Why do automotive brands need public relations?
Automotive brands need public relations because a car is a carefully considered purchase for most of us, and advertising alone won’t persuade the people making that decision. Public relations in the automotive industry earns you coverage in the places buyers check before they spend, from motoring magazines to the local news. That coverage often does the persuading for you, because it comes from someone other than you.
Our specialist automotive PR services will put you in the fast lane and set you a specification above the rest.
Why use a full-service agency for automotive PR?
Pushing customers over the finish line takes more than a good product, and this is where we come in.
Prohibition is a full-service PR and marketing agency, meaning we’re able to provide clients with greater brand awareness and visibility across a wide range of communication strategies.
Whether this is expert press features, thumb stopping ads, or video-first social media content; we’ll help you reach the right audience.
Our Automotive PR services
We build automotive campaigns around our Create, Engage, Convert method. That means creating the story and the content, getting it in front of the journalists and creators your buyers follow, then working to turn that attention into enquiries and sales.
Public relations
When marketing a vehicle, you’re appealing to different audiences with varying preferences. This could be someone who wants to upgrade their motorcycle, buy their first car, or rent a company car, for example.
Public relations can play a vital part here as it builds brand reputation through media coverage in the outlets your target audience are on, such as news sites, podcasts, magazines, and broadcast.
PR can help automotive brands in many ways by creating hype around a new range of vehicles, making you a more reliable brand, or even attracting a completely new audience!
Our 10+ years of PR experience has allowed us to build strong media relations and expertise in the industry. So, whatever you’re wanting your campaigns to achieve, we’ll achieve it.
Digital PR
If you’re looking for a greater presence online, then you’re in need of our digital PR services.
Digital PR earns links to your site from trusted media sources, which Google treats as a sign your site is worth ranking. That brings SEO success in the form of sessions, customer enquiries and sales, plus success in the form of earned and shared media. And, the more relevant and authoritative links there are pointing towards your site, the more consumers are going to see your brand as trustworthy.
Our digital PR services will target publications that are relevant to the automotive industry. We want to make you a market leader, which will only be achieved through quality media coverage.
Event management
You want to get your vehicles off to the right mark and one way of building stronger customer relationships is through events, either real-world or virtual. They give new or existing customers a real experience of your vehicles, whether it’s a new product range or just an upgraded specification.
You’re much more likely to engage potential customers through events, as the interactions are much more genuine, pushing them further down the sales cycle. Our event management services can help to plan the perfect on-the-day event and effortlessly promote your event at the same time.
Social media marketing
Social media can sell your ‘hero’ products or a whole range, and it lets you reply to customers in real time.
Autoglym, the British car-care brand sold in more than 45 countries, asked us to launch QuikRefresh in the UK. The product gives a just-washed finish with no hose, in under 15 minutes. Car enthusiasts are fiercely loyal to their cleaning routines, which made this a tough sell. So we shot the launch content with our in-house creative team, listened to what people were saying online, answered the doubters with myth-busting posts and used paid social to turn interest into sales.
The product launch outperformed their competitor’s engagement rate. It reached a relevant audience of 2.7M, with more than 165,000 people liking, commenting or sharing and more than 12,000 clicks to the website. Read the full Autoglym QuikRefresh case study.
Paid advertising
Paid advertising can support your existing organic social media efforts. With the organic reach of social media content declining; paid social ensures that you’re reaching those missing people by targeting set age groups, locations, or even interests.
Vehicles are a life-long investment, so you want to make sure you’re reaching a relevant audience to maximise profitability, and that’s what we’ll do.
Our detailed audience research will make sure we’re reaching the right audience at the right time, to push them over the finish line.
Communications
A lot has changed in recent years for mobility industries; new technologies have meant fewer people are buying cars in person and instead, they’re buying online. And for a lot of people, their first interaction with your brand is online, making it even more important to get it right.
That’s why you need our team of communications specialists who are well-versed in brand positioning, creative communications, and reputation management to get your comms off to the right start.
Media Relations
Want the press talking about your products? We can do that through media relations, using our offline and online approach, to feature your brand in major trade and consumer titles on a regional or national level.
Media relations gets your key messages to the press, your stakeholders and your customers on the channels they already use, and it builds lasting relationships with the communities around your brand.
Product launches
There are hundreds of car brands out there, and when you’re launching a new product, getting ahead is even trickier, because buyers don’t know your brand yet. This is the beauty of a product launch: it introduces your product to the market and to buyers in the best way possible.
Our integrated offering works even better for a product launch. You can focus on refining your product details, while we perfect your product launch strategy and create hype around your product on the ground as well as online.
Creative Services
Another factor of car selling is promoting what’s under the bonnet and inside the car, from engine size to gadgets and warranties. Showing the exterior features of the car, from the look and feel, can only be visualised through video and imagery.
