PMG: Turning around client campaigns with confidence

For over 25 years, PMG has been providing creative, strategic, and technical solutions for some of the biggest brands internationally and within Australia. They specialise in delivering integrated campaigns that sharpen their clients’ edge and ensure they stay ahead of the competition.

As for any creative agency, the average day at PMG can be quite varied explains Jessica Brigstocke, Senior Account Director, and John McSherry, Account Director.

“We could be receiving a new brief from a client, responding to a brief, chatting to suppliers, or resolving issues that arise. Internally we’re running creative workshops, or we’re looking at creative that has been developed.” Jessica shared.

“Along with managing external teams and campaigns, we also manage our internal teams: such as our digital team, our design team, and our own accounting services staff,” John followed.

Ensuring client campaigns are legally compliant

PMG have long recognised how marketing promotions can be used to effectively increase brand awareness and drive engagement for their clients. As a result, they often choose to incorporate trade promotions into their client’s integrated marketing campaigns.

However, in Australia, different states and territories have different rules and regulations when running a promotion. It was critical for agencies like PMG to be well across these regulations and ensure their clients’ campaigns were legally compliant and prevent consequences such as costly fines or damage to the brand’s reputation.

Historically, PMG addressed these legal requirements by sending their promotions and collateral to their in-house lawyer for compliance review. But as the agency continued to grow, the volume of collateral to review became too large for one lawyer and the subsequent backlog caused a drag in their ability to respond to clients in a timely manner.

When Jessica joined the PMG team in 2018, she saw the opportunity for PMG to reclaim time and cost for the agency by partnering with Plexus to manage their marketing compliance. She had been using Plexus’ Promotion Wizard at her previous company for a few years and loved how quick and easy it was to manage their client’s promotion terms and conditions requirements.

Utilising Plexus to manage marketing compliance with ease

Today, PMG views Plexus as an extension of their team sending through between five and 10 jobs to Promotion Wizard per month. The expert legal support combined with the rapid turnaround Plexus offers is an asset to their team and their clients’ campaigns.

“We use Plexus at the beginning of a campaign, so we’ll go onto Promotion Wizard, and if there’s ever any doubts about whether we need permits or what the permits are going to be we use the Promotion Cost Estimator tool to help us build our cost estimates for our clients. We’ll use Plexus for quick advice, so we’ll send the Plexus team any quick promotional questions that come up internally or from our clients. We’ll also use Promotion Wizard to form our T&Cs for our promotions and to manage our winners' releases,” shares Jessica.

“We also use Plexus Advertising Wizard to review marketing collateral review of key visuals to make sure it is all legally compliant. What’s great about Plexus is that if there's ever any grey area or we’re uncertain of the legality of something we’re able to just drop the team an email and know that in like 20 minutes, half an hour, they’ll have a reply,” John adds.

Being a creative agency, PMG have client briefs constantly coming in, sometimes with tight turnaround times. Plexus guarantees custom terms and conditions returned to clients within 24 hours. This guarantee ensures that PMG can meet client expectations.

“Sometimes clients come through with a brief last minute and don’t fully understand how long some of these promotions can take to get approved so Plexus’ 24hr turnaround time is hugely beneficial for us.”

Turning around client campaigns with confidence

In a recent example, PMG had begun working with a client from the vitamin industry. This was a relatively new client for the agency and so they needed to get across the regulations associated with advertising in the heavily regulated industry. The client had wanted to run a promotion as part of their marketing campaign but there were concerns about what they could and could not do or say with their marketing.

Jessica reached out to Plexus to assist with understanding the restrictions around marketing within the particular industry.

“The problem was that they didn’t really understand the legality around running a promotion in their industry. The Plexus team really helped us understand and navigate the campaign so they can promote legally versus doing something against the guardrails of what they are supposed to do.”

The rapid response from Plexus’ team of expert consumer marketing lawyers provided Jessica with the advice to efficiently develop a legally compliant campaign in response to her client’s brief.

“Promotion Wizard is just an easy way to get out a high volume of promotional terms and conditions. It's really, really helpful when we need simple terms. But what’s more helpful is when it is a little more complicated and we do need to have a back-and-forth about the promotion details the platform allows us to leave the Plexus team a note with more details.”

“It's great, and it's just making sure that everything kind of keeps ticking along. I think it's great having you guys on board, and definitely see you as an extension of the team.” shares John.