About Rain Communications (PR)

By Erica Wenham, Monday 25 March 2013.

Rain Communications - The News Generation Agency
"A track record without shouting about"

Rain Communications is an independent PR agency which specializes in news, features and content generation – “with consistently outstanding results” (raincommunications.co.uk, 2013). Rain take pride in delivering innovative and compelling story angles and packages that cut across all areas of the media including print, online, social and broadcast.

According to prweek.com (2012), Rain Communications is currently not one of the Top 150 PR Consultancies. This could be due to the fact that they are a fairly small, independent agency, potentially looking for expansion in the near feature to increase their agency positioning. However, the organisation does maintain many successful household name brands including Avon, Slimming World and John Lewis. With offices based in London Victoria and Oxford Street, Rain’s organisational structure consists of a strong team of 30-40 media professionals.

Rain is proud to celebrate its 10^th birthday this year as the agency was first set up in 2003 by PR professional, Delia Hyde. Delia brings her wide range of experience and expertise to every client, campaign and business manageable. Rain Communications has flourished to become one of the most successful “news generation agencies” in the UK, achieving ambitious but sustainable business growth – with an impressive client retention rate. Many clients have worked with Rain for more than eight years to date. (raincommunications.co.uk, 2013)

The agency particularly takes control over the PR for John Lewis regarding fashion, advisory services and the brand’s flagship Oxford Street and Peter Jones stores. Rain offer a variety of PR services for the brand including; News Generation, Crisis & News Management, Public Affairs and Digital. Members of the Rain team regularly build effective relationships and work alongside media contacts, partners, clients and other third-parties to produce a positive brand image for John Lewis. 

The John Lewis Rain PR Team (Organisational Structure):

• Emma Pengelly (Junior Account Executive): Men’s Fashion, John Lewis Oxford Street
• Golnessa Motazedi (Junior Account Executive): Women’s Fashion, John Lewis Oxford Street
• Fiona O’Rorke (Associate Director): Women’s Fashion
• Caroline Lay (Junior Account Manager): John Lewis Oxford Street
• Lucy Hemelryk (Junior Account Manager): John Lewis Peter Jones
• Olivia Cordwell (Junior Account Executive): Specialising in Images & Product Placement for Women’s Fashion
• Fiona Campbell (Account Executive): Specialising in Lingerie

As business-savvy professionals, the Rain team ensures all PR campaigns have clear commercial goals. Agendas can vary from sales generation and business development to CSR and reputation enhancement. Supporting the news generation tagline and mission statement, Rain Communications also deliver public affairs campaigns, news & crisis management and fully integrated digital PR programmes for clients.

Rain’s professional services including news & crisis management/consultancy and digital marketing are both headed up by Delia Hyde (Managing Director) and Lizzie Costelloe (Senior Account Executive). Together they have over 20 years experience in advising and supporting clients on sensitive media issues. Rain PR’s aim is to “minimize negative impact and reporting of inaccurate information whilst offering a 24/7 advisory service to fully support clients and consistently deliver and excellent service to the media”. Additionally, Rain Digital mainly creates and manages “sophisticated, cost-effective and fully integrated online PR and social media campaigns” all specifically tailored to clients needs. Through strategic planning, unique rich media and promotional content, Rain ensures clients shine in all the right places. By utilising the full potential of social media platforms, dynamic relationships for client’s existing and potential customers can be formed. 

Rain PR has won many successful pitches in the past as well as various praise from past clients, media correspondents and suppliers. Rain Communications are extremely passionate about what they do and are committed to offering all clients their gold standard “Rain Guarantee” as follows;