When you’re managing communications for a global company with 100+ regional facilities, 70,000+ employees, and operations spanning the UK and Ireland – the traditional PR approach just isn’t going to cut it.

You can’t coordinate a single national message when every region has its own unique eco-system of media relationships, differing local priorities and shifting community dynamics. You also can’t rely too heavily on national campaigns when your best stories come from employees. And you really can’t treat facility launches like product launches if you’re opening new locations while having to manage community relations at sites that have been operating for years. Regional comms is, as you may have guessed, a whole other beast. Here’s how we do it…

Understanding regional diversity

Media landscapes vary significantly. Some regions are served by daily newspapers with substantial digital reach. Others rely on weekly community titles, local radio, or hyper-local digital platforms and influencers. Understanding which channels matter in each location – and building relationships with the journalists and influencers who serve those communities – is fundamental to success.

Community contexts differ just as much. Economic conditions, political priorities, local concerns, and cultural attitudes change from region to region. What resonates in Portsmouth might not land in Dundee. Cardiff has different dynamics to Belfast. Successful regional communications hinges on understanding and respecting this.  

Co-ordinating opportunities

When you’re operating across 50+ locations simultaneously, you have the chance to create impact at both a national and local level. 

National stories CAN be amplified through regional angles, but only if done carefully. A company-wide initiative can become dozens of locally relevant stories, generating hundreds of pieces of press coverage. Employee stories from different regions help to show the breadth and authenticity of your operations.

This doesn’t just happen by magic. You need:

• Local media relationships. Not just national contacts, but journalists in every region.
• Regional storytelling capability. Knowing where the regional angle is in a national announcement. And where it isn’t.
• Community understanding. Knowing what matters in each specific area is key.
• Authentic voices. Employees and local stakeholders who connect with their communities, and an understanding of how to reach them.
• Coordination and fluidity. Making sure your brand narrative works in each region.

Building communications with scope

Over 11 years of working with Amazon, we’ve built an infrastructure to manage communications across its entire regional operation.

We maintain relationships with regional journalists across the UK and Ireland. We understand the media landscape in each location – who covers what, when they publish, what stories resonate with their audiences. We track local news cycles and community developments, so we know when to lean in and when to hold back.

We’ve developed systems for identifying employee stories across all levels. We’ve created processes for coordinating facility launches on different timelines. We’ve built content production capability that can generate everything from regional press materials to broadcast-quality video at the speed and volume this breadth of activity demands.

Most importantly, we’ve learned how to make national narratives relevant locally. When Amazon announces a national initiative, we can create 50+ different regional angles – not because we’re changing the message, but because we understand what each community cares about and how this news impacts them specifically.

Managing communications of this complexity means understanding:

• Regional media across the entire UK and Ireland
• Community relations and local stakeholder engagement 
• Facility launch communications
• Employee storytelling programmes
• Super-fast, high quality content production
• Multi-site coordination
• A network of great photographers (shout out to our partners at UNP)

This doesn’t come down to thinking bigger. It’s about building smart processes. Systems that can operate across dozens of locations simultaneously while maintaining quality, authenticity, and local relevance. This is what we’ve built over a decade with Amazon. And it’s the expertise we now bring to other brands managing significant regional operations.

Results? What this looks like in practice

Since 2015, our always-on communications programme has delivered:

More than 1,000 pieces of regional and national press coverage annually. 20+ successful facility and service launches across England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Thousands of employee stories developed and placed in national media, regional media, on Amazon-owned channels and on social media. Employee case studies developed for The Times, The FT, The One Show and more.

Content used across internal communications for Amazon’s 70,000+ UK employees. Sustained positive brand perception across diverse regions with different economic and political contexts. Positive employee engagement.

People, positioning and being prepared 

When Amazon opens a new fulfilment centre, the communications programme starts many months before the doors open. We’re building relationships with local media, engaging with community groups, and identifying the employees who’ll become the face of the facility in their community.

By the time the site opens, we work with our clients to make sure regional journalists aren’t covering “Amazon opens a fulfilment centre” – they’re reporting on the 1,000 jobs created in their area, profiling local people who’ve been hired, talking to the team behind the site’s construction, and covering partnerships with local schools and charities. The national corporate announcement becomes a locally-owned, impactful story of its own.

This matters because it’s the difference between being seen as a corporate presence and being welcomed as part of the community. When a local newspaper profiles a single parent who got their first full-time job at your site, or when regional radio covers your partnership with a local food bank, you’re building authentic connections that corporate messaging alone can’t achieve.

A key part of our strategy, and something that’s become essential for every brand, is telling the story of its people.

Employee storytelling en masse

Over the years, we’ve developed employee case studies across every role, level and region – from fulfilment centre pickers and packers to general managers, from delivery service partners to robotics engineers. These aren’t corporate testimonials. They’re real stories about real people. We’ve had the former investment banker who retrained in robotics, the graduate who built a career path they didn’t know existed, and the local mum who advanced from entry-level to team leader through programmes like Amazon Career Choice.

