How to build a brand through PR & VIP, with Kate Halfpenny, Halfpenny London

0:02Kate Halfpenny:Advertising can make people know your name, but a reputation built through hard work and dressing real women, making them look and feel extraordinary. That's one that makes people trust you. There's no elegant answer to this. It's just clear visibility brought people through the door. And the work had to make them stay and had to make them talk. Someone who genuinely connects with what they're making. Audience can feel the difference, I think, between a woman who chooses something that she loves and something that she's being paid to wear. Before Kate Halfpenny designed wedding dresses, she was a stylist, dressing people like Kate Moss, Rihanna, Kate Blanchett, to mention a few.

0:36That client list didn't just shape her design eye, it built her reputation before she designed a single dress for the public. When a commission from actress Amelia Fox in 2005 became the foundation of Halfpenny London, Kate already understood something most founders take years to learn. Proximity to the right person at the right time is one of the most powerful but least controllable forms of PR there is. So I was really keen to chat to her about how she's managed this in the 21 years of her business and what she may have done differently had she had her time again. Kate, welcome to How to Start Up.

1:09Halfpenny London is a phenomenally successful brand and I'm so excited to talk to you about this because I've seen you grow the brand through various clever PR tactics. But before we get into that, I'd love it if you could introduce yourself and a bit about the brand that you have started.

1:25Kate Halfpenny:So I am Kate Halfpenny of Halfpenny London, which is a British bridal brand. We are 100 % made in London. We are 21 years old this year. It's a milestone. I spent a huge portion of my career as a celebrity stylist and costume designer. So I did that for nearly two decades, styling some of the world's most iconic men and women, not just women. How much of your early bridal business came directly from the people knowing your name in that styling world versus people discovering dresses on their own? Honestly, in the very beginning, it was almost entirely word of mouth for sure. The people who came to me first were the women that I'd either worked with or I'd dressed for shoot or someone who knew somebody that I'd worked with.

2:10Kate Halfpenny:And they trusted me and my eye before they'd even seen a single dress that I'd made. So it was a gift, but also a huge pressure because they were already buying a gown, banking on a relationship and a point of view that they already believed in. So the discovery piece came much later once there was something to discover really. But yeah, the very early days was all referrals and actually still very much is today. I often worry about that with my business because it's being built off word of mouth and people putting my name into rooms that I'm not there. And I'm incredibly grateful. But when I was working with a business coach, it's like, that's not a tap I can control.

2:46And it's not like I can ramp it up or ramp it down. I just have to assume that if I do good work for good people, they will refer me. But for you, how have you mitigated that risk of word of mouth or not? You just know that it works.

2:57Kate Halfpenny:We just know that it works and we create a product that we truly believe in and we give an experience that is truly authentic and we make people feel amazing. I think there's nothing to mitigate here. Because I was going to ask, what's the difference between a brand that's built through marketing, advertising, paid campaigns versus that brand that's built by reputation, which would you rather, like, where's your heart sit with those two options? Or is it a case of both? It is a case of both. And there is a huge, enormous difference between the two. Advertising can make people know your name, but a reputation built through hard work and dressing real women, making them look and feel extraordinary.

3:39Kate Halfpenny:That's one that makes people trust you. But paid marketing is a shortcut to visibility, but a reputation is shortcut to nothing really. There's so much opportunity these days with marketing and paid marketing, placing yourself in those rooms and those environments that can elevate a brand very quickly. But sometimes it's very shallow, isn't it? You scratch the surface and you think, hang on a minute, no stories. There's no authenticity. I am bored of that word to some degree because we're just harping on about it all the time and it comes every single day but it is it's true but we often talk to our clients because we do a lot of pr training and podcast training where we teach people how to do it themselves we talk about paid owned and earned paid being you put money out to pay for positioning wherever it may be earned is your pr your earned media because it's not up to you it's like that word of mouth and celebrity falls into that of course and then under your own platforms your instagram your linkedin bio So between the three, but paid comes at a cost.

