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PRESS RELEASE One of Cornwall's most experienced "spin doctors" - the man behind many a headline for numerous Cornish small and medium sized companies over the years - has made news of his own. Mike Truscott, head of Falmouth-based Westcountry PR Services Ltd, is celebrating his 25th anniversary in the business of promoting firms through editorial coverage in the press and media - "the acceptable face of spin," as he puts it. Mike was formerly on the other side of the fence - as a newspaper staff reporter - but took the plunge in 1984 when he decided to go solo as a freelance journalist and, increasingly, a PR writer. Among his first PR clients, he recalls, were Mike Jordan, still head of Cornish Stairways today, John and Janet Pearce, of Cornish Sheepskin Shops, and the late David Evans, then of Falmouth's Hotel St Michaels and latterly the Falmouth Beach Hotel. But Mike's PR career really took off when, along with so many other up-and-coming Cornish businesses, he benefited from the Peter de Savary "revolution" in the late 1980s. PdS, as he is known, swept into Cornwall with a blizzard of entrepreneurial projects that he set up in double-quick time. Still wearing his journalist's hat, Mike covered a Falmouth Chamber of Commerce meeting where the flamboyant tycoon declared: "Wherever possible, I will use local products and services." The next day, Mike wrote to him explaining that he was in the process of building his own PR business - "so the poor chap could hardly say "no" and I was promptly appointed his PR man in Cornwall!" PdS subsequently moved on, but Mike used this invaluable experience as foundation for the accelerated growth of his own burgeoning business. They say press publicity is the best form of marketing short of word-of-mouth itself - and this was graphically underlined by a Truro company's experiences back in 2001. The day Mike's release for Somarhouse.com appeared in the West Briton, the company took a call from a business with a "highly sensitive" website and internet marketing project, for which they had already received quotes from one American company and one British. They had read the Briton piece, decided Somarhouse.com could supply exactly the sort of thing they wanted, and called them in for discussions. Two months of negotiations later, Somarhouse.com secured a new account initially worth £10,000 - with sky's-the-limit potential for further business thereafter. Equals an initial 5,000 per cent return on a press release that cost just £200! Recalling all too well his own distaste for PR types trying a tad too hard to influence his editorial judgment as a journalist, Mike has stuck rigidly to his policy of "letting my press releases do the talking." He explains: "As a former journalist myself, my principal aim has always been to supply press releases that are appropriately targeted and written as near as possible to the way the editors would want to use them - giving them ready-to-use copy that is accepted for publication on merit alone. "This is essentially about "marrying" two tasks - qualifying as news but at the same time conveying very effectively the client's desired marketing message." Mike's own business - with wife Janet invaluably handling all the books and admin - has gone from strength to strength in an era of greatly increased awareness of the value of "spin." He says: "I find the work endlessly interesting and enjoyable, and it's a great thrill to share the successes of business people seeing themselves in the headlines for all the right reasons!" | |