Search Marketing Association UK (SMA-UK) is a new organisation designed to promote Search Engine Marketing across the UK. SMA-UK provides a service to search engine marketing professionals and companies by helping to establish a favourable operating environment, by providing a forum for discussion on non-competitive issues and by providing information to assist them in their business. The Brief: Launch the SMA in the UK, raise awareness of its purpose and its executive committee. Develop a media relations programme. The Campaign: We launched the SMA-UK in July 2005 with a media tour for the SMA President Andy Atkins-Kruger. We used this as a platform to promote the organisation’s key messages and build relations with key journos who had an active interest in search marketing. This was quickly followed by our “Does the industry need the SMA?” campaign which opened the debate in key titles, including Revolution which ran a feature on the subject. We invited leading industry authorities from Google and i-level to question the need for the SMA-UK. As expected the outcome was that the SMA played a vital role in the development of the Search industry. This significantly raised the status of the SMA. We have since focused on issue based PR, promoting the organisations position on various industry developments such as Google’s commission changes. The Results: The SMA-UK is an established industry organisation with a high profile and awareness. Andy Atkins-Kruger is a recognised authority on the search industry and is a regular contributor to industry media.