Jayne Ayers
How did Jayne Ayers PR and Marketing Services come about in 1979?
This wasn't a lifestyle choice, but more a question of necessity.
Having not long given birth to my second son and with my husband being made redundant a few weeks after the baby arrived, I had to help bring much needed money into the household to support the family. With little work around at the time, my husband set up a general building company with a colleague, which I helped to market through my business which was then known as Jayne Ayers Administrative Services. It grew into Jayne Ayers PR & Marketing Services as the emphasis of the business changed.
As I write this piece there is a real sense of dèjà vu as, for those of us that were around at that time will remember, this too was a period of recession. At the same time as marketing the building company, I became a double glazing salesperson and helped to set up Anglian Windows in the East Sussex region.
Whilst this is something I would not want to do again, despite being very good at it, I recognize that the hard lessons learnt door knocking, doing local shows, and manning a showroom, helped me to carve out a very individual writing style based on promoting ‘features and benefits’ which focus on customer need! As you can see the early years of my business were spent in a marketing/sales/administrative role, but later I began to appreciate the value of PR and worked with local businesses creating story opportunities to get their names into the local press. It wasn't until 1983 that I stated to work with a local PR agency and discovered the whole industry of technical PR and I have been hooked ever since.
What career would you have taken up had you not worked in PR?
My background is local government as I started working for the London Borough of Southwark in 1970. During my time I spent five years as a part time student obtaining various qualifications which eventually led to me obtain an HNC in Public Administration & Business Studies. I soon climbed the career ladder from a lowly trainee clerical officer to a high grade administrator before leaving Southwark in 1976 to have my first child. In those far off days young mums didn’t seem to think about combining a working career with a family. I suppose that was because we were still under the old regime of a ‘women’s place is in the home’. Not that I minded that. Over the years I have applied for jobs back in this sector but, for whatever reason, never managed to secure the post.
How do you describe the kind of PR work you do?
Niche market and technical. I love getting technical information and converting it into something which the ordinary person can understand - hence where I have been able to score by subtly promoting the ‘features and benefits’ within the text. I have even been given a magazine written in Italian and somehow I have converted the contents into an article despite not understanding a word of this language.
What are the advantages of specializing in PR for niche market manufacturers?
There are pros and cons. When I started I had a wide mix of manufacturers from lots of different industries including vehicle refrigeration, mobility vehicles, electrical cable management, the double glazing industry, tower cranes, crane safety instrumentation and wiring accessories etc. More recently I have concentrated on being a specialist in the lighting and electrical industry. This has worked brilliantly as I have become known as a specialist and have been the major point of contact for the media in this sector, due largely to the nature of the brands I have worked with.
The downside of this approach is now being felt as the market has begun to slide. I am now finding that there is a lack of commitment in this sector and wish that I had maintained a wider spread of work where you were less vulnerable to the shifts in demand.
Give us an idea of your typical day at work?
I am an organised person, which has always enabled me to manage a huge amount of work on my own. Consequently, at the end of each year, I routinely contact the magazines on my mailing list and get them to send me their new features lists. From these I identify the relevant features for each individual client and then formulate monthly editorial feature lists which form the basis of my work load each month. I create editorials for each of my clients to address these features. So a typical day is spent writing editorial features, along with general product editorials, project stories, and managing all aspects of my clients advertising campaigns.
I used to offer a whole range of services from design through to events, but these days I just focus on press communications.
Are web-based media, and social media like Facebook and Twitter, becoming important in your line of work?
This is the million dollar question and one I have yet to work out. It is difficult enough getting our target audience to read trade magazines, so I am not sure that they will have time to read Twitters and Facebook, but who knows!!! I can see these tools working very well in some sectors but remain unconvinced in technical arenas.
However, I am sure that some members of our network group will prove me wrong. And so they should!
What are the things you should and things you should never do when building relationship with a journalist?
I have always recognised my dependence upon editors and other journalists for my business success. Unlike many of my colleagues, I have been able to build up strong and loyal relationships without having to meet in person with these people, but purely by providing them with good editorials and images and keeping in contact via the phone and email. This method has worked well for me. The ‘never do’ is a more difficult question to answer. But I can say that I am not sure that all editors like my approach which is to write an article and send it in without discussion. Most are grateful, but some, I am sure, feel it’s a cheek.
What are the main challenges and opportunities facing the PR industry?
Technology is the main challenge, without any doubt. I think it will only be those people that can think out of the box and adapt their thought processes to address the challenges of these new online communication channels will survive in the future. Some old work horses, like myself, may be able to creak along, but the market will want zany ideas that can have a real impact on the chosen market sector. They will also need to address different mediums as mobile phone and held-held device technology evolves. How this will work within the industrial and manufacturing B2B market sectors is anyone’s guess.
What advice would you have for someone embarking on a PR career interested in working in your area of the industry?
You will have to constantly move with the times and so I would suggest that you connect with industry bodies so that you can always be a font of information to clearly demonstrate that you understand the issues and problems faced by the client in their market sector. For example, for the last five years I have been involved with Profitnet- a knowledge sharing initiative facilitated by the University of Brighton.
This has been really useful as it has given me a real understanding of the issues and problems faced by manufacturing companies. It has enabled me to pass on valuable tips to my clients relating to Government grants etc., which they have found to be most useful. At the same time I have gathered information relating to the latest ideas for marketing, manufacturing and business management.
What do you do to unwind?
I must confess I am a workaholic so I haven’t got much time for hobbies, but I do like a good walk and as I live in the country I can nip into the fields or woods whenever I choose. When I was younger I used to run half marathons, but a back injury put paid to such exercise.
Tell us something interesting about yourself that we couldn’t find on the internet?
Until a few months ago, I had spent over 10 years as a Trustee with the Eastbourne and Wealden branch of the YMCA.
This Christian charity specialises in providing safe havens for homeless young people along with the support and training they need to develop the skills to live independently. This is an amazing charity and the work they do with damaged and dysfunctional youngsters is a real credit to the dedication and hard work of the staff members. It is wonderful to see the positive effect that this organisation has on the young people it serves and to hear the glowing reports from ex-residents as to the way that their lives have been turned around. As an aside, I also take family funeral services. To me it is really important that people should get a good send-off and that their lives should be remembered positively.
Jayne Ayers is director of Jayne Ayers PR and Marketing Services