Welcome to the world of 393

November 2024: 393 is an audience-first PR consultancy for technology brands.

393 is an audience-first PR consultancy for technology brands. We’ve set ourselves up with a set of strong beliefs about why we’re different and how we deliver on what clients need today.

We’ve put an audience-first approach at the heart of what we do. We call it Audience ID – and it’s a commitment to provide unique, robust audience understanding for every client. Ultimately, we want to take the guesswork out of comms, to reach the right audiences in the right way and maximise impact for our clients.

Knowing your audience best

To establish Audience ID from day one, we’ve invested in exclusive research with Censuswide. We spoke to 250 C-level executives – encompassing CEOs, CIOs, CFOs, CMOs and CHROs – to understand their media habits and their attitudes towards where they get their information.

So, what does that look like? Well, illuminating insights on B2B audiences from our research were…

• The average C-suite leader today will spend just 44 minutes consuming media for work-related purposes. That doesn’t leave much time for a brand’s message to cut through – emphasising just how important it is to stay relentlessly focused on what matters to them.
• The Sun is as influential on CFOs’ business decisions as the Financial Times. Likewise, as many CEOs read The Sun as read the FT. Business leaders consume a range of media to understand their own audiences – so they can be reached and influenced in sometimes surprising places.
• C-suites’ favourite type of content is opinion pieces, where they can get informed perspectives on the big issues. That underscores the value of companies defining and externalising their own powerful points of view.
• Out of the C-suite, CIOs are the least likely to read national newspapers for work purposes but the most likely to use LinkedIn – so it’s better to target them by posting there.

Every 393 client has access to the full research findings as part of their engagement with us – with more granular detail on preferred media outlets, favourite business influencers, and top industry events.

Our knowledge of audience attitudes will shape our work and recommendations. And most importantly, it will help us stay focused on what will make the greatest impact for clients.

Crucially, it’s an ongoing commitment we make to every client at no extra cost, as we’re all too aware that media consumption habits and preferences are changing all the time.

The new imperatives for agencies

Crucially, we believe agencies need to rethink old assumptions about their audience. The information ecosystem is in flux and provides us with a constantly moving target. People’s behaviour keeps changing, and new channels and content types keep emerging.

We think that creates a set of imperatives that agencies need to follow to help their clients succeed:

1. Insight – we need to ground all of our work in true audience insight that reflects their priorities and needs, as well as the reality of their consumption habits, content preferences and time pressures. This is an ongoing process to stay close to the people you want to reach and evolve with them.
2. Stories – our ideas, messages and campaigns must stay ruthlessly audience-focused. In our experience, it’s still striking how many organisations look to create stories based on what their competitors are up to, rather than what their audience cares about. Losing that audience focus blunts the commercial value and impact of comms work – ultimately make it harder to justify our return on investment. To deliver on this, we’re backed by the award-winning strategic comms agency, Delphi, providing every brand we work with the perfect blend of thinking and execution.
3. Tools – we need to use the best available technology to support and inspire our work. Through the use of AI and other tools, we can be faster, more efficient and more impactful for clients. These tools can allow us to plan and measure our work, inspire creativity and thinking, and save time in production and design.
4. Focus – we believe an agency built for today’s changing world needs to be radically focused on what matters. There’s less reason than ever – as well as less time and money – for “busy work” or unnecessary admin. Instead, we should be dedicated to getting in front of the people who matter to you, with an emphasis on high performance at all times.

By building your relationship with that audience, and enhancing your reputation with them over time, an agency fit for the modern age can deliver real impact and remarkable results.

Confident you’re reaching your audience?

Is your comms activity not as focused on your audience as it should be? Is it failing to resonate with them?

Are you confident that where you’re getting coverage currently is truly where your audience is spending their time? Or are you going more on a hunch?

Drop us a line and find out how we can help you take the guess work out of your comms.