below par, and had to be dropped. He also found himself deluged with new business leads, often from well- meaning friends, which, out of politeness, he felt compelled to follow- up. This activity consumed valuable time which should have been used to shore up the company infrastructure and was lost instead on interesting, yet fruitless, meetings.
Benjamin found two kinds of potential contracts placed enticingly in front of him: either for clients who offered vast sums but held wholly unrealistic expectations and did not warrant a news profile; or clients who were a genuinely newsworthy proposition but pleaded poverty, and offered fees that would not even cover costs. Both options were tempting to a new business owner keen to acquire clients, but Benjamin realized that these would prove counter-productive in the long term, and it was far better to hold out for the right clients, and devise effective ways to obtain them.
Throughout late Spring and early Summer 2007, Benjamin used social networking sites to obtain interns to carry out basic adminis- trative tasks who, whilst unpaid, were happy to work in a small start-up where they would derive greater experience than in a larger agency’s conventional internship scheme.
Benjamin also sought the advice of leading figures in the industry, resorting to devious means of bypassing their PAs so as to have the opportunity to convince them over the phone about the merits of a
meeting. The lessons that Benjamin learned from subsequent meetings were that the elder statesmen and women in his industry liked his news-focused method, had wry respect for his gall in approaching them, and were prepared to give advice and pass potential clients to him that were for them (comparatively) small fry.
With more clients coming in, Benjamin was able to expand the business cautiously by taking on more staff. Through much trial and occasional error, Benjamin was able to develop an internal structure that allowed for the satisfactory servicing of existing clients and for the reintroduction of the news-focused method of obtaining new business that had shown such promise at the old company. After a detailed monitoring of the morning’s newspapers by Benjamin and his staff, companies were approached in direct response to news develop- ments of the day that were relevant to them, their competitors, or their sectors. Such a topical method worked far better than the traditional cold call, as it seized the imagination of the potential client and, more often than not, revealed their inability to deal with news stories – justi- fying the trial appointment of Deliberate PR.
The biggest break of the late summer came with the appointment of Deliberate PR to handle the promotion of Dancing With The Bear, a business biography and how-to guide to making millions in Russia penned by the serial entrepreneur Roger Shashoua. The free reign given by Shashoua in the promotion of the book allowed Deliberate PR to have the opportunity to demonstrate its full capacity for lateral, news agenda-setting thought. By the time of the book’s publication, Deliberate PR had made international headlines for Dancing With The Bearthrough inventive angles. These included securing $3 million worth of stones from a leading diamond company in order to creative a special ‘oligarch cover’ for the book, and persuading a leading Russian bar in the City to mark the publication by naming a range of cocktails after Russian companies trading on the London stock exchange, their alcohol content varying on a weekly basis according to share prices. As intended, these initiatives proved a catalyst for major profiles of Roger Shashoua across the business media.
The work for Dancing With The Bear came to form a case study document that encapsulated the Deliberate PR method, and was subsequently used in pitching for new business. It was a contributory factor in Deliberate PR’s securing in 2008 of the accounts for HarperCollins and The Hay Literary Festival. In turn, the work on Dancing With The Bearattracted the interest of the media industry as a whole,
and in late 2007, Benjamin was cited as one of the ‘29 under 29’ most significant PR operators by PR Week magazine. In June 2008, The Independentnamed Benjamin in its list of 100 most significant indi- viduals at work within the creative industries.
The first business, Legend Press, started as a one man business when the talented owner secured grants to support his business concept and self-evident drive. The second company, Business Bump (Maternity Care), is more complex, involving the design and subcontracted manufacture of product, distribution channels, consumer marketing, customer care and the management of inventory. Business Bump also required start-up finance after its initial self-funded phase and a relatively high degree of risk. By contrast, Deliberate PR was a breakaway start-up from a previous business by its founder whose lateral thinking generated a concept that was incompatible with conventional practice.