We have an in-house team of creative specialists that can truly advertise your products; ranging from OOH advertising to TV adverts, animation, image and video content. We execute the full spectrum of creative communications.
No need for lengthy contracts either, as we can work on a project-basis or pair with your wider marketing activity for full impact. That’s our full-service agency touch.
Training
Looking for more than just campaign support? We can help to upskill you or your in-house team through our social and media training. Our Training Leaders, Chris Norton and Will Ockenden, have more than 45 years of communications expertise between them.
Over the years, we’ve trained international clients, from Watches of Switzerland, Interflora, and Huthwaite International, so you’re in good hands.
Whether you want help to finesse your corporate communications or exclusively promote your range of electric vehicles on social, we’re here to show you the way. This will ensure you can brace the media, as well as conquer your social media relations.
Crisis communications
In the automotive industry, people buy on reliability and reputation, so one bad interaction can leave a long-term mark on your brand and your sales. We’d rather plan for the bad day before it comes. Our Reputation Guardian programme maps your risks and the people who matter to your brand, then puts stakeholder engagement plans in place for your staff and partners. Your spokespeople also get a crisis playbook and media training, so nobody’s making it up on the day.
Don’t let your brand become another PR disaster. Be prepared before it’s too late.
How can we help your automotive brand?
We can help at every stage, from the first press release to the paid campaign that brings buyers to your website. Here’s what you can ask us for.
| What your automotive brand needs | How we can help you |
|---|---|
| A launch that gets you noticed | Product launches and PR that stand out in a busy crowd |
| More trust with your target audiences | Strategic influencer relations that build consumer trust |
| More coverage in the right places | Targeted national, regional or global media relations campaigns |
| Content that people want to share | Viral video creation, creative development and seeding |
| A chance for buyers to try it | Experiential development and product sampling |
| A clear view of what works | Social media monitoring, insight and evaluation |
| A website your buyers enjoy using | Website creation that engages your target audience |
| A way to reach hard-to-reach buyers | Paid social campaigns that reach hard-to-reach audiences |
What can you expect from Prohibition PR?
You get one full-service team, with the awards and experience to back it up.
High-quality & full service
You can expect a results-driven service, with creativity that secures real business results across the sphere of digital marketing; content marketing, social media, media relations, and advertising.
We’re not like other automotive PR agencies, we can manage your marketing all in one place to give you greater control and impact. Think of us as part of your team, your event organisers, PR specialists, corporate communications advisors, production team, and much more.
And we like to create campaigns that get people talking for the right reasons; from creating Yorkshire’s most disgusting art exhibition for Yorkshire Water that achieved top-tier BBC coverage, to encouraging non-core cask ale audiences to drink cask beer through a Jester Jacobs rap for Black Sheep, as well as utilising TikTok influencers to make Primula’s biggest Christmas yet. We’ll get your brand noticed, and on the big stage!
Multi-award-winning service
Prohibition is a multi-award-winning PR and marketing agency based in Leeds, but we deliver results across the world.
Our PR expertise has won us more than 45 industry awards, including PRCA’s Medium Sized Agency of the Year 2022 and CIPR 2022 winner of Best Use of Digital and Social Media. We believe every campaign deserves to be award-winning, so you can trust that the automotive sector is no different.
So, whether you want more visibility on a local or international level, we’ve got the kit to get you there.
Long-lasting experience in the automotive industry
The automotive industry is built on reputation, so it’s only right you want a PR agency that has the reputation to match. That’s exactly us, we’ve been in the PR and automotive sector for 10+ years, so you can trust we’re industry experts.
In this time, we’ve built up a reputation as one of the North’s leading PR agencies, as recognised by Prolific North. And our experience doesn’t just stretch to the automotive industries, our PR services expand to much wider industries (see below).
Your automotive PR questions, answered
What are the seven types of PR for automotive brands?
The seven types of PR we offer automotive brands are media relations, product launches, digital PR, social and influencer relations, events, corporate and stakeholder communications, and crisis communications. Lists vary, and everyone seems to have their own seven, but those are ours. Media relations gets you into motoring, trade, regional and national titles. Product launches introduce a new model or product to the market. Digital PR earns links and coverage from trusted online media. Social media and influencer relations reach buyers where they spend their time online. Events let new and existing customers experience your vehicles for themselves. Corporate communications and stakeholder engagement keep your dealers and staff on side. Crisis communications protects your reputation when something goes wrong.
Do we need to sign a long contract?
No, you don’t need a long contract. We can work project by project, say on a single launch, or alongside your wider marketing for the full effect.
Which markets can you run automotive PR in?
We’re based in Leeds, but we deliver results across the world. Our media relations campaigns can be national, regional or global, depending on where your buyers are.
How will we know the PR is working?
We link every campaign to your business goals and measure it with proINSIGHTS, our in-house measurement toolkit built on the AMEC principles. It tracks press coverage, share of voice, sentiment and social media insight, so you can show the return to your board.
