Words: Ashley Rigg
Published: 10th May 2011
17 agents score national PR hit
Everyone loves a top ten list. It’s easy journalism and readers seem drawn to them, intrigued to see if they agree with the selection.
The latest list in the British national press comes from upmarket broadsheet, the Telegraph.
Its list of top ten retirement destinations makes no mention of the criteria used to make the selections but unusually name drops and links to 17 overseas property firms.
The list is less interesting than the process through which it was compiled.
According to one of our sources, the journalist contacted a number of overseas property PR firms asking them to write a proposal on the best top ten destinations to retire to and then cherry picked his favourites.
Overseas property companies paying for services of a specialist PR firm had a significant advantage as did companies with an already strong brand like Cluttons and Chestertons.
The Telegraph has an affluent audience of older readers and reaches around 1.6 million users a month. Editorial recommendations lend credibility, provide a boost to search engine rankings and usually generate reasonable quality leads.
Monthly retainers for PR firms start at around £1200 a month in the UK. Ironically, it is smaller firms without an established brand that seem to benefit the most from their services.
Companies mentioned in Telegraph top 10 retirement destinations
1. US -
Torcana
2. Barbados -
Cluttons
3. Cyprus -
Limassol Marina,
Leptos Apollo Beach Villas,
Sea Gallery Villas
4. France -
Home Hunts
5. Italy -
Alfa Immobiliari,
Knight Frank
6. Mauritius -
Cluttons
7. South Africa -
Cluttons South Africa, Chestertons South Africa
8. Spain -
Mercers Estate Agents,
Taylor Wimpey Spain
9. Switzerland -
Pure International,
Sotheby’s International Realty
10. Turkey -
Gem Invest,
Yoo Instanbul
View the list here
Source: Global edge
User Comments
Back in 2005/2006 the best property PR agenices could command day rates of anywhere between around £500-£1,000 p/day, but not any more.
We handle all our PR in-house, as its more cost effective and we can provide journalists with information/images quicker than we could going through a middle-man.
I agree PR can get a bad rap and ironically news stories like this one above do not help. Firstly, the above story refers the to journalist as 'her', yet the actual journalist was Christopher Middleton, a vastly experience (and award winning) writer. Also, I doubt he just 'cherry picked' the PR's destinations as this 'source' suggested. It is more likely that he drew upon what I would guess is a wealth of knowledge on international property.
10.05.2011
Lloyd Hughes,
PURE International
£1200 a month? You must be joking mate, you can get a better deal than that nowadays.
As the company enjoying "top spot" in that top ten list, we received 1400 unique hits to our website last weekend (by far our biggest ever) with 75 odd direct enquiries waiting for us on Monday morning.
PR gets a bit of bad press (ironically enough!) but a fair chunk of the money wasted can probably be traced back to property agents and developers not working proactively with their PR agent.
We get more bang for our buck because the top people in the company (i.e. me) talk and plan releases with them regularly.
There´s a bit of life in the PR industry yet!
http://torcana.com/press
Colin Murphy,
Torcana Ltd