Interview | 08 Apr 2019

Becoming a thought leader and building brand awareness

Posted in Motivation & inspiration, Learning, Interview, Client,

To achieve a reputation as a thought leader takes time and effort to successfully cultivate. Being recognised as an authority in a particular field, whose expertise and opinion is sought can, in turn, help build your brand awareness.

Trust in your brands leadership, instills trust in your brand, which ultimately means trust in the services or products you offer.

To position and promote yourself as a thought leader,  requires more than a few blog posts and simply sharing your opinion on social media. To ensure you build a following and are seen as the ‘ go to person’ in your industry, bringing in an expert in this field, can help give you the boost you need to position yourself correctly.

This month we talk to Coralie Fernando, Head of Marketing and Communications at Tiger Recruitment on why they have used freelance support to work with their management team, to successfully help them with media coverage as part of their thought leadership campaign to drive brand awareness and to help develop new business.  

Coralie, tell us a little more about Tiger recruitment, your values and your target audience?

Tiger Recruitment is a boutique recruitment consultancy that specialises in matching exceptional support staff to top businesses and private individuals. We work across four divisions – Business Support, Private, Virtual and Hospitality – spread across three offices: London West End, London City and Dubai.

Tiger recruits for a range of positions around the world, including personal assistants, executive assistants, domestic staff, administrators and many more. Our expert consultants only work with high-calibre individuals who offer outstanding business, private, virtual and hospitality support. We have five main values: excellence, positivity, gravitas, integrity and dedication. They guide all our thinking and business decisions and are espoused by the actions of our staff.

We have a range of target audiences! We work with both candidates and clients in the recruitment process, but these will vary depending on the division as well. Our communication needs to appeal to UHNWI hiring for their private household, through to graduates entering the workforce and HR Directors in the City. We are also industry-agnostic, so we work with businesses across professional and financial services, creative, tech and not-for-profit.  

You came to The Work Crowd looking to identify a PR partner to help build brand awareness and develop a thought leadership campaign; what were the key business objectives here?

We were looking for someone who could assist us in generating external interest in the press and position our senior leadership team as thought-leaders in the recruitment space. We wanted to promote Tiger as far and as wide as possible, with the goal of increasing brand awareness and ultimately generating new business.  

You hired Anna, Independent Communications Consultant. Can you discuss why you chose to work with an independent freelancer professional?

We had previously worked with an agency and didn’t feel they adequately understood our needs. At the end of each month, we’d look at the reports and so much of the time was going towards admin and account management, yet there were minimal results.  As a small business, we didn’t require extensive PR support and wanted to focus on the actual press generated, so the workload suited a freelancer. That said, we met with a few options, both agencies and individuals, and Anna was our favourite!

‘Anna has been incredibly easy to work with. She is responsive to our needs but also requires very little guidance to get the job done! We are a growing business, and fully intend to take Anna on this journey with us as we expand into new locations.’

Can you share any results you have had working with Anna to date and what this has meant for the business?

We’ve had some great traction in national and business press, one of which subsequently led to broadcast national TV. We’ve found that the more press we secure through Anna, the more likely we are to be approached by others looking for comment. This has meant that we’ve been able to successfully improve our leadership team’s visibility as thought-leaders in our space. Some of their appearances have also resulted in new business.  

If you’d like to develop thought leadership for yourself or your senior leadership team, feel free to get in touch with us at 0203 828 8440 or drop us a line at hello@theworkcrowd.com