Case Study: Aker Solutions

Challenge

Aker Solutions, a leading global oil services company that provides engineering services, technologies, product solutions and field-life solutions for the oil and gas industry world-wide, were looking to make a big announcement around domestic investment in the UK.

Managing the flow of information to maximise coverage is always difficult, but even more so when there are a number of announcements on the same story coming from other parties, including the UK government. Our biggest challenge was managing the news flow to make sure Aker Solutions’ voice had cut through so that the coverage delivered on its objectives and raised awareness of the company’s significant UK presence and on-going investment.

We needed an outreach plan that maximised potential, but also had flexible contingencies in case information was released to the media ahead of time by other interested parties. We also needed to ensure that the announcement had strong messaging that stood out from the rest of the announcements going out at the same time.

Solution

With any big announcement, making sure you have the right targets is key, as well as having a good strategy in place.

In a very short period of time, we created an outreach plan that showed our commitment both to understanding the business and the news story that Aker Solutions wanted to tell. While Aker Solutions has a big profile throughout Europe, it is less well-known within the UK, so we started by identifying the key media that would be interested in this announcement and then planned a dual strategy.

The first stage of outreach was an announcement to the national media, closely followed by a wider broadcast engagement strategy. The biggest focus was on making sure that we timed the announcement carefully with a view to building the news, story rather than trying to compete with the Government statement for share of voice.

Beyond making the announcement and following up with key media, we also worked to secure high-level broadcast interviews so Aker Solutions could engage with key stakeholders to provide clear cut messages around the announcement. We provided media training to the spokesperson to ensure that messages were clear and concise, and that broadcast opportunities were used to their maximum potential.