4:36It's not cheap. And what pains me for my entire career is that PR is so much more effective, but it's paid way less because you have to pay for PR's time to try. There's no guarantee of result and therefore you can't charge the earth for it. Whereas back page of Vogue, 10, 15 ,000 pounds, jobs couldn't. But for you, the Amelia Fox effect, I wanted to ask you about this. You had a single commission for Amelia Fox in 2005, which I believe effectively launched your brand. Could you talk us through what actually happened in the press and the word of mouth after that dress? And how much of it did you have to chase versus what came to you after the fact?

5:13Kate Halfpenny:So Amelia had three wedding dresses, one of which another brand did and two of which I did. and her best friend came up to me on that wedding day and said you've captured Amelia in every stitch of that dress like out of the first dress she wore and the two that then followed that were mine she was just like it's just it's so her and her aunt worked at Vogue amazing journalist Fiona Golfer and we were at a fashion show and she said oh Kate I just loved the dresses that you did for Amelia and we were just talking and then the fashion show ended at Claridge's and as we were walking out the door, we said, oh, we'll just jump in your cab with you, Fiona, and we'll chat on the way.

5:49Kate Halfpenny:And then we'll just jump out when you've got out. And she said, why don't you come and have a look around Vogue? And Amelia and I were like, this is like the devil wears prod in the moment. Neither of us have been behind the scenes. So we popped her into Vogue and then got introduced to some incredible journalists. One of them was getting married. She was writing an article. Fiona was like, this is Kate Halfpenny. She made one of Amelia's wedding dresses. And Charlotte, But the journalist was like, oh, Fiona's told me all about it. And she said, oh, I've got this beautiful vintage hat that was my mother's I'd love to wear.

6:18Kate Halfpenny:And I said, I'll help you turn that into something amazing. So she was writing a piece on weddings and she put a little credit to me in the magazine. And that was the very beginning. So it was very serendipitous and right place, right time. But also based on the fact that they'd seen the beautiful craft and creativity that I'd created for Amelia. And I didn't have a website. Amelia was like, have you got a website? I was like, no. she was like let's do a shoot let's create a website and literally i was going to brazil on a huge big tv commercial and so amelia was like let's just do a shoot on saturday we got a friend she did the photographs amelia modeled all the dresses i made a few extra ones i've got big collection of vintage ones and i've got pieces that i'd already started working on so we just pulled this amazing shoot together and created a website and while i was in brazil on this shoot the magazine article came out and it was just like a little website it just snowballed from there really and I didn't chase anything it was just I'd been doing the wedding dresses on the side I wasn't styling Amelia if she was in an ad or presenting awards or all of those things it's a true definition of word of mouth it's being the right place at the right time with the conversation and that dot connecting magic is so powerful and do you think that was the launch of your brand was that a moment for you where you're like I'm in it was incredible because everyone was like oh my gosh Amelia Fox is modeling this whole bridal collection it was brilliant but it was truly authentic as well the relationship Amelia and I had the love of the love affair of everything that we were doing within our work together like I understood her I was doing her interior for her as well as dressing her for things so it was truly real and I think people could feel that and whenever she talked about it it was she loved them and we continued to then make dresses that we could then shoot a bridal that she'd wear to an event.

8:04Was your first

8:05Kate Halfpenny:piece of editorial coverage British Vogue yeah I mean it was tiny it was just about a bell that I'd made so it was but yeah it was that was the springboard yeah back then because that that in itself is incredible but so I wanted to ask you about the mechanics of celebrity PR because paid owned and PR is earned media as you said will speak to a journalist at a magazine then they feature you and they'll maybe put a link to a website and that is more of the traditional PR and a print magazine. You obviously have the digital coverage as well. Now you have Instagram, social media coverage from influencers as well.

8:38So that's earned media. Earned media is also awards, newsletters, going to events, a conversation. It's public relations as opposed to press relations. But celebrity is such an interesting part of PR. A well-known woman wearing your dress is a different kind of marketing to almost anything else. Is it ever possible to put a commercial value on that piece? And I know the answer to this, but I was having to ask you the question in terms of that return. Could you ever put a number on it?

