Property and Mortgage PR and Integrated Communications

Most lenders and property businesses need to reach consumers and intermediaries at the same time, and the two want completely different things. A first-time buyer wants to know whether they can afford it. A broker wants criteria, service levels and whether your underwriters will actually say yes.

We plan for both explicitly rather than writing consumer copy and hoping the trade press picks it up. In practice that usually means national research campaigns doing the awareness work while a separate trade programme handles the detail brokers care about.

Mutuals and specialist lenders compete against much larger balance sheets, so the differentiator is rarely price. It is criteria, service, specialism and the sense that a human being will look at the case. Those are communicable, and they are what the intermediary press will actually cover.

The intermediary market has its own trade titles, its own commentators and its own calendar, and it notices immediately when a brand is talking at it rather than to it. Consistency matters more than volume here: being present, quotable and useful on criteria changes and market shifts builds more standing than an occasional large campaign.

Proptech has to convince an industry that is genuinely hard to change. The credible route is evidence of adoption and a clear view of the problem being solved, rather than a claim to be disrupting an ancient market. Named customers and real numbers do more than any amount of category language.

This sector rewards good research more than almost any other, because journalists cover housing constantly and need fresh, defensible numbers. The Bank of Mum and Dad worked because it named and quantified something everyone half-knew but nobody had sized.

That is the standard we work to: a real question, a method that survives scrutiny, and a finding that changes the conversation rather than confirming it.

Mortgage communications are regulated, and consumer-facing claims about borrowing carry real risk. We write to be approvable, flag risk early and brief spokespeople on what they can and cannot say, so compliance review is part of the timeline rather than a problem at the end of it. The same discipline applies to reactive comment on rate decisions and regulatory change, where the firms that get quoted are the ones who prepared a position in advance.

Senior people who know both the regulated and the consumer side of this market, a proactive newsroom service rather than a monthly report, and creative, commercial work that runs across PR, content, social and design as a single programme.