11August/September 2005 CorpComms

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10 CorpComms August/September 2005

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Egg-citingat thetop

Helen Dunne talks to the young and dynamic headof corporate communications at online bank Egg

When Emma Byrne, director ofcorporate communications atonline bank Egg, read the

thousandth headline containing theword ‘cracking’, she sent a bottle ofChampagne to the hapless reporter.

Five years into the job, Byrne, 35,has scrambled her way through everypossible Egg-related pun but, withtypical good humour, remains amusedby the game. ‘The name got us talkedabout and symbolises our fresh approachto banking,’ she explains.

Headhunted from Weber Shandwickfive years ago, Byrne was excited by theprospect of Egg. ‘The obfuscation andlack of transparency in the UK bankingmarket is outrageous,’ she says. ‘It canbe made so much easier. The prospectof helping that process won me over.’

Egg, which is 79 percent ownedby Prudential, launched with a creditcard offering 0 percent interest onpurchases and balance transfers. It wasrevolutionary. Today 83 providers offersimilar deals. ‘It was quite difficult toexplain initially,’ she admits. A seriesof groundbreaking humorous TV adverts

helped; some even assumed cult status among students.Egg is passionate about educating customers on improving

their financial circumstances, working closely with consumergroups and the influential Treasury Select Committee. It wasthe bank’s evidence to the committee that precipitated achange in how credit card companies disclose their charges.

Byrne has always enjoyed championing underdogs. Morethan ten years ago, she persuaded businesses to invest introuble-torn Belfast; later she took on former client Ikea‘because it meant everybody could afford a stylish home.’

Today Egg has more than 3 mn customers, and Byrne andher five-man team have won almost every award available.Shortly after joining, she fired Egg’s external agencies,earning the sobriquet ‘Bin ‘em Byrne’.

‘My view is that I won’t hire somebody to answer the phoneand pass a message on to the chief executive,’ she explains.‘We all need to understand the business inside out, andrepresent that to the media. An external PR can rarely getthat close and keep up with the pace of change.’ Byrne –a member of the executive committee, just below boardlevel – reports directly to CEO Paul Gratton.

Rumours persist that Prudential will sell Egg. ‘About 2,500employees work for us; we have to be open and frank withthem and as reassuring as possible, as well as working withinthe reality of City regulations,’ Byrne says. ‘The last 18 monthshave been challenging.’ And egg-citing! �

helen@corpcommsmagazine.com

‘The obfuscation andlack of transparency inthe UK banking marketis outrageous. It can bemade so much easier’

Rosie Murray-West meets Ros Freeborn, head of communications at Jeans for Genes, and learns about her quest to ‘denimise’ the world

For Ros Freeborn, every day is dress-down Friday; she is the head of communications at Jeans for Genes, the charity that raises money for genetic disease research by

organising the ultimate ‘mufti day’. As we speak, just before the annual Jeans for Genes day on October 5, Freeborn’s life is becoming increasingly manic. ‘It is like being a sheepdog,’ she says. ‘My job is to keep everything going in the same direction. There are only nine of us here, with so much to do.’

Jeans for Genes is a collaboration between four genetic disease charities, including Great Ormond Street Hospital, and last year it raised £3 mn for research and help for affected families. This year, Freeborn explains, she is encouraging the public to ‘get denimised’ and pay a couple of pounds for the privilege of wearing jeans to work.

She has been working on a massive marketing campaign, and has spent the week doing trial jeans f ittings on a number of somewhat unresponsive subjects. ‘We are putting jeans on iconic statues around the country to advertise the day,’ she explains, because this provides visual images that are easy to sell to newspapers, magazines and even radio stations.

This year, the statue of the trader in London’s Walbrook Street will be sporting a natty pair of jeans held up by braces, while in Coventry, the famously naked Lady Godiva will be clothed for the f irst time in a long denim cloak.

‘We have to keep the message very simple, but it needs to be refreshed every year,’ Freeborn says. ‘It is looking good for this year. These things are visually quite quirky.’