9:07Kate Halfpenny:I think these days more and more there's a commercial value to a celebrity wearing dresses. It's hard for a brand like myself to compete within the landscape of brands are paying everyone to wear the brand. And yes, I do believe in that respect there is. But when it happens serendipitously and naturally because the person, the celebrity wanting to wear your garment truly loves you and your brand, then no, I think it's priceless. Well, you can never prove the actual return. I think that's where I've struggled in the past with CFOs at the luxury houses I work for is why do you need to buy them coffee?

9:44Why can't they buy their own coffee? Talking about journalists. Bvlgari are flying them to Rome, so we need to do something and I just need to have their time. But to have a proper ROI or that return on investment is really hard when it comes to public relations. But for you, that gut feeling, you obviously have an intuition as to who you want to wear your pieces. How do you work that out? How do you work out who's a good brand fit when it comes to celebrity?

10:08Kate Halfpenny:We get approached all the time by, and I know we'll talk a little later on influencers, but we get approached by people that we just think we love their audience that resonates with us we love their style we love what they stand for and an example of that from an influencer's point of view is Emily the nutritionalist she really came to us she only wanted to try one dress on she loved in the collection and she did only try that one dress on and she was like this is the dress for me it was just really beautiful she wanted to buy the dress it was just a beautiful meeting of minds and she's super authentic and truly delicious and gorgeous in the same way Amelia is.

10:49Kate Halfpenny:And it was just such an honor and a privilege to dress her. I just thought, I know this will be a great partnership. I know that her audience respects and adore her for her true storytelling. So yeah, it's hard to exactly know how it's going to take off. And we work with other people that in my gut, I was thinking this, it doesn't feel quite right. And then I just thought that audience isn't for me. And I think the person was just hunting to find a partnership. Yes. Well, I mean, I fortunately worked for some incredible brands, Chanel being one of them, but Shangri-La was actually the worst. I get probably 10, 15 influencers a day DMing me going, hi, I'd like to stay for free for three nights and I'll give you a grid post of this, that and the other.

11:31Obviously, you are running a business. Your P &L is the most important part to keep that business alive. If you were to gift left, right and centre, you'd have no bandwidth to make commercial pieces where do you draw the line on who you gift we don't give away i think for the

11:47Kate Halfpenny:integrity of the brand it's just it values it i also think people want to pay for something that's as important as this to for it to feel so kind of throw away and you're bartering a deal on this it just it feels slightly wrong as well so you're 21 years in you've got an amazing brand reputation everybody comes to you because they know that you have beautiful pieces when you were at the beginning and you were being approached by celebrity or you were going after celebrity people to wear your pieces how did you grow through those conversations I just think I've been really lucky in the fact that they've all been great conversations I might have met that celebrity at an event and said that I'd really love to dress you and love to work with you and it's happened naturally I suppose in the earlier days there was more opportunity to to gift more pieces which I think is actually the opposite when you're in that kind of tension point of growing from a small brand to a couple of million pound brand, that middle bit is actually is more difficult.

12:44And is it something you've sort of forecast for? You look at your quarterly plan and go, right, we need this many celebrities wearing our pieces. Is it something you actively go after? Is it integrated in your plan?

12:55Kate Halfpenny:It's very organic. We're not chasing and putting that into the plan for sure. What do you think founders get wrong when they go after celebrity? Because I'm constantly looking at brands and their activity across influencer celebrity press and you're like oh that doesn't fit and then you see incredible collaborations like what Barber have been doing with the Gani collab and things like that what do you feel founders can get wrong? Yeah I think sometimes they go after the name and not the fit and I think they want a celebrity rather than the right person so I see that someone who genuinely connects with what they're making audience can feel the difference I think between a woman who chooses something that she loves and something that she's being paid to wear.

13:36Kate Halfpenny:I mean, I certainly do. And you sometimes see it on people's grid posts and you just think. That's the thing with declaring what's an ad, what's paid. It's becoming a lot more regulated. So people do need to declare what partnerships they're in. So readers or watchers are not led astray and it can feel a little bit awkward. I think when you see some of the reality TV stars go into sort of Dove or Fairy Liquid and it's so sort of 80s, like perfect. You want it to feel really natural. And I guess for you, when you've met people and you've had good chats with them and then you maybe have a further conversation about working together, that has much more integrity behind it because they genuinely love your brand and you genuinely love them.

