Prohibition

I’m the marketing manager at Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford. The school is 25 years old.

This academic year we wanted to produce a range of thought leadership articles for the next 25 years. We had another agency working on the project, but we had to let them go because they weren’t performing as we needed.

Prohibition has produced social media image assets and animations for us. Our faculty wrote a series of 20 thought leadership articles, and we needed accompanying images and animations to go with them for social media. They’ve also created seven pillar assets. We initially briefed them and explained we wanted to step away slightly from our brand guidelines to be a bit more interesting since it was a new and exciting project and a big milestone. We told them we wanted to veer towards a specific style of imagery where different images are stitched together.

We mainly deal with the owner. We have a project manager, and three team members are popping in and out. In addition, we have meetings with their graphic designer and creative director, and a few people check in to ensure everything is running smoothly.

A few people on our team had been to some webinars they ran during the pandemic lockdown. When this project came to us, another agency was booked for it, but we weren’t happy with their first draft. We remembered Prohibition from the webinars and contacted them. They were happy to help and jumped on it really quickly.

We’ve spent $25,000.

We started working together in December 2021, and our relationship is ongoing. Currently, they’ve started working on another project. We chose them because they did well on the first one.

We contacted them knowing that they’re specialists in higher education marketing. We gave them a quick deadline and turnaround time, and they jumped in and produced something extraordinary. They’ve delivered perfectly on everything. The feedback from everyone around the school has been great — they say it’s creative and nice to look at. It’s a great change from the usual corporate stuff we produce.

They’re excellent. Everything runs on time; we have a spreadsheet to see what they’re working towards. If there are issues, we have a lot of two-way communication. We use email and a Teams channel.

Working with people you get along with is key, and they’re really nice people. The team is creative, and they understand higher education and how to reach its audience, which is vital. Moreover, their work is fantastic. Everyone loves it.

No, they’re doing a great job.

If you’re considering working with them, go for it. It’ll be the best decision you ever make. Also, be open with communication and make sure you set your primary goals. They’ll do everything they can to meet them.

We’re a further education college in England called Calderdale College. The department I work in is the commercial side of the fence. We deliver a lot of government-funded and EU-funded skills development and workforce development programs, and my job title is the sector relationship manager.

We’re seen locally within our district as just a further education college. We needed to be able to communicate what our full offer is to businesses. This is because we work a lot in other districts and within other local authorities throughout England with businesses, but not a lot within our own area.

We asked Prohibition to come up with a strategy for us for an integrated marketing campaign. We had never done anything like this before so we were being guided by their expertise.

We worked with Will (Director), who headed it all up, and Ella (B2B Lead & Account Director). Our team also worked with Victoria (Senior Account Director) and a couple of other team members.

We were given a pot of money to do this piece of work under another project. It was a government EU-funded program. I put a tender out to commission an external marketing agency and Prohibition bid into that. What really stuck out for us was their professionalism, honesty, and the way they communicated what their skill set was. As part of the procurement exercise, I asked each of the people who were tendering to come up with a solution for us and the shortlist of people had to make a pitch.

It was roughly £89,000 (approximately $123,000 USD).

Our ongoing engagement started in July 2020 and was supposed to finish in December 2020, but we extended it for an additional month because we enjoyed working with them and what they were doing. Prohibition is still engaged with us even though the contract has run out. They’re still helping us out now on little bits and bats.

Prohibition took a baseline in the audit as to how many people were visiting our website; for example, how many people were viewing and engaging with any social media that we ran. Then, their team looked at what those figures were at the end of December 2020 and January 2021, and it was blinding. It was exponentially huge. We got so many hits it was ridiculous, as did the different social media platforms.

During our contracted time, we had fortnightly catchups, and they produced a monthly planner for us which was always updated. Prohibition uploaded all of the drafts which they sent us a link. We then went on to look at all the social aspects and videos to give our approval, and ask if they could tweak things so it didn’t overwhelm all of our inboxes.

As a team, they gel. They work brilliantly together and have a heck of a lot of fun together. They like each other and that absolutely shines through. That’s exactly what we’d want and what we need. It feels like there wasn’t any hierarchy within their structure and team. Will was on the calls and was managing the project but we could tell with the interactions between them that it wasn’t hierarchical. What really impressed me more than anything is them as people, a team, and as a company.

No, not from my perspective. We are really happy, and my director was really happy with them too. Prohibition produced their final report as well which was exceedingly helpful and gave us all of the stats and analytics. They put into context what is the industry standard and what’s not, and where we fit within all of that. It was extremely helpful.

