Practices

• Corporate and financial communications
• Crisis
• Reputation mamagement
• Media relations
• Corporate social responsibility and sponsorship
• Public affairs and lobbying
• Internal communications
• Brand marketing
• Media training
• Event management
• Social media communications

 Corporate and financial communications

Whether you are working to build or enhance your reputation, or clarifying the nuances of a complex transaction to your stakeholders, Mediju Tilts / Burson-Marsteller’s Corporate Communications Practice offers strategic counsel and execution that is aligned with your business objectives – creating an enduring reputation and sustaining corporate value.

The Corporate Practice is built around four specialties:

• Corporate Brand Positioning, 
• CSR and sustainable business leadership, 
• CEO and company’s experts PR,
• Finance PR.

We provide insight and support to a number of themes, including:

Corporate Purpose and Performance – Can corporations evolve and deliver ideas that balance sustainability, responsibility and substance with bottom line performance?

Intangible capital – Building a winning organisation. What does it take to create a superior relationship with the corporation’s workforce and how do you attract, motivate and retain people?

Leadership – Is the leadership team and the CEO well equipped to execute effective communications which move the organization forward?

Financial vitality – Is the corporation making adequate use of its financial tools and resources and are its stakeholders comfortable with this approach?

  

Crisis 

Our 2011 Crisis Preparedness Study found that 65% of business decision makers believe that new media actually make crises more difficult to manage and 66% of respondents believe new media have also significantly increased the potential cost of a crisis.

Previous research has shown that 60% of business decision makers across Europe have experienced a ‘crisis’, and more than half of these have experienced one in the past year. Yet only 53% currently have a crisis plan in place. Of those that do, the bottom line savings have been shown to be significant.

Our offer to support customers in crisis situations provides for the availability of an appropriate crisis expert by phone or e-mail 24 / 7. Analysis and forecasting of potential crisis situations, identification of external factors and subjects provoking crises, simulating their behaviour in the information space and management of arising situations. We are highly experienced in developing crisis communication plans and crisis situation management training.

 Crisis preparedness

• Risk audit
• Evaluating internal crisis procedures and developing new plans as needed, including issues management, 360° stakeholder analysis and engagement
• Crisis training, assessments
• Social media scenario development/testin

During the crisis

• 24 hour / 365 day crisis strategic advisory and operative support
• Strategic research and analysis to solve the problem without delay

Post-crisis recovery

• Brand, reputation or trust capital recovery programs
• 360 degree stakeholder relations and engagement
• Corporate responsibility/CSR programmes
• Environmental affairs
• Change programmes
• Organisational transformation
• Research and analysis

 

Media 

Every PR agency does media relations, but no one does it the way we do.

First of all, we don’t just seek coverage for the sake of it. Stacks of media clips may feel good, but if they don’t shift perceptions and move the needle against your business and communications objectives, they don’t provide value.

Our Evidence-Based methodologies ensure that the media coverage we generate provides real and lasting value to our clients. That’s why clients and industry bodies consistently give us such high marks for our high-impact media campaigns.

Second, we’re systematic in how we cultivate and leverage our senior-level media relationships. That’s why we have on our staff so many former journalists, who really understand how media work.

Finally, we understand how a story travels – across journalists, media, social media and different markets. Using Evidence-Based tools and technologies, we know how to manage a story, so that it goes farther, faster, longer and more efficiently.

  

Corporate social responsibility and sponsorship

Social and environmental issues have become an integral part of long-term business communications strategies. Consumers become increasingly sensitive towards activities of companies in the field of corporate social responsibility. It is known that by joining forces consumers may increase their impact on a company and vote by their purses if they discover unethical activities in the company’s business. With our experience, we can help companies to adapt themselves to new trends, creating corporate social responsibility standards in marketing and media relations.

 

Public affairs and lobbying

We help our clients to understand political system of Latvia and decision making process. Or Public affairs team mainly consists of people who are aware of policy making process and development of political processes in Latvia. As we have well developed cross border cooperation in conjunction with Burson Marsteller's experts in other countries we are able to provide services for cross border projects.