14:17How do you protect a brand from a celebrity association working against you if the wrong person wears it for the wrong reason? I put this question in here because I remember when I was in the Chanel press office, Victoria Beckham wanted to call in the ski suit and they said, no, she's not right for the brand. this was way way way way back and she just went out and bought it and she was all over the tabloid press wearing the chanel ski suit and everyone's like oh my god i can't believe chanel gifted her she's posh spice it's all wrong how would you advise founders to protect their brand against

14:46Kate Halfpenny:celebrity i think you protect it long before it happens so you're clear on who you are and who you're here for and if your brand has a genuine point of view then an unsolicited association doesn't fit well reads exactly that as unsolicited so politely distancing yourself from it really if your brand has no point of view any association will stick I think and then you have no defense so as long as you are clear on who you are and your brand then I think that's well and I'm sure the whole conversation around the Chanel thing at the time I just don't think it would have stuck would it it was fine because you had a complete clear vision on who Chanel was and who their consumer was Yes and they proactively went after the other people that wanted the time.

15:31Ironically now obviously they'd bend over backwards. And for you when Amelia and that moment happened how did you turn that early visibility into something that was repeatable?

15:42Kate Halfpenny:By doing the work and doing the work consistently over a long period. So there's no elegant answer to this it's just clear visibility brought people through the door and the work had to make them stay and had to make them talk and it was feeling it was emotion it was the bride remembering how she felt and then she told somebody oh my god i feel incredible there that's the most important thing and that's something that you can't buy so that's how you sustain this journey that's true kind of hard work and great product and it's harder now more than ever in a sea of white do you have a client they go on instagram they have been recommended you they find you they look for you and then their algorithm sends you 20 other dresses that are riding off your coattails that are paying to be part of your search or sometimes when I'm looking for an archive dress in my collection to show my design team I'll remember the name of it I'll just half a couple of times have the Georgie skirt netter porter and then I see who is buying that airtime which is just you know you're always just like off they're buying anyone that searches for your dresses that something similar pops up Well, it is riding off your coattails and I find paid search fascinating and very effective.

16:53We do it a lot for our podcast training course and then seeing, and it's always like a compliment because we're a very small business, but when we come up against the big dogs, oh wow, you know, that's quite cool that we're in there. But the fact that you can kind of get in there without having necessarily done the work or these dress companies are kind of knowing that they want to mimic your consumer and bring their eyeballs over to their brand. And it's pay to play. It's how much budget you've got to put in there. But your reputation, that word of mouth, if somebody has personally said to their friend, I call it the mascara effect.

17:26When your girlfriend has great mascara, you're like, oh, I'm definitely going to buy that. It's that power, that value is so much more important and it has a lot more longevity to it. But also for you, because it's not like you're going to have repeat customers. They're not coming back every six months. I remember doing a lot of PR around engagement rings. It's really hard because you're marketing it to the woman, but the man is purchasing it, but they're only going to do it once and they're not going to be a repeat customer. Maybe they buy their wedding bands and their wedding jewellery, but then that's pretty much it.

17:53Kate Halfpenny:It's a hard one for you. What role does PR and press play in the business today? or 21 years in compared to those early years with sort of single client relationships? Where does PR sit within the business and your marketing strategy? We're taking a quick 30 second break from this episode to ask, are you thinking of starting your own podcast? If so, this is great news because we run a course that will train you how to produce your own podcast yourself. This course is for people who do not want to outsource and pay someone else to do it. You want to learn how to do it yourself. We teach you everything that you need to get up and running with your own podcast show and so much more.

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18:36Kate Halfpenny:I think now it's more about reinforcing what we are, reaching the right brides at the right moment and maintaining a presence that feels considered rather than constant, really. Social media changed the volume. There's far more noise, which paradoxically makes earned media more valuable and not less. So genuine editorial real placements, a real recommendation, a review from a woman who loved her dress. These things cut through in a way that paid content often doesn't. How do you now manage the rise of the influencer and the social media content? We were one of the first hundred businesses to Instagram.