Trust them. They know what they’re doing. Take them on board as well because they’ll fly. Different people have different ways of working. Be open and honest because we really liked that they were like part of our team. Other businesses may not like that and may want them more at arm's length. Trust them because they’re really good. I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t think that.

I’m the UK marketing manager for Lansinoh Laboratories UK. We specialize in products for breastfeeding moms.

They manage our PR efforts in the UK. Trying to capture media support, they help us position ourselves as an industry-leading breastfeeding brand.

Over time, their objective was to increase awareness and coverage in key trade and consumer media. They organize product placements, support hub campaign development and activation, and secure comment opportunities.

We worked with an account director and two account executives.

We found them through a Google search of local PR agencies. They pitched several ideas and their suggestions were much better than any other agency that pitched us.

We’ve spent about £50,000 (approximately $70,000 USD).

We started working with them in May 2020 and our partnership is ongoing.

Overall, we’re happy with their services. We tracked their performance by measuring the amount of press coverage we received. They generated seven pages of coverage for us, which is the best result we've seen from any PR agency.

They were very good at meeting deadlines. They also responded quickly to emails. We have very open conversations with them, so they’re very responsive to feedback. Generally, we’re really happy with their work, but if something wasn’t working properly, we would tell them and they would rectify the situation to make sure we have a smooth working relationship.

They understood our brief and our business needs.

They don’t need to change anything to improve our partnership.

If you’re looking for a new partner, make sure you find a PR agency that understands what you’re trying to achieve.

I’m the CEO of Search Laboratory, a digital marketing agency.

We do social media and have in-house PR capabilities, but we needed more of a dedicated specialist to come in and help the profile of the business across a few different areas.

We went to them with a top-level brief of what we wanted to achieve, and they came back to us with a plan. Prohibition is getting us coverage and media opportunities across a range of publications including local, industry, and national media.

We have an account manager. We also work with some junior teammates and the managing director.

They’re a local company and I’d heard good things about them. One of their founders is active in social media and blogging.

The retainer is £3,400 per month (approximately $4,500 USD)

We began working with them in about November 2018, and our engagement is ongoing. It’s in the process of wrapping up.

The measure of success for me is the quality and frequency of placements, which has been exceptional. We’ve worked with other PR agencies in the past, and Prohibition has secured more national and radio coverage than anyone we’ve worked with previously.

I get nothing but glowing reviews from our marketing team who deals with Prohibition directly. I’ve never heard anything bad said about them. We went to their office initially when we were discussing the opportunity, and they’ve also been to our office.

They always have good ideas. They’re constantly coming to us with different ways of doing things, within the scope of our brief, which we wouldn’t have thought of doing ourselves.

No, I have no suggestions.

I’m the marketing manager at Exemplar Health Care. We have 32 nursing homes across England and support adults living with complex needs.

We needed to boost our profile on a local level and also within the health and social care sectors. We wanted to position ourselves as a specialist provider with in-house expertise.

We have a monthly retainer with them. They do our PR when we open a new home and are recruiting for jobs. They also do some stakeholder mapping so that we can start to build those contacts.

There are a couple of people we’re in contact with: Fiona (PR Account Director), who is our account manager, and then Marta (Senior Account Executive), who does the more day-to-day writing and communicating with us.

I started in this role at the beginning of March, and we’ve obviously been on lockdown, so I wasn’t really involved in how my company chose Prohibition.

We spend just over £3,000 (approximately $3,700 USD) per month.

My company began working with Prohibition in January 2020, and it’s ongoing.

It’s been really positive. Compared to the PR agency that we used last time, we've gotten a lot more coverage, especially in the sector press. We’re getting approached to write features for a wide range of magazines and titles. Also, due to the local PR, newspapers are coming to us now and asking for stories.

They’re really efficient at getting back to us and keeping open communication. We have a call with them every two weeks to go through our plans for the next couple of months, and we then agree to timescales between us. They’re always efficient at sticking to those and coming back to us as needed. We communicate via email and phone calls.

From my perspective, the account management is really proactive in finding new opportunities. They seem to have really good contacts with the media. They also provide advice; we’ve had a few crisis communications that they support us with.

The only thing is that we’re still working together around our writing style guide. Obviously, we want our writing to be person-centered and fit with our style. They’ve pretty much nailed it, so that’s something we’re still working through.

Be really clear about who your audience is and what your goals and outcomes need to be from the partnership.