Case Study: Penfold

Client: Penfold 

Location: London

Sector: Finance 

Service: PR Strategy and Media Relations 

Project:

Penfold is the pension built specifically for the self-employed. It is a digital alternative to traditional pension companies, allowing its customers to set up, consolidate, manage and track their pensions online.

Penfold believes it should be easy to understand the key things you need to ‘do’ with your pension, and just as easy to put those things into practice. 

After a successful funding round, the business identified a need to develop a PR strategy which would raise brand awareness and tell the brand story in the right way – for example, through news stories and creative feature placement. The Penfold team had initially been exploring the idea of working with an agency but were unsure this would be the right path for their business. 

CommsPeople worked with Penfold to talk through the benefits and differences of working with a highly experienced freelancer versus working with an agency – and how to go about sourcing someone with relevant experience. 

After a focused and efficient search process, Penfold decided to take the leap and work with a boutique agency who were just right for them, and who has gone on to deliver excellent, tangible results across mainstream media.  

Pete Hykin, cofounder at Penfold says: “We didn’t really know which route to go down when it came to our PR activity – we were mainly considering different agencies, however we had heard negative stories about some agencies not being able to deliver the right results. 

We spoke to CommsPeople who talked us through the improved flexibility, price, and performance we could get if we used a freelancer or a smaller, boutique agency.

After being able to have such an open conversation with someone who is well-experienced in PR and comms, we decided to go down the boutique agency route and the results have been fantastic. The team  we worked with were engaged, dedicated, and most importantly helped us get the word out about Penfold. We still get compliments on our PR success today”