Public Relations

Luckily, you are just seconds away from some very smart brand marketing solutions. Click here!

Key points

Public relations is often viewed as the most under-exploited of communications media, & it is especially suitable for branding. It is based on the view of focus customers as a community, & a successful brand develops its own community. It therefore feeds, & feeds upon, normative effects - the fact that lots of people of a certain type (your type of focus customer grouping) endorse the brand. Therefore, the right kind of public relations endorsement can be highly beneficial &, as a bonus, relatively cheap to build.

The negative is that public relations is also a many-headed monster out for a good story, & the more famous you are, the more of a target you are too. PR classically goes through a cycle of:

• promising newcomer
• newcomer who made it
• star
• idol on a precipice
• fallen idol
• "whatever happened to......? or "the one who bounced back"

If you use PR extensively, you have to be prepared for the full cycle, to take advantage of "windows of opportunity" & to respond rapidly to adverse publicity. Building close relationships with key journalists will help. The good news is that trusted brands tend to bounce back from PR crises quickly unless their core values are undermined.

Good PR practice would include:

• concentrate on your focus customer segments
• always have as your objective the enriching of the brand experience
• do not ever let the trustworthiness of your brand be undermined
• do not let your core values be undermined
• build strong relationships with influential journalists/spokespeople
• associate yourself with specific topics so as to be "front of mind" as a source of stories on those topics
• publish press stories which can be published without reworking
• make brand executives available for interview
• have back-up response systems in place & well-rehearsed crisis management procedures

Measurement

Most companies track:

• number of mentions
• amount of airtime
• number of column inches
• whether the message was positive, neutral or negative

However, it is difficult to work these measures up into a predictive model, because:

• some highly negative messages can have a positive impact on the brand, because they increase awareness. Research suggests that a PR crisis rarely has a long term impact on strong brands
• there may well be no standard message (especially if the "story" ends up consisting of articles written by people not associated with your organisation - e.g. TV, radio, press & Internet journalists/contributors)
• the message can take up different amounts of space in different places
• some people delivering the message have greater credibility & impact than others

Luckily, you are just seconds away from some very smart brand marketing solutions. Click here!

For further information, please contact enquiries@mudvalley.co.uk

© 2004, Mud Valley ™ brand marketing community.

Related answers