Mason Williams

We have great relationships with our clients which are built upon trust, professionalism, results and fun.

We are a “full service agency” using a range of communications techniques to achieve just one aim – getting our clients' message to the right audience with the right key messages at the right time.

To achieve this we blog, tweet, use YouTube, Facebook, write press releases, make films or virals, organise press conferences, increase traffic to websites using SEO techniques, phone journalists, watch trends and act on them if they effect our brands.

While we do undertake on-off style events we prefer long term relationships as greater knowledge allows us to produce better campaigns.

We can prove that we are the most efficient, effective way for your brand to spark a reaction.

Mason Williams have been with Hasbro for a very long time and worked with me for over six years. I find them imaginative, exciting, creative and all the team have a “can do” attitude. We have achieved amazing results for many campaigns over the years and long may it continue.

We have worked with Mason Williams for over a year now across a number of different venues and they have proven themselves to be a thoroughly dedicated team. Their enthusiasm knows no bounds and they are committed to delivering results that extend way beyond great media coverage.

Essentially we are (true) story tellers. Effective public relations is a dynamic business with routes to audience changing, it seems, every week.

Whereas it was once fine to choose national, regional or local newspapers, radio and television to tell stories; the picture is much more complicated today. What few agencies have grasped, however, is that buzz words like “social media” or “virals” have not changed the simple truths of communication.

We ensure that the messages we put out on behalf of our clients are true, well presented and of interest. We research the desired audience to understand how they gather information. Then we prepare a form of communication which matches the message to the medium. It’s a lot more work than just putting out a press release – but the rewards are exponentially greater. We might prepare a film to be uploaded to a Facebook site, optimise a client’s website to be more

visible in Google, live stream content from events, tweet, blog – or use any of the other channels used every day by
our audiences.

Getting the message out there is just one part of what we do.

Going back a few steps, we ensure there is a strong strategic case for whatever campaign we develop followed by the development of a creative approach.

The first step in any Mason Williams campaign is to listen VERY carefully to what it is our client wants to achieve. We will intelligently probe until we are sure that we have a forensic understanding. At this stage we will also offer a sanity check if appropriate — is this possible as well as desirable? From this we distil a message that we are confident we can deliver.

At this stage we identify our target audience(s). Who are they? What do they do? How do we touch them at various points in their lives? We often produce a “mood board” which illustrates who we believe is our target and check with the client to ensure we are on the right track. We NEVER think that all coverage is good and we prefer a sniper rifle to a shotgun. In particular we try to understand how the target receives or searches for information. This might be women’s magazines, google, FaceBook, the local radio or a combination of all these channels and many more.

Now that we have the message and we know the people we are talking to we need to create our delivery mechanism. Instinctively we are “anti-stunt.” Not because we don’t see the excitement that a good newsy stunt can generate – we’ve done lots ourselves – but we think that if the entire effort (and budget) goes into a stunt that doesn’t hit the spot because the media don’t go for it, or simply because it’s a busy news day, then there isn’t much left. We prefer to suggest a multi-faceted solution with “lots of legs” so if one element fails all is not lost.

At Mason Williams we work very hard at the implementation stage. Anyone can use social media or press releases to create some buzz; we prefer to talk to our key journalists and develop stories with them. The phone is an underrated tool in modern public relations. As are face to face meetings. We know literally hundreds of journalists across every part of consumer lifestyle media. We rely on their feedback and they trust us to give them strong stories not waste their time with “puffs” of no news value or interest to their audience.

We use sophisticated and independent measuring methods to analyse media worth, reach, key message delivery and will agree an acceptable ROI – typically 10:1. Constant real-time analysis allows us to dynamically modify campaigns that are not meeting the standards we've set and expect.

Did it Make Any Difference? This is the guiding light for everything we do. At every stage in every campaign we constantly ask ourselves this question. In other words if the key desired outcome is added sales of a product, or more participants at an event, we need to ensure that whatever activity any member of the team undertakes is actually geared to this result. There is no real value in acres of media coverage that doesn’t generate to required outcome. DiMAD keeps us focussed and ensure we meet or exceed client expectations.