CorpComms Magazine

Christina Rebollo is no stranger to switching. Born in Madrid, the 30-year-old head of PR at price comparison website uSwitch spent her early life in a succession of different countries. 'My father worked for IBM on some of the first internet projects, and we moved every three to four years,' Rebollo explains. 'But I moved to the UK 12 years ago to attend London University, and I've been here ever since.'

When Rebollo graduated with her degree in computing (to please her father) and French (to satisfy her love of literature), she knew what she didn't want to do - but not what she did. Her first job was in the marketing department of accountancy giant Deloitte, before joining the credit cards business at Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).

'I realised what I liked most about my job at Deloitte was PR,' Rebollo recalls. 'RBS was a fantastic opportunity because it was purely PR, and the credit cards business is huge. We used to say that it was bigger than Boots and McDonald's.'

Such was its importance within the banking group that the cards business had its own autonomous PR team and agency. 'We were allowed to be creative,' says Rebollo. 'But you also spend about 60 percent of your time within a big bank just fighting fires. There are dozens of customer complaints every week that the media ring up about; you are always defending and reacting. It is true crisis management.'

Although Rebollo stayed with RBS for more than four years, she began to feel uncomfortable about the way high street banks operate. 'At the time there was a lot of public discussion about consumer over-indebtedness and responsible lending,' she explains. 'RBS is an incredible organisation that treats staff extremely well, but banks are there to generate as much profit as possible from customers. I needed to do something different where I could say what I wanted - call a spade a spade, if necessary - to the benefit of consumers. The job at uSwitch offered me the chance to do the kind of PR very few people are able to do.'

Really saying something

Rebollo joined in 2005, when uSwitch was already well known for its energy price comparison site and was extending its service into other consumer products, such as personal finance and home phone and broadband offerings. She was its first in-house PR person and, as well as boosting its press coverage and profile, she had to build a team, put processes and systems in place, generate press coverage and achieve her very ambitious targets.

'Coming from an organisation like RBS, it was like chalk and cheese,' recalls Rebollo. 'I wanted uSwitch to have the largest share of voice as an independent commentator in each of the industries where we operated. Today, in energy our closest rival is Ofcom, which is a regulator, and we have raised our game in personal finance, beating our nearest rival, Moneysupermarket.com, for the past two years.'

Rebollo now has a team of five - 'all very experienced with more than 10 years in PR' - and two external agencies, including Lansons, which has 14 people on the account. 'But PR is core to uSwitch's strategy,' she says. 'The CEO and management team believe in PR, which is why we have been so successful, because there has been buy-in at the very top.'

Rebollo says she has a budget to rival any FTSE 100 company. 'I have the resources needed to achieve 6,000 items of coverage a year,' she notes. 'Everything I have asked for, I have been given, and I have received the undivided attention and support of the management and products team.'

She is determined that such support should be vindicated, too. 'We log absolutely everything we do,' says Rebollo. 'It is up to us to prove what we bring to the business. Our return on investment is the highest in the industry.'

Her team's efforts were also recognised when uSwitch was sold by founder the Marquess of Milford Haven, a cousin of the Queen, to US media group Scripps for £210 mn last year. 'Scripps mentioned that it was impressed by the PR when it negotiated the deal,' says Rebollo. 'Its business is traditionally in newspapers and local TV stations, but it really believes in uSwitch.'

Energetic approach

Existing solely to save consumers money, uSwitch also needs to alert the public about its services. Rebollo knows that just 40 percent of consumers read the personal finance sections of newspapers, where uSwitch initially predominantly featured. So, with the aid of her consumer agency, she has worked to ensure that about half of uSwitch's coverage now appears in the general news section. A recent campaign, for example, featured on the front pages of the Daily Telegraph and the Times and also in every national newspaper except the Sun and the Daily Star. It also appeared on every major news broadcast, including the Ten O'Clock News and Working Lunch.

'It was unbelievable,' says Rebollo. 'On the day Parliament opened after the summer recess, we published research showing that households had less disposable income than 10 years ago. We had been working on the campaign for two months. The next day we had 50 percent more traffic to our site, and a 30 percent increase in switching.'

The campaign did not work in isolation, however. Rebollo worked closely with uSwitch's marketing department, which sent out 1.2 mn emails to coincide with the publication of the research that highlighted how much money consumers could save by switching.

'It is not enough just to get press coverage and comments in the newspaper; PR has to be there to support the business,' comments Rebollo. 'It has to drive traffic to the site which, in turn, drives the revenues.'

It helps that Rebollo is so zealous about her work. 'How can you not be passionate about it?' she asks. 'How can you not believe in a company that offers consumers a better deal? True, it is long hours and backbreaking work, where we produce 60 press releases every month, but we have a fantastic relationship with the media - they trust us. This is not a nine-to-five job, though; you need to forget the clock to work here.'

share me: del.icio.us | digg | reddit | Tweet