The market of services – and communication is no exception – has indicated a growing trend towards specialization. Clients are looking for companies that can serve them in the best way within the specificity of their own field. And given the reality of increasingly globalized and diversified markets, several services have specialized in the areas of tourism and lifestyle, seeking to serve essential sectors of our time such as hospitality, gastronomy, and culture.
Given the nature of these areas, many clients wish to go international: to bring their brands to audiences in other countries, in Europe and beyond. For this reason, amongst others, an international network of communication agencies with the same specialization, to which Message in a Bottle belongs, has been established – the Travel Lifestyle Network, which includes 17 agencies from five different continents.
And why be part of a network?
The answer is simple: because in our increasingly globalized world, in which brands seek to expand beyond borders, knowledge of destination markets is essential. And in the field of Media Relations or Digital Marketing, no-one knows national markets as well as communication agencies do. Through a network of agencies, the process of finding the best experts in other markets is not only simpler, but more reliable.
Imagine that a Portuguese company, which has hired Message in a Bottle for Media Relations services, wants to take its products to the UK. It’s not difficult to imagine – ranging from Portuguese wines, much appreciated in the land of Her Majesty, to travel agencies and tourism, which find in the British public fervent adorers of our coast, there are many examples. One of the most effective ways of publicizing a brand, we know, is Media Relations – and through the Travel Lifestyle Network, Message in a Bottle can introduce its client to a partner communication agency, also specializing in tourism and lifestyle, through which it can communicate in the British market.
But why go with this recommendation and not any other agency? Again, the answer is simple:
- Identity. Because the client knows that agencies in the same network share the same identity. They do not only work in the same field; the DNA of communication agencies is the same. They work in similar ways, share knowledge, and cover the equivalent markets of each country. Basically, it is the guarantee that the option in one country has a brother (if not a twin, at least a very similar one) in another.
- Simplified relationship. Because when going with a network communication agency, a Portuguese client knows he will be choosing a company with which his Portuguese agency is in close contact and with which it can help mediate the relationship.
- Lower costs. Because through the recommendation process, a partner agency can develop more attractive budget proposals, as well as ensuring some economies of scale.
Being part of a network like Travel Lifestyle Network is therefore not a formality: it is a door to reach further. When a brand chooses a communication agency to reach out to its consumer audience, it does so by thinking about how the communication strategies presented by that agency fit in with the brand’s own strategies. This selection process becomes more complex when the brand wants to internationalize, both because of the quantity of supply and the differences between markets. But through international networks, the brand finds foreign agencies whose strategies are, in general, aligned with the agency that the brand has in its country of origin and, in particular, designed for its own market. That is precisely the banner of the Travel Lifestyle Network: global reach, local expertise.