Mediju Tilts/Burson Marsteller offers to client’s analytic overview about regulatory environment and decision making process on regulation issues, as well as issue lobbying process. The cornerstones of successful public affairs and lobbying activities are transparent cooperation with stakeholders and interest groups by means of influencing policy makers.

Our consultants are working transparently; counterparties in governmental institutions should be informed about clients they are representing. Burson Marsteller network is pioneering in transparent and open lobbying principles in EU. Experts of Burson Marsteller are actively participating in development of EU guidelines on transparent lobbying.

 

Internal communications

We help our customers to identify the two most important assets – employee and reputation. The employee is among the strongest news carriers to the outer world, a prism which the news intended for external target audiences goes through, and a magnifying glass through which the credibility of external communication is scrutinised. Your employees are those who implement business strategies, ensure what customers expect from this brand, get in touch with customers, interact with trade unions and social groups, and speak to media and the surrounding social environment about the company they are working for. Finally, your people influence their friends and family members if someone is willing to join your team, buy your product or shares at the stock exchange.

We co-operate with the customer to understand what should be changed in your employee’s attitude and difficulties that may emerge in the process of the attitude change.

We help the customer to develop a strategy to communicate his/her plans and generate a flow of communication over time, while implementing changes.

We help our customers to get their top-level management involved in internal communication processes and develop in management the skills of communicating with the employees, so that they should be ready for processes of changes in the organisation.

We help our customers to implement internal communications program, often in partnership with the existing internal communication team.

 

Brand marketing

Mediju Tilts / Burson-Marsteller’s Brand Marketing Practice understands that brands exist to provide their consumers with memorable experiences and a sense of community.

Companies don’t own brands, people do – and they are engaging more, doing more and acting on their opinions more regarding your brand, beyond just buying your product. They can make things happen at the click of a mouse that will profoundly impact how your brand is perceived anywhere, anytime. For consumers, it’s an unprecedented transfer of power.

Consumers now demand that you understand their needs and treat them as a market of one, not many. They switch off if you simply communicate ‘at’ them; instead, they expect you to engage, one-to-one, through many different but integrated channels. They want your brand to be different, but they also need to trust it absolutely. Trust is the Number 1 driver of brand strength.

Brands are changing too. Segments, products and even geographies that earlier were clearly separated are now moving into each other’s areas of business. There are also simply a lot more brands out there. For our clients, it’s an unprecedented degree of competition.

When developing a brand strategy aimed at business clients and individuals, we can influence the short-term choice in our favour and long-term loyalty to our product. Being involved in creative planning of brand development, we make sure that the brand reaches the target audience and activities give tangible results to customers. Mediju Tilts / Burson-Marsteller’s Brand Marketing Practice has consumers’ surveys and EVIDENCE BASED methodology and competencies that help our clients deal with these changes. We know how different consumers behave and think.

 

Media training

In many global companies top-level public faces undergo annual media training, to refresh and adjust their knowledge to the current situation and sector changes. Media training is significant because a spokesperson can take maximum advantage of the opportunities provided by interviews to get the preferable news across to the target audience. We offer media trainings to both individuals and groups. The contents of a media training we offer to each client are accurately customised according to the customer’s needs and time schedule. The media training  timetable is adjusted to each customer’s working schedule and may be a half-day or a day program, with the possibility of complementing it with some specific issue blocks according to the customer’s needs. 

 

Event management

Our agency has a wide experience of organising events for the needs of our customers, with wide media coverage. We are experienced in organising the following events:

• Press conferences
• Round-table discussions
• Brand launch 
• Opening of corporate objects
• Product launch
• Coprorate events

 

Social media communications

We help our customers to find their way in the rapidly changing Internet-based media environment, to achieve good business results, as well as not to lose competitiveness. We create and develop social media platforms so that our customer could develop communication with his/her clients not only in one direction but also in two-way format. All markets recognise, to different extents, the significance of the Internet, searching systems, blogs, consumer generated media, social networks, mobile news and digital videos, and, what is important, the significance of their development lines. We give our customers the opportunity of choosing the appropriate digital communication tactics, to make it an integral part of the total communication and achieve communication goals in the most successful ways.

We offer:

• Digital communications strategy

• Twitter, Facebook, Draugiem accounts running

• Video releases

• Development of blogs

• Video 2.0

• Twittering

• Digital leadership