How Gold award-winning campaign from this PR agency was taught at a top Scottish university

NUGGETS of Scottish wisdom are brilliant and among the most pithy is this belter which sums up the power of learning – feed yer heid.

When it comes to ongoing learning, we’re big fans at Holyrood PR. One of our favourite sayings is that every day is a school day and we show our commitment to this in many ways.

Not only do we feed our own heids through continuous professional development (CPD), but we also try to put something back, by taking on an aspiring young communicator to work with us every month.

So, we were chuffed to bits when we discovered that our work was helping to educate the next generation of public relations professionals at one of Scotland’s oldest and finest seats of learning.

Yup, one of our award-winning PR campaigns has been on the syllabus for post-graduate PR students at Stirling University. While our work for rocket company Skyrora is a source of pride, discovering that it’s helping to feed the heids of talented young people left us absolutely beaming.

So, just how was it that our PR efforts on behalf of Scotland’s leading space race company came to be a study subject for the brightest and the best on Stirling’s Post Graduate course in Strategic Public Relations and Communication Management?

After winning Gold at the annual Chartered Institute of Public Relations PRide awards in 2019, our campaign caught the eye of university lecturer, Grant Thoms – and he knew it would be perfect to help teach students.

Grant told us: “I tend to use CIPR Pride and Excellence award citations as case studies for students to use in exploring important concepts.

“In Skyora’s case, a group had referred to the company in another context and that led me to look into who they were. When I googled them, your citation came up in the hits.”

Grant then used our case study to help demonstrate the vital importance of PR measurement. This might be where those of you are who not PR geeks start to switch off. However, all this means is that PR agencies should always strive to show clients how our work delivers real and tangible business results for them.

In simple terms, PR work should be measurable and properly evaluated (did we mention that we’re the only PR agency in Scotland to have won the CIPR’s Gold Award for Measurement and Evaluation?)

The reality is that PR measurement can often be more complicated than it sounds. That’s where the International Association for Measurement and Evaluation in Communication (AMEC) comes in – pushing for PR practitioners to uphold the highest standards.

Back to Grant. To make lectures lively and engaging he is constantly looking for ways to catch the attention of students while helping them learn about AMEC’s framework. What better way to do that than to use real-world case studies to bring to life the subject of measurement and evaluation?

That’s how our case study about delivering mammoth PR success for a rocket company came to be analysed by his students. They got the chance to run the rule over our real-world work and results and benchmark how closely it adhered to AMEC principles.

Grant added: “It is used as an example for students to critique against industry standards to identify those parts that meet the framework and where would they identify gaps which the framework would expect to see.

“Now, we know that what you put into an award application is writing for the judges and they may not be fully signed up to the AMEC model but they won’t be far off it.”

The all-important question is: did it work? Well, we’d venture that it did, because it led directly to talented student Niamh Coffey applying for our one-month graduate placement scheme (she’ll be joining us in February 2021).

At her interview she revealed how she’d studied our Skyrora work in vital module, comparing it against the AMEC framework. She was part of a team which took a deep dive into it, looking at objectives, implementation and measurement.

Niamh added: “When it had all been put together, we relayed back to the class in the following tutorial and had a short class discussion on how we got on. It was a really good way to understand how a great campaign is carried out step by step, at the same time as learning evaluation techniques.”

Needless to say, the entire team at Holyrood PR is chuffed to bits that our work is helping to teach and inspire the next generation of young communicators.

However, any business can also be inspired by our Skyrora case study. It can give confidence to any potential PR client that public relations delivers massive reach and success. Indeed, the judges who awarded it a Gold PRide award said:

“This was a campaign with PR at its heart. Through storytelling and expert counsel, Holyrood PR elevated Skyrora and its profile, not just in Scotland but across the UK. The exceptional results translated into real new business leads and impacted on the bottom line.”

Isn’t it time you treated your business to the outstanding results and value delivered by a top Scottish PR agency?

We’d love to hear about the opportunities and challenges for your business – and show how PR can help. Getting in touch couldn’t be easier. Phone us on 0131 561 2244, or take seconds to fill and submit the simple form below and we’ll get straight back to you.