Telum is looking to highlight the diverse and vibrant agencies in the Australian and NZ PR and communications landscape in upcoming editions of our PR Alert. We want to encourage networking, business opportunities, and to celebrate the great initiatives being worked on. If you'd like your agency to feature, get in touch at alert@telummedia.com

In this edition, we look at Clear Hayes Consulting. Founded by Alex Hayes in 2017 after several years leading editorial and events at media and marketing publications, Clear Hayes Consulting now has offices in Sydney and Auckland, with a presence in Queensland.

What services does the agency offer?
We’re very proud to be a specialist agency that offers a wide spectrum of services across the APAC region. We know that sounds a little weird, but we’ve chosen to specialise in a vertical - media and marketing - and offer a channel agnostic approach to client briefs, looking at everything from your traditional PR outputs to video series, white papers, global trends reports, web experiences, webinars and events, as well as offer display advertising creation and media buying. We call it marketing to marketers.

What size is the agency?
We’re small but mighty. We started as a small team with big ideas, and we’ve now got ambitions to expand into new markets. 2021 saw us break into New Zealand, where we’ve already had success securing some new clients.

Where does your agency have offices?
The company is currently headquartered in Sydney, with our New Zealand office based in Auckland. We also have boots on the ground in Queensland, and we are expanding into Singapore in early 2022 with a physical presence.

Who is the founder and why did they start the agency?
Alex Hayes founded Clear Hayes after leaving Mumbrella, where he’d been editor and then overseen the creation of the paid content division, and was in charge of events. It was based on the insight that while so many media companies are marketing to the most sophisticated audience in the world - marketers, most are very poor at doing it. So, we’ve maintained an editorial approach to our work, putting the audience first and understanding how client needs can fit into that. Our mantra is simple: “B2B doesn’t have to be boring”.

What is next for your agency? What is the five-year goal?
Our aim is to create business-moving work for our clients, scaling this across different territories as we go. We’re fortunate to work with multinational companies who are already seeing the benefit of our unique approach and perspectives and leaning into us for global work. We want to leverage this to get a foothold in other relevant markets and build the business that way. An Australian-headquartered, global business.

In a sentence, describe your ideal relationship with a journalist.
A relationship with the media should be mutually beneficial. We’re very conscious of understanding what audiences are looking for and how we can help educate them on industry hot topics, as well as what journalists want and their individual topic areas or beats. Before reaching out, learn what kinds of stories they're interested in and how they like to be approached. Showing that you know their audience and that you care about their interests is crucial.

Tell us about a campaign you are currently working on or are particularly proud of.
There are a couple of campaigns which stand out. One is the Face 2 Face podcast for Facebook, which was named AdWeek’s inaugural Marketing Podcast of the Year in 2019. That series created incredible results and we’re working on a follow-up as we speak, so watch this space.

Another is a recent webinar we created for Outbrain. It was for a select, invite-only audience, and to ensure they turned up we supplied them with a luxurious cocktail-making kit, which was locked with a combination code only revealed when the event was underway! We partnered with Fever-Tree to bring in a top mixologist to shake things up mid-event, and nearly every attendee hung on the call afterwards to chat more - unheard of in a webinar-fatigued world.

It helped Outbrain create new relationships and delivered a direct 10x return on investment.

Any key PR trends your agency is keeping an eye on?
We’re in the business of trend spotting - we create the Advertising Week Global Trends Report every year among other things. What we’re seeing is PR moving more confidently centre-stage, and reclaiming some of the ground it’s lost to gimmicky advertising stunts masquerading as PR.

The best PR professionals are at the heart of business strategy, because they understand their client’s business on a level most in the marketing function never get to.

We’ll also see a more measured approach this year to talking about social good and some of the claims coming from certain businesses. That’s more a function of the increasing scrutiny coming from consumers, who are growing more aware of when a business is walking the walk versus talking about things it has no background in.

What skill sets do you look for in new hires?
Proactive is our word of 2022. We like independent thinkers capable of spotting an opportunity and jumping on it, an attitude of "it’s up to me to make it happen", which involves rolling your sleeves up across all aspects of our business to ensure client delivery.

Be an excellent communicator - although that goes without saying…

And culture is incredibly important to us. We might have people working across the globe, but it’s really important everyone contributes to the team atmosphere.

In fact, we’re currently looking to fill a couple of new roles in PR and Editorial including an Account Executive, Content Creator / Strategist and PM. Get in touch with our Managing Consultant, Jonelle Lawrence, at jobs@clearhayes.com