Katie Perrior, a founder of iNHouse PR, kindly agreed to be interviewed by Marketing Statements. During this interview Katie describes how iNHouse PR transformed the public’s perception of Boris Johnson, which ultimately led to him being elected as Mayor of London.
JP. As a leader of a major transformation, “Boris Johnson” and the public’s perception of him, what did you find to be the biggest challenge?
KP. The fact that the public knew him was a great strength for us because we had a head start, but they already knew him as one character – a comedian and an entertainer – and this was our biggest weakness as well as our biggest strength. We had to build on the strength, he could get invited onto programmes, the platform was open for us, but we needed to dampen the weakness by pointing out that this was a serious man and he was serious about his aims and objectives and he wants you to be serious about him as the next Mayor of London. That took some real work and actually not just with the journalists but also with Boris himself because occasionally he flipped back into entertainment mode and we had to pull him aside and say “hang on a minute you’ve changed”.
He has an exceptional brain and is a very intelligent and talented man. What he does very cleverly is that he will go somewhere and he will say to someone “I don’t know about this can you explain it to me?”…He always listened and I have worked for a lot of politicians who didn’t.
Word of mouth is the best and worst form of marketing…everyone makes mistakes, everyone messes up but it is the way you deal with a crisis that counts.
There were things about Boris that I liked and didn’t like, but I was so grateful for the opportunity that we had. Although we are no longer working with him I still believe that he is doing a great job and I will always promote him positively, I will always sing his praises. There is a lot to do and a long way to go but it is very difficult to change the environment that he is in and I think he is doing a great job and I am very proud of him.
When running a campaign it is very easy to get caught up in political minutia, people would often drill us about the facts and figures of things and I would have to say “stop, stand back are we not doing everything we hate about politics?” Let’s forget about that and go back to the things that people care about, which is services that are on time, efficient, clean, safe and a good price. People don’t believe percentages and numbers.
This is not a complicated business it is common sense but people get themselves in a pickle and too bogged down with detail.
I encourage our clients not to use notes, only a prompt card with the 3 points on it, so that they will stick to those and talk around them and not get annoyed that they have missed things they wanted to talk about out.
JP. With Boris, people had a perceived idea about him and you changed that so dramatically.
KP. Yes and now he has the best of both worlds because he has learned that if you want to be taken seriously and you want to take peoples issues seriously, you have to be serious and by that I mean the way you act, the way you dress, the way you talk to them and the way you get back to those people about their concerns. However, he can break the ice start the conversation with old Boris. He has learned that he has this talent and learned to use it.
We had to explain to him that people might like you but have they got confidence in your running their city and are they going to vote for you?
That is the difference and the transformation we had to make. We did that by making sure he was wearing the right clothes, nothing grand just smart. Making sure he wasn’t wearing something ridiculous to go jogging in! Every morning we used to make sure that he left the house looking presentable with a manifesto tucked under his arm…the amount press we got that said, “Boris is off to work to prepare to be Mayor”. It is sometime the small things not the big things that people remember. It made people think; he is a determined chap, he isn’t messing around anymore. Every time he was snapped with a manifesto under his arm the hits on the website to download it went up. We got more people reading our prepared information because he presented himself in a more professional manner.
We had no budget at first Boris even put his money in to begin with so we had to think creatively. You were not allowed to put political advertising on London taxi’s but something we did was to get Boris to go the cabbies breakfast cafes and talk to 500 of them – most were in favour of him. We designed and printed 50,000 booklets of taxi receipts with Vote Boris printed on the back and distributed these to the taxi drivers to hand out to customers, which they did, in fact I was given one!
JP. How many ides do you take from other companies that have transformed themselves?
KP. We don’t reinvent the wheel but it is hard to say exactly which ones, the taxi receipt idea came to me when I was given a receipt with Tiffany advertising on the back. We looked at pledge cards, everything that Boris stood for printed on a credit card size card, these were very popular. We were inspired and influenced by Obama’s amazing website. We used Facebook and Twitter for young people to associate themselves with Boris, not necessarily the Tories, as a lot of them were not interested in politics per se but wanted to show their support for him. This support was huge and we were toppling the amount of hits Sarkozy and various senators in America got on Facebook and we would celebrate whom we toppled each week. It was the students who were in charge of putting together our poll and it was their job to increase membership of younger people, it became like a game for them and one that delivered us a huge amount of people…The internet as a tool is exceptionally powerful and we used it to maximum effect.
JP. It is interesting how you celebrated internally and externally to keep the momentum and celebrated throughout…
KP. I learnt a lot from Lynton Crosby, the Australian strategist that masterminded Boris’s campaign, about keeping the momentum going internally. We knew how to manage a campaign, manage a brand but we learnt a lot about motivational techniques.
JP. It went beyond a job, it was an emotional journey, how did that feel?
KP. I believed from the beginning he would win, and I was in it to win. We were ridiculed for being women and told that it was the hardest job in politics that we had taken on. No one told us that we could do it or good luck, they thought we were silly women who couldn’t attract anyone else, but it was Boris’s choice, as it was his campaign, and we told him exactly what we wanted to do for him and we delivered in the end, although there were times when it was demoralising…It was personal and we wanted to prove everyone wrong.
JP. It was realising a vision, being determined and putting energy into the campaign that got you there?
KP. It is very easy to get distracted on campaigns, and I have looked at campaigns and thought at what point did they go wrong? It is when you get distracted by your opposition, or a path that people want you to go down or a row that is taking place, you loose your focus and waste weeks.
The most important thing was to stay focussed. You have an aim and an objective and no one will steer you off your route, there may be hiccups on the way but you keep heading towards that goal. The success of the campaign was Boris himself, who really was and is a focused guy.
We worked at a minute-by-minute basis, not even hour by hour. PR is only as good as the people behind it, and our research team were exceptional.
A lot of people thought we went to work at City Hall but we didn’t want to work in local government and didn’t want to sell the business and give everything we had worked so hard to build.
The feedback during conference season was really fantastic and the same people who were so negative were giving us their cards telling us to call them.
JP. What is next for iNHouse PR?
KP. We represent both Labour and Tory and are very well placed for the next election. Growth areas are places that are not in our comfort zones and we have brought new people with different expertise to our own. Energy, waste and environment are interesting sectors for us, how we get rid of our waste, how we divvy up our recycling. A lot of our work at the moment is taking advantage of the recession, job markets etc.
In every downside you have to look for the opportunity.
JP. Thank you Katie, change is cyclical and as we say on our site – recession threat or opportunity?
Katie Perrior is a Founder of iNHouse PR – http://www.inhouse-pr.co.uk
To arrange a meeting with Marketing Statements, please contact Jenny Patterson on 07957 473 270/020 8983 3984 or jenny.patterson@marketingstatements.com
