Rising Star of the week: Polaris Media

A new concept is coming to life at EUROPORT 2021, the Rising Stars Pavilion powered by MARPRO. An area fully dedicated for promising maritime start-ups and next-gen innovators, where they can demonstrate how they contribute to a smarter, cleaner or/safer maritime future.

EUROPORT’s and MARPRO’s intention is to provide small start-ups a fair chance of showing their products and services to a large audience like EUROPORT is, for a budget friendly participation fee.

Company profile: Polaris media

Since the news aired officially, the call to maritime start-ups has been answered and a great deal of interest has been shown to participate.

Polaris Media is a maritime specialist on public relations and marketing whose core areas are maritime, engineering, energy, construction, private business and exports. Make acquaintance of Polaris Media in the following interview:

What is the idea behind Polaris Media and its services?

Polaris Media is a Maritime specialist public relations and marketing company. Based in the UK we have grown from a local only company in our home port of Liverpool to having a national and international client base. Today we work with ports, shipyards, flag states, classification societies, shipping lines and supply chain SMEs worldwide. Services include media relations, digital media, film and design.

In June our MD Ben Pinnington published his first book ‘Making Waves: PR strategies to transform your maritime business’;. The book challenges the maritime industry to improve its approach to PR by growing understanding its strategic importance giving guidance on brand, media relations, evaluation, social media and crisis. It features comment from leading maritime industry figures and journalists.

How can Polaris Media contribute to a smarter maritime future?

We are trying to disrupt the maritime industry by offering contemporary public relations services. Maritime is behind other industries such as politics, tech and aerospace when it comes to understanding how to communicate with the media, how to present the company to stakeholders and handle a crisis. This has been brought into sharp focus by the media criticism of the Ever Given Suez Canal crisis as well as the Black Trail documentary.

Drawing on our experience as journalists and also working in industries outside maritime we are trying to bring a more professional approach to PR so maritime can present itself better to the mainstream. Maritime suffers from a conservative cautious approach which is becoming increasing untenable in the modern era when everyone has a voice via social media and organisations are expected to stand up and be counted for what they believe in particularly in light of the ESG agenda, see below, and the wide adoption of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

How can Polaris Media contribute to a cleaner or safer maritime future?

A major theme of our work and Ben’s new book is for maritime companies to embrace decarbonization and digitization as well as safety in their operations, brand and communications. Too often maritime companies are silent on innovation many comfortable servicing the global fleet of diesel ships even though this is emphatically not the future.

As well as speaking and writing articles on these issues we work with some of the biggest names in maritime including China Classification Society and the Isle of Man Ship Registry promoting a wide range of innovations in green propulsion and tech in the media. We also promote seafarer safety and welfare through charities like Merchant Navy Welfare Board which is responsible for leading seafarer welfare in the UK and overseas ports on behalf of UN body ILO 2006.

Where is Polaris Media in 5 years from now?

Polaris has the potential to grow to a million-turnover business in five years by helping many maritime companies solve the difficulty of communicating better across their own media (websites, film social media, in house publications) as well as regional, maritime and mainstream media. The international ,market is a key growth area with Polaris already working in China, India, Poland and Oman. Morer widely as maritime is thrust more into the mainstream spotlight by decarbonization many organisations will need to show more publicly how they are going green, not green washing or purpose washing this will require serious PR help. The advent of Environmental Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) in place of CSR is a tough game. We see ESG in action in maritime finance where the Poseidon Principles have been signed by lending institutions responsible for $158billion roughly half of global ship finance. PR will play a key role in helping organisations meet their ESG targets.

How is Polaris Media organized, and who are the key people?

Polaris is a boutique agile PR firm and we were named Professional Services Business of the Year at the 2020 Mersey Maritime awards. Our model sees a virtual team deliver campaigns drawing on expertise of maritime specialist writers and advisers in the UK and around the world with representatives in China, Oman and America.

The key people include our founder Ben Pinnington who sit on Society of Maritime Industries committees in London as well as the CBI in Manchester, our senior consultant Rita Hunt who advises on strategy, Pamela Brown who has a Merchant Navy Medal who also advises on strategy. Milda Cuplinskaite meanwhile manages our digital media campaigns while our writing team is bolstered by a collection of well known maritime writers like Charlie Bartlett as well as business journalists, Ged Henderson and Jon Symcox.