Public Relations Services
At Sutherland Weston we offer our clients judicious expertise in public relations and marketing communications strategy. We examine each client’s unique challenges and opportunities to provide well-considered strategic counsel to meet your long and short-term goals.
Everything your business or organization does sends a powerful message about your identity, reputation and brand. From product advertising to employee recruitment to brand positioning, Sutherland Weston provides practical, effective communications strategies that build brand recognition, loyalty and support. Our clients count on us for imaginative ideas and careful execution. We learn fast, get it right the first time and honor budgets and deadlines.
Want to Know More? Read a Bit Further.
Messaging and Positioning
Who you are, what you do, how you do it, and why I should care?

These are questions every organization’s conversation with the public must address, but all too often, does so from too “internal” of a perspective. When we live, eat and breathe our businesses and brands, how can we separate ourselves enough from internal perspectives and pressures to ensure our communication is saying what our customers want to hear and not just what we think they want to hear?
With Sutherland Weston, we work with your company to assure that you are speaking to the right people the right way every day.
Strategic Counsel
You may be looking for public relations support to help you launch a product, create a thought leadership position (What’s thought leadership? See below!), or promote a new service. But beyond the program that your agency implements for you, it is their responsibility to counsel your organization at every turn with fresh ideas, ways to improve your position as a competitor in the market, and new ways to accomplish sales and marketing goals through the vehicle of public relations.
Some say that the relationship between an agency and a client should be viewed as a partnership – and it should to an extent. But beyond a partnership, it is the responsibility of your agency to serve you just as a physician serves his/her patient.
Performing diagnostic analyses, comparing brand strengths and weaknesses in light of the competitive market, recommending new ways of thinking, telling clients the hard truths they may be unlikely to hear from internal sources, and creating a unique communications plan and roadmap that delivers clients to their end goal in record time: all these things are strengths of the public relations strategists at Sutherland Weston.
And just like a visit to the doctor, these truths may hurt at times, but they will make your company better.
Media Relations
At Sutherland Weston, we know that effective Media Relations is more than just blasting out press releases - it's all about building powerful relationships.
Our team of public relations professionals has spent years building and maintaining media relationships that result in extensive media coverage for our clients. From upfront planning and messaging, to full-blown communications plans and execution, it's all about precision and results.
And in order to assure that you are ready to face the camera, we offer a variety of Media Relations workshops that can help your company leaders get it right each and every time.
Thought Leadership
We used to call the great thinkers a visionary, today they are called Thought Leaders. These are the folks people turn to again and again to find the right answers, even to ask the right questions. When it comes to positioning your company as an industry leader, being known as a thought leader is crucial.
Sutherland Weston has a rich history of achieving results using a variety of tactics, from securing speaking invitations at conferences and tradeshows to authoring executive bylined articles. In fact creating a position of thought leadership is a component of nearly every public relations plan we create.
Event Planning
Need to make a big splash with your event? We can help.
From initial planning and preparations down to the cocktail napkins, our team of event planning experts will make sure your function goes off without a hitch.
Paper: Sitting at the Table
Written by Elizabeth Sutherland, APR
Published in the Maine Public Relations Council's PR Journal. Winter, 2006
Once upon a time, the corporate world thought that if you spent millions of dollars in advertising, you’d build the best brand. That was then. These days, names such as Starbucks, Amazon and Yahoo! save millions by not spending the big bucks on advertising, but by using the power of publicity to build a brand.
Best selling author Al Ries’ book, “The Fall of Advertising & The Rise of PR” illustrates a distinct change in corporate thinking from an advertising-oriented mode to a PR-oriented mode. CEOs and marketing managers are shifting budgets, realigning strategies and realizing the intrinsic value of PR.
If this is true, why don’t their public relations counselors have more clout? Why don’t they have a seat at the table?
As PR professionals, we don’t automatically deserve a seat at the executive table – we need to earn it. To earn that seat we have to perform more than the communications function. We have to push the commercial success of the operation. In other words, we need to know what the business objectives of the company are and help the company meet those objectives using our bag of PR tools. Communications should further the basic business goal.
We must speak the same language as the rest of those already sitting in the conference rooms. We must become more business literate -- able and ready to answer key questions like: Who are the big competitors of the companies we represent? What are the financials? What’s the stock price? What’s the market capitalization? What were the company’s net sales last year? What is the company’s marketing strategy? In other words, what’s keeping the CEO up at night?
Once we are a valuable contributor to the business success of the organization, gained the respect of our co-workers, and are able to influence the leadership of our organizations, then we also have to be exceptional PR practitioners. That means having a solid point-of-view that we’re not afraid to share (even if it contradicts the conventional wisdom), serving as a strategic business counselors and realizing that we need to serve multiple people and parts of the organization. Direct access to the CEO is not enough. To truly have a voice in the company, our power to influence must reach beyond the executive suite and include the people that run the daily business. In reality, these are the people who drive the commercial success of the organization and control most of the dollars that are spent on PR.
And when it’s time to spend those dollars, we must commit to and promise to deliver ROI that is measurable, not just PR by the pound. After all, what exactly can we measure by the number of clips we have stashed in the Sunday Telegram file?
Bottom line metrics are rarely at the forefront of marketing communications. However if we cannot provide data points to prove marketing communications' effectiveness in today's economy – we need to be ready to make room for someone who can. The only way marketing communications can defend and grow its budget is to show how its budget impacts the bottom line.
Public relations professionals often spend more time debating metrics than they spend actually doing the work. Our lack of leadership in this area contributes to our difficulty in getting a seat at management's table.
I know, I know, we're word people and not number people. But the sooner we show how public relations impacts the bottom line, the sooner we'll get the status and access needed for ongoing strategic success.
