Australia. China. Spalding.

A friend of his owned one of the largest bulk materials handling companies in the world and was in advanced discussions to acquire another company.

Could we manage all the internal and external communications surrounding the deal … bearing in mind activity would need to be co-ordinated with teams based in China, Australia and the UK?

Of course, we could!

Naturally, the deal was highly sensitive so we used emails and out-of-hours calls to liaise with the owners of Mitchells in Australia and China to agree the core messages they wanted to convey.

A comprehensive communications plan was produced to ensure everyone who would be touched by the deal was fully informed. Given our experience dealing with corporate finance transactions, we had a number of contingency plans in place should the timeline slip.

Our activity included producing a presentation, brochure, letter and video announcing the deal to staff at both Mitchells and Gutteridge. The overriding aim was to set out the reasons for the acquisition and to reassure them of why it was such a positive transaction.

Letters to customers and suppliers were also drafted, along with telephone and email scripts for staff to use post-acquisition.

Press releases distributed to trade, business and regional media across China, Australia and the UK resulted in a clutch of positive headlines about the acquisition, all featuring the photography we’d organised.

What had the potential to be a challenging project went like a dream, not least because of meticulous planning at our end and a wonderful client across the globe who trusted us to run the project.