Not much gets past the staff at Fleishman-Hillard, who last week
announced a six-figure account win with Britain’s leading stationery
manufacturer UK Paper.
The prospect of F-H sending out press release information on stationery
supplied by a rival producer was a PR disaster waiting to happen.
So what exactly are the chances of it happening? About as thin as a
standard sheet of A4, according to agency chief Barry Leggetter.
The agency has diplomatically ordered sufficient of its new client’s
stationery products to service the account while existing stocks are
being run down. Meanwhile, the firm has asked its stationery suppliers
to switch the agency’s supplies to UK Paper products.
It’s all part of the service, says Leggetter, who says the agency tries,
when it can to back its clients when sourcing its own supplies.
Take for example its work for US brewing group Anheuser-Busch. ‘You will
always see Budweiser in our fridge,’ says Leggetter.
But supporting a client’s products does have its limits.
‘One of the campaigns we recently finished was for the Health Education
Authority, making sure that people who had sex on holiday abroad used
protection. But that didn’t mean that we issued everyone in the office
going away on holiday with condoms.’
Summer holiday condoms? Now that really would be stretching things too
far.
