Questions, answered.

Fireflies Management is a senior, founder-led PR and strategic communications consultancy. The work spans communications strategy, earned media across digital, print and broadcast, brand and campaign activations, crisis and issues management, media training, and funding-round support. Every engagement is led personally by Maria Jordan, not handed to a junior team.

Most clients are founders, scale-ups and purpose-led organisations, usually B2C or product-led, operating in fast-moving, high-visibility markets where perception, coverage and trust are closely linked. Some are at their first real moment of public attention. Others are established names protecting and extending a reputation.

With a large agency you often buy a senior pitch and receive junior delivery. Here the person you meet is the person who does the work. That means global perspective and senior judgement without the layers, the account-management distance, or the dilution, and usually at a lower total cost than an agency for comparable strategic work.

Every engagement starts with your goals, not a template. From there the work is senior-led from start to finish: a clear communications strategy, campaigns shaped by sector, market and audience, and earned media that translates into real coverage. Expect a close partner through launches, funding rounds, market entry and reputation-defining moments.

Not always, and starting too early wastes money telling a story the market is not ready to hear. PR tends to pay off once there is something genuinely newsworthy, a clear audience you need to reach, and the capacity to act on the attention it creates. A short, honest conversation usually settles the question quickly.

The right moment is when a real story exists and a business outcome depends on the right people hearing it: a launch, a raise, a market entry, a reputation to build or defend. Support often begins well before a company has launched, particularly around funding rounds, and can include media training for spokespeople so they are ready for the attention when it comes. Timing matters more than budget, and the simplest way to weigh the options is a chemistry call to talk them through.

Most engagements open with a conversation about where you are headed, followed by a focused strategy or audit before any pitching begins. Starting with a defined project or a short, sharp piece of work is often wiser than committing to a long retainer up front, because it shows how the partnership works before you scale it.

PR has no unit price the way advertising does, so any figure is a guide rather than a quote. After a chemistry call to understand your requirements, you receive a tailored strategy and a budget proposal built around the coverage you are looking for, structured as a retainer, ad-hoc support or a project. No two stories are the same, so the approach is always shaped around your goals and expectations rather than a fixed rate card.

Work is usually structured as a monthly retainer for sustained visibility, a project fee for a defined moment such as a launch or a funding announcement, or a day rate for advisory and ad-hoc support. The right model depends on whether your need is ongoing or a single moment, and it is agreed clearly before anything begins.

Value in PR is rarely about the volume of coverage. One feature in the title your buyers trust can outperform fifty mentions nobody relevant will ever read. The outcomes worth tracking are branded search and direct traffic, the quality of publications, inbound enquiries and their source, and softer signals such as investor and partner recognition.

No serious practitioner can, and anyone who does is selling something else. What can be promised is senior judgement, real relationships, the right story well told, and the time to do the work properly. Coverage follows relevance and timing, not guarantees.

PR rarely pays back in the first month, because relationships, story development and timing all take time to compound. Judging a retainer after four weeks is like judging a content programme after one post. A three to six month window is the honest minimum before deciding whether the spend is working.

Success is measured against the outcomes that matter to the business, not a clippings tally. That means tying coverage to branded search, direct traffic and inbound enquiries, weighing the quality of publications over the count, and tracking reputation signals that shorten sales cycles. Reporting connects the work back to business value, not just activity.

Deep experience sits across technology and AI, travel, hospitality, sport and major events, genealogy and heritage, and NGO and purpose-led organisations. A message that works in business media will not land the same way in lifestyle or travel, and that sector instinct is built from years of working across each world.

Campaigns run across the UK, US, Canada, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. A story that resonates in the US often needs a different narrative and tone to succeed in the UK, so global reach is always paired with local understanding rather than a single message pushed everywhere.

Buyers increasingly meet a brand through a machine before they ever reach its website, asking an AI assistant what a company does and whether it is any good. PR for the AI era means shaping that answer: structuring campaigns and coverage so the engines, as well as the journalists, interpret your brand as intended. The discipline is sometimes called answer engine optimisation.

Yes. Crisis and issues work is a core part of the practice, from preparing before anything goes wrong to managing a live situation with clarity and control. Sensitive, human stories in particular are handled with care, protecting trust while limiting risk.