For Jeans for Genes, the communications and marketing challenge is clear. The charity must compete with other well-known causes for money and attention from schools and work-places. Genetic diseases are harder to explain than other diseases, such as cancer, and yet they are surprisingly common.

‘There is a huge spectrum of genetic disease, everything from a squint or a cleft lip to something like cystic f ibrosis, for which there is no known cure,’ points out Freeborn. ‘It is very

hard to put the message across about every facet of genetic disease, and yet it affects one in every 33 babies.’

Target practice Part of the marketing strategy is to target specific employees in workplaces around the country. ‘There are always those who make sure the collecting tin is taken round and the money collected,’ Freeborn explains.

The charity sends out packs to these people in August to explain the theme of the next Jeans for Genes day, and takes adverts in national newspapers and workplace magazines running up to the day. ‘We ring up and ask whether they have any spare space to slot in our pre-prepared advertisements,’ Freeborn says. ‘That has been very successful.’

The charity’s roots are in the nation’s schools, however, and this is still a massive part of its marketing. Jeans for Genes started over a decade ago when a school in the West Country held a dress-down day to raise funds for a child with a genetic disorder, and the charity has grown from there. ‘Eighty percent of schools are aware of Jeans for Genes, and it is incredibly popular with teachers,’ Freeborn says.

This is hardly surprising: unlike some other charitable days, which can be about throwing custard pies at staff, Jeans for Genes has a serious educational

In-jean-ious

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21October 2007 CorpComms

‘Jeans for Genes

is incredibly popular

with teachers’

Photography: www.charlesshearn.com

Helen Dunne meets Christina Rebollo, head of PR at uSwitch, and learns about passion and campaigning media

Christina Rebollo is no stranger to switching. Born in Madrid, the 30-year-old head of PR at price comparison website uSwitch spent her early life in a succession of

different countries. ‘My father worked for IBM on some of the f irst internet projects, and we moved every three to four years,’ Rebollo explains. ‘But I moved to the UK 12 years ago to attend London University, and I’ve been here ever since.’

When Rebollo graduated with her degree in computing (to please her father) and French (to satisfy her love of literature), she knew what she didn’t want to do – but not what she did. Her f irst job was in the marketing department of accountancy giant Deloitte, before joining the credit cards business at Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).

‘I realised what I liked most about my job at Deloitte was PR,’ Rebollo recalls. ‘RBS was a fantastic opportunity because it was purely PR, and the credit cards business is huge. We used to say that it was bigger than Boots and McDonald’s.’

Such was its importance within the banking group that the cards business had its own autonomous PR team and agency. ‘We were allowed to be creative,’ says Rebollo. ‘But you also spend about 60 percent of your time within a big bank just f ighting f ires. There are dozens of customer complaints every week that the media ring up about; you are always defending and reacting. It is true crisis management.’

Although Rebollo stayed with RBS for more than four years, she began to feel uncomfortable about the way high street banks operate. ‘At the time there was a lot of public discussion about consumer over-indebtedness and responsible lending,’ she explains. ‘RBS is an incredible organisation that treats staff extremely well, but banks are there to generate as much profit as possible from customers. I needed to do something different

where I could say what I wanted – call a spade a spade, if necessary – to the benefit of consumers. The job at uSwitch offered me the chance to do the kind of PR very few people are able to do.’

Really saying somethingRebollo joined in 2005, when uSwitch was already well known for its energy price comparison site and was extend-ing its service into other consumer products, such as personal f inance and home phone and broadband offerings. She was its f irst in-house PR person and, as well as boosting its press coverage and profile, she had to build a team, put processes and systems in place, generate press coverage and achieve her very ambitious targets.

‘Coming from an organisation like RBS, it was like chalk and cheese,’ recalls Rebollo. ‘I wanted uSwitch to have the largest share of voice as an independent commentator in each of the industries where we operated. Today, in energy our closest rival is Ofcom, which is a regulator, and we have raised our game in personal f inance, beating our nearest rival, Moneysupermarket.com, for the past two years.’

Rebollo now has a team of five – ‘all

uSwitch

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‘It’s not enough just to get

press coverage and comments in

the newspaper; PR has to be

there to support the business’

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