Regional media consistently choose these stories over corporate announcements because they’re genuinely interesting to their audiences. A profile of someone from Swansea working in the Swansea Bay fulfilment centre resonates with South Wales readers in ways a London press release never could.

The content we produce – from photography to broadcast-quality video – gets used across multiple channels. The same employee story might appear in regional newspapers, on local radio, across Amazon’s social media, in recruitment materials, and on internal communications platforms. This complex efficiency is only possible because we’ve built the infrastructure to produce high-quality content at volume and speed.

Of course, some of these campaign strands present complexities.

Managing complexity across regions

With operations spanning 100+ buildings, something is always happening somewhere – launches, community partnerships, recruitment drives, occasional challenges that need managing. The ability to coordinate communications across all these locations simultaneously while maintaining quality and local relevance is what separates regional communications capability from standard PR.

When Amazon runs a national initiative – whether it’s the Amazon Apprenticeship programme, a sustainability commitment, or a community giving campaign – we translate it into dozens of regional stories. We don’t change the message, but we understand what Northampton cares about versus what matters in Aberdeen, or what Manchester media will cover versus what Belfast journalists prioritise.

This coordinated regional approach means Amazon maintains a consistent brand narrative nationally, while building genuine local credibility in every community where it operates.

Measuring success

The ultimate proof this approach works isn’t just coverage volume (though we generate plenty of that). It’s that Amazon has maintained positive community relations across the UK and Ireland while growing from a handful of facilities to over 100. It’s that every new fulfilment centre, corporate office or delivery station successfully recruits from the local community. It’s that when challenges arise – and at this scope, they do – we can manage them locally before they become national reputation issues.

After 11 years of building and scaling our processes and systems, we’ve proven that communication with this breadth isn’t about shouting louder – it’s about listening. It’s about understanding what each community needs, respecting regional differences, and building authentic relationships that last beyond any single campaign. This is what communications infrastructure at scale delivers.

Why this matters

The expertise we’ve built managing Amazon’s regional communications applies directly to any brand operating across multiple locations in the UK or Ireland.

If you’re a retail chain opening stores across the country, a food brand managing hundreds of restaurants, a hospitality group with regional sites, a manufacturing company with facilities nationwide, or any organisation trying to balance corporate messaging with authentic local engagement – you face the same fundamental challenges we’ve spent a decade solving for one of the world’s most scrutinized brands.

How do you maintain brand consistency while respecting regional differences? How do you generate meaningful local coverage, not just national announcements that regional media ignore? How do you build multiple community relationships? How do you coordinate facility launches across different timelines while managing ongoing communications at existing sites?

These aren’t theoretical questions – they’re practical challenges that require specific expertise. 

Common mistakes

Many brands approach regional communications in one of two ways, and both fail. Some over-centralise – treating Glasgow and Greenwich identically, using the same messaging everywhere, relying on national media coverage to somehow reach local audiences. Then they wonder why regional journalists ignore their announcements, why communities can be sceptical, and why local recruitment campaigns fall flat.

Others under-coordinate – letting each region operate independently without coherent national narrative, resulting in inconsistent brand representation and missed opportunities to amplify regional success stories nationally.

The answer is coordinated regional communications – understanding that different regions require different approaches while ensuring all of them support your overall brand story.

In a nutshell, this means:

Building genuine relationships with regional media across the country, not just maintaining a London press list. Developing local storytelling capability that finds the regional angle in national announcements – and knows when there isn’t one. Understanding community context in each location – what matters locally, what concerns exist, what opportunities are available.

Creating systems for a magnitude of employee storytelling, because authentic local voices build credibility that corporate spokespeople often can’t. Having the content production capability to generate high-quality materials at the volume and speed regional operations demand. Coordinating across all locations while maintaining the flexibility to adapt to local contexts.

What this expertise requires

Most agencies don’t have this experience because most agencies haven’t operated on a platform this broad. They might have managed a handful of regional launches or coordinated a national campaign with some local activation. That’s not the same as building and running always-on communications across 100+ facilities with 70,000+ employees for a decade.

Your opportunity

If your brand is managing significant regional operations and you recognise that your current communications approach isn’t built for this level of complexity –  whether you’re over-centralising or under-coordinating – there’s a better way.

The opportunity isn’t just better media coverage, though you’ll get that. It’s authentic community connections. It’s brand consistency with local relevance. It’s the ability to launch new regional outlets, recruit employees, manage challenges, and build reputation authentically across dozens of regions simultaneously. This is the expertise we’ve built. And it’s exactly what brands with regional operations need.

If you want to discuss your next phase in regional communications, give us a shout – or check out the case studies here on our website.