Delighted Kathy enjoys coverage every day of the year – thanks to Holyrood PR in Edinburgh

The Holyrood Hotseat series offers quickfire Q&A sessions with the interesting characters who are clients of  our Scottish PR agency. Introducing Kathy Crombie, Marketing Manager at Bield Housing and Care.

BIELD Housing and Care has worked closely with Scottish public relations agency Holyrood PR for three years.

During that time it’s public profile has increased dramatically – and in the past year Bield has enjoyed the equivalent of one item of media coverage every working day.

Key to that success is the PR agency’s relationship with Bield’s marketing manager, Kathy Crombie, who ensures we get access to the right people to maintain a steady diet of positive stories from Bield services around Scotland.

We caught up with Kathy to find out more about her work – scroll down to watch a short video where Kathy outlines her role at Bield and the crucial part our public relations agency has played in raising its profile.

Q. How would you describe your company and its main aim?

We believe there is no age limit on happiness. And getting older does not mean that life should be harder. At Bield we want to make life easier for Scotland’s older people.

We aim to do this by offering a diverse range of high quality housing and care services where older people can be ‘Free to Be’ able to make choices that will enable them to live independent and fulfilling lives.

Our services extend across 23 local authority areas in Scotland.

Q. What are the PR objectives for your business?

We want to let people know what we do and the quality services and choice we can offer older people in Scotland.

Many people don’t realise the range of services we offer for older people – or how far and wide we operate across Scotland. In addition to our extensive range of specialist housing provision, we have been providing care services, including innovative specialist dementia services for more than 25 years; our emergency response centre has been established for almost 30 years and we have been providing factoring services for almost 30 years.

Q. What is your current role?

My current role is Communications and Marketing Manager. It’s a wide ranging role that covers a number of areas: Corporate literature, Newsletters, Website, Intranet, Surveys, Complaints, Marketing, Media Handling and PR, and Fundraising.

It’s a varied role, no two days are the ever the same, but that keeps it interesting.

It might seem a funny mix of areas but a large part is how we communicate and get feedback from people, whether they are existing customers, potential new customers, internal customers such as staff, volunteers and stakeholders.

We use our marketing and media campaigns to promote all that’s good about Bield; letting the wider world know about our housing and care services and what our people are up to.

Q. What has been the highlight of your career so far?

There’s quite a few; such as rebranding, implementing a new complaints procedure, building a new website. But you can’t beat seeing a news story about Bield’s innovative work make headlines or receiving feedback such as Thank You cards from our tenants or their families when you have added value to their lives.

It’s the simple things that can bring so much happiness and knowing I play a part in that is actually a very nice feeling.

Q. How has working with Holyrood PR helped your business? 

Having just viewed the annual coverage report it is amazing to realise that Holyrood PR have managed to achieve one piece of valuable media coverage for Bield equivalent to every day of the last year.

This in itself is fantastic, but when we factor in the help from Holyrood PR with media enquiries and co-ordinating responses to the occasional emergency or crisis situation, it’s a service that we highly value.

Holyrood PR have also assisted us in developing a Social Media and video content presence over the past year – and it has been extremely valuable in augmenting the process of raising awareness of the work of our staff and services.

The saying ‘a picture speaks a thousand words’ is certainly true when you view some of the short videos they have produced and promoted on social media and our website.

For example, one of our tenants who celebrated his milestone 100^th birthday appeared on the BBC thanks to efforts of Holyrood PR – it lovely to see him on national TV and his family were so pleased to have that record. That kind of added value we give to our tenants and their families is invaluable – and it also provide a great means to energise our staff.

Enjoy the benefits of being a Holyrood PR client

We want to work with you and your business so you can enjoy the success of effective public relations like Kathy and Bield. You can call anyone one of our team on 0131 561 2244 or fill in the simple form below and we’ll get straight back to you.