Telum Media spoke with Sarah Coligan, Managing Director of Profiler PR in South Australia about the agency. If you would like your agency to be featured in an upcoming Agency Profile, get in touch at alert@telummedia.com

What services does the agency offer?
Public relations, crisis management, sponsorship attraction, engagement and management, long form writing and social media content creation.

What size is the agency?
Profiler PR is a boutique agency that gets big results. We have a team of six consultants across approximately 30 clients ranging in industries as diverse as horse racing to wind farms. We prefer to have only one client in any one category and we work to push those clients to the top in their segment. We are flexible and diverse and our team is dynamic and able to adapt and flex quickly for the benefit of our clients.

Where does your agency have an office?
Dulwich in South Australia, a few kilometres from the CBD.

Do you have a particular area of focus?
Finding the unsung heroes in any industry and working with them and some of the best news writers in the game to bring their stories to life and shine a light on them.

Who is the founder and why did they start the agency?
Sarah Coligan is our founder and MD. She launched Profiler PR in March 2020, as Australia was being introduced to the pandemic! Sarah had been working with an existing client base and founded Profiler PR with a view to looking at individuals in businesses and how to grow the profiles of those business in the media, ultimately for the benefit of the business, but also to drive the profiles of those individuals. The idea that you could build an individual’s profile - put great people and their passions at the centre of the story and, in turn, give their businesses great exposure that resonates with audiences - was the inspiration for Profiler PR.

Tell us about the leadership team
Sarah Coligan, Managing Director: Sarah is passionate about ideas and achieving exceptional communications wins for clients. She brings 27 years of experience into her leadership role - working in senior communication management roles at national companies in three states, and having also managed her own Marketing and PR business over many years with outstanding results, Sarah knows her craft exceptionally well.

Bryan Littlely, Senior PR Consultant: An award-winning journalist with almost 30 years in media and communications, Bryan is committed to producing compelling content and has unrivalled experience and knowledge of South Australia, its media landscape and how the two co-exist. Bryan not only brings years of experience as a senior journalist, but also in media and communications roles across all levels of government.

Pam Peterson, Business Development Executive: Pam has spent almost three decades working in media, sporting, film and retail sectors in Western Australia and South Australia. She has held senior roles with Perth talkback radio station 6PR, the WA Turf Club and is a former Sponsorship Director of the South Australian Jockey Club. Pam’s expertise includes promotions, sponsorship attraction and management and the development of loyalty programmes.

What is next for your agency? What is the five-year goal?
Continue to grow our business and highlight the impact and value of working with positive sponsorship collaborations to drive business profiles. If you can link a company with good sponsorship, it gives them positive PR, drives valuable social media content and gives those operations access to a wider audience that positions them for growth, which is our aim for clients of Profiler PR.

In a sentence, describe your ideal relationship with a journalist
A good relationship with a journalist is one that is based on mutual respect. If you can be as forthright with them as they are going to be with you with respect to deadlines and appetite for the story, then it creates a win-win situation with no time wasted on either end. A great relationship is one where the journalist actively looks to revisit the original story you’ve brought to them, because they see real value in that story for their audience.

Tell us about a campaign you are currently working on or are particularly proud of?
Walk For A Veteran with PTSD, an annual fundraising and awareness walk supporting servicemen and women and emergency service personnel, has grown year-on-year, driven along with the support of the event team and our PR and Sponsorship strategy. Not only has Profiler PR secured this worthy event exceptional media coverage that’s seen the participation rate grow from just three people for the first walk to more than 350 participants, but it also has secured valued sponsorship for the walk, which has created great public relations and media content for a growing number of clients.

To kick off 2021, we secured Walk For A Veteran outstanding coverage with a prominent picture and news article in The Advertiser to promote the partnership between Walk For A Veteran and Spinifex Brewing Co. These stories are usually declined by journos in these competitive times, however our approach secured the client a standout placement, producing a story that saw significant sales results for the brewery, which in turn raised funds for our client. This is when strategic PR is invaluable and what we love achieving with clients.

Any key PR trends your agency is keeping an eye on?
We’re interested in how brands are allocating the time they spend on paid, earned, shared, and owned channels, as marketing and PR lines are more blurred than ever and traditional mass media options are in decline.

What skill sets do you look for in new hires?
Adaptability. Accountability. Creativity. Work ethic. High on the list is a sense of irony and humour, as elements of our jobs in PR can tend towards the ridiculous if viewed objectively. A typical week often comprises stories well suited to an episode of The Office, but we absolutely love it all.