19:09Kate Halfpenny:They reached out to us to ask for some metrics and how it impacts our business. And it truly did. We dressed an influencer very early, over 10 years ago, Lydia Millen. And it was stratospheric for the brand because it gave us such a massive global reach she just went completely viral in her outfit that she wore so social media is super important it's definitely something that we hugely focus on we do invest a lot in creating content user-generated content as well we look at in real weddings which really resonate and pinterest is super important for those brides looking for boards and trying to create inspiration there constantly so yeah the landscape constantly changes doesn't it changes just the algorithm and this, and you now need to change your squares into portraits and you need to not put hashtags on it and all of those things.

19:57It's like they like pulling the rug from everybody and it's like, guys, we all need each other. Like just make it simple for us. And for you, obviously the paid, owned, earned mix is really working really well for you. What advice would you give to new founders when they're entering into building a brand?

20:13Kate Halfpenny:I think they really need to know what their story is that they're telling and then that should influence all of those areas you know everyone wants to know about the founder and their stories and their successes and their failures as well it's difficult isn't it but it really resonates and it drives brides to us and they love the storytelling and they love that i'm real and that i'm approachable and the experience that you have in the boutique is that and i don't hide behind some big marble columns and a big shiny sign and you know that there's no access well it's a whole isn't it because a brand is scalable when the founder could leave and no one would notice but at the same time it's something like this where people it's half penny london it's kate half penny they want access to you so that balance i think for founders to work out how much of themselves they're happy to give the business because their business will take as much as it will take all yeah it will not just take nothing for sure.

21:07Kate Halfpenny:I was listening to some incredible podcasts with Nicola who founded Neom and just her journey and her story. And again, that naivety of, I just think you have to be naive. And I think it's harder these days now to stop businesses because we know too much. There's so much out there. And actually it's more difficult to launch a brand on the social channels to watch those bill one extra follower, or you've lost a couple or that growth of them constantly chasing that viral moment that will make a huge difference. And truly, I just think to start a brand now, even though you have all those platforms, it was much easier to be a little bit more anonymous and to sort of step by step when they say you don't have to eat the elephant all at once.

21:53Kate Halfpenny:You just a bite at a time or however that quote goes. I think it's... But now we have 20 elephants because you have to be a content creator. You don't have to. I have voted not to my team. And I go, oh, you could do this. I could, but I'm not going to. I have a line. It's my business. I'm drawing it. I don't want to be a content creator. But you look at someone like Grace Beverly, who is insanely good at content, running for businesses. Like, where do you find the time? We only have 24 hours in the day. I'm convinced we actually have 48 and I try and do too much. But you're doing your P &L, you're doing your payroll, you're having to fire someone, you're having to hire someone to then think creatively and like flip your brain into content creation it's another hat so i think maybe when i started my career you know we used to fax coverage up to paris office and we'd look at the print magazines and then the rise of digital and then social and and and and then you see it in the journalists it's like well we now have 10 jobs to do but as a founder when you're starting when you're doing everything yourself it's very hard to know what to give what and i think a lot of people get distracted by instagram and think and social but they need followers to be successful it's like is that where your client is is that where they're going to consume you.

23:00But that's word of mouth when other people are doing the job for you, then to read me. So something that we ask guests is about now, next and never. What is the one thing you're focused on with Half Penny London right now?

23:11Kate Halfpenny:So continuing to grow in this treacherous and tricky UK business environment. We are, and we're doing great things. And major growth for the brand internationally. So the US is a huge focus. Brilliant, which I'm sure celebrity will come into play massively in the US. the way they operate. Yes, that would be nice. But that is, I think, an entire ballgame. And you need, I feel, to have a permanent showroom in the States to access that. We did just dress Jess Glyne. We sent her our beautiful waspy corset. She walked to a Pride event the other week with just normal clothes underneath it. But it was nice to get that sent out there.