I’m a little behind on my TV viewing but last week I had the pleasure of settling down on the sofa to catch up on the new series of Dragon’s Den, which returned to our screens a fortnight ago. It’s a wonderful concept – you get to snigger and marvel at some of the more ludicrous ideas a la X Factor, but because it’s about ‘business’ you feel totally vindicated about watching.
True to its form the first episode included some howlers, such as a strange lighting system for street signs, which received the dubious accolade of being named the worst idea ever to be presented on the show. It also saw some exciting ventures that received investment from the Dragons including a Devon-based vineyard owner that was looking to fund his fractional concept – selling plots of the vineyard to consumers for a number of years, resulting in their own-brand sparkling wine - I rather fancy a bottle of Dom Osmondignon, if I say so myself. http://www.pebblebed.co.uk/
However, the over arching success story of the first episode was Kirsty Henshaw, a young entrepreneur looking for investment for her frozen dessert business, which was borne out of her son’s food intolerances: http://www.worthenshaws.co.uk/. She clearly knew her stuff and had managed to get intent from the UK’s largest supermarket for a trial. The Dragons were clearly very, very impressed and it became obvious that a bidding war would ensue. She eventually ended up accepting a deal from ice cream aficionado Duncan Bannatyne and Reggae Reggae sauce success story Peter Jones. An excellent result for her business. Or is it?
My ears pricked up during her pitch when she asked for £65,000 for “branding and PR”. This sounds like a lot of capital for a fledgling business, but when you start breaking it down, you realise that it will soon diminish. Branding doesn’t come cheap so taking a reserved estimate you can expect that she would part with around £35,000, leaving £30,000 for PR, not to mention that she also needed to find the money to increase stock, so actually the PR budget would probably be even less. Given that the product is new and very different to the norm she would firstly need a trade PR campaign to introduce the dessert to the market and encourage buyers to list her. Once achieved it is likely she would want also to invest in consumer PR – spreading the word amongst the people that she wants to give her pudding freezer space. This is a huge task and one that certainly wouldn’t fit within the very modest budget that had been earmarked. This reminded me of a jewellery designer a few series ago that thought she could invest £500 a month in PR, but you have to ask yourself, what’s the point? You may as well save your money as £500 is not going to create a strategic campaign that delivers on the bottom line.
My point is that it seems many people have an unrealistic view of the price of PR – evidently some of the Dragons included. Only Mr P told her that £65,000 wasn’t enough and tried to offer her a further £35,000. I’m sure that behind the scenes, once the cameras have been switched off, the money that changes hands is actually very different to what we, as viewers, see. But even so it’s a depressing time for the PR industry when business stalwarts are undervaluing our market.
