Challenge
How to you make tax planning and VAT work interesting?
With 125 years of pedigree as independent chartered accountants, the team at Chiene+Tait love their work and wanted to ensure a wider audience knew about their passion and expertise.
Despite its long history, the company had never used PR and was sceptical about possible results.
With more than 100 staff, it specialises in taxation, VAT, compliance and audit assurance. The company is particularly renowned for its discretion in private client work and expertise in rural and estate management issues.
However, the defection of a senior partner to a rival firm, had spooked the remaining partners at Chiene+Tait, who wanted to do everything possible to retain key private clients.
Objectives
Working with Chiene+Tait’s leadership team, we agreed a specific, targeted and timely three-month
- A three-month PR campaign was conceived to:
Showcase the company’s pedigree in tax planning - Highlight the credentials of senior tax partner Helen Mackenzie
- Target the rural, farming and estate media
- Reach mainstream business titles
So we conceived a three-month campaign to showcase the company’s pedigree, as well as the credentials of senior tax partner Helen Mackenzie, pictured, while cutting through with both business writers and the niche media serving rural communities and businesss.
What we did
Recognising that tax planning is often considered an unpleasant chore, we knew it would be crucial to engage the attention of the audience with lively, people-focused stories.
We concentrated on a number of clear themes, allowing us to deploy interesting case studies. These included:
- A look at the main points for farmers in self-assessment tax returns
- An explanation of the tax pitfalls of auctioning family heirlooms
- A guide to the tax burdens of owning ‘heritage’ properties
- Explaining the windfalls available by investing in forestry syndicates
Each story was individually and personally pitched to target media, resulting in extensive coverage for the firm in specialist trade press, as well as national UK and Scottish media.
The coverage which flooded in covered titles as diverse as the Sunday Telegraph, The Scotsman, Total Investor, Intelligent Investor and Scottish Field