PR on Top of Brand Seesaw
PR on Top of Brand Seesaw
The global economic meltdown, the advent of the Obama era, environmental disasters and new organic lifestyles and fashions have caused shifts in consumer values and beliefs which have tipped the brand see-saw in favour of PR over advertising.
In the past, PR played second fiddle to advertising and other marketing disciplines, but never before has strategic communications been as centre stage as now.
In the wake of the shift, brands have been forced to reposition themselves to fit in with changing consumer values. And this has pushed PR and strategic communications to the top of the marketing advertising heap and right up into the domain of strategic brand leadership.
The tables have definitely turned from advertising agencies’ traditional brand custodianship where PR executions were made to hang off advertising creatives’ big ideas. Now the PR discipline is becoming the lead agency and the advertising and point of sale executions need to tap into its ideas.
The move is due to a clear shift in global perceptions. Now it’s all about what is “real” and “true” about brands and it has become more important than ever to clearly communicate proof points of brand relevance and value in order to retain and sustain consumers’ confidence and get them to believe brand promises.
The trend was predicted nearly a decade ago by father and daughter team Al and Laura Ries in their book the The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR and, while it was widely hailed at the time, it is only now that the fairground strongman’s heavy hammer is making the PR gong ring out loudly.
US-based Ries was selected one of the most influential people in the public relations field in the 20th century. He has written a number of best selling books including the Immutable Laws of Branding. About five years ago he created a marketing consultancy with his daughter Laura, who also crossed over from a career in advertising.
For many years top players in the PR sector have been predicting that “now is the time for PR”. We saw the writing on the wall and noted the major shifts over time from “tell and sell” marketing to sharing “stories” about products with consumers.
Legendary brands have always used their stories – think Levi Strauss and Johnnie Walker and Harley Davidson – to connect with consumers and build their brands. But that was then. Now consumers are telling their own stories about their experiences with a brand – blogging about them and publishing articles about them – and in so doing building brands for companies more effectively than marketing, advertising and PR campaigns could have ever done.
The internet and cell phone technology has tied us all up in a communications web, allowing us to share stories and spread brand suss globally almost instantaneously.
These conversations are allowing for two-way dialogue between brands and consumers on a scale none of us would have believed possible.
Brands are linked to products and things people want and are created by customers via their experiences. Getting them to talk positively about it – in a brand ambassadorial way – is the way to getting more people to know about and desire the product.
And because of the way we all connect these days – ideas and news – good and bad – spreads far faster than the word of mouth PR sought to create in the good old days.
Conversations and communication and the ability to direct and influence the dialogue sits most easily and firmly at the heart of the PR domain and this is what has provided the tipping point for the industry.
The changed landscape has forced corporations and brands to reinvent ways to convey their messages to their targeted audiences.
And one of the cheapest and easiest channels is digital – which is why it is shooting the lights out in terms of growth. But, digital agencies only focus on their channel and not on the whole communications mix. Nor do their brand strategies provide the holistic messaging vantage point owned by the PR discipline.
The Rieses’ writing is at last ringing true.
Public Relations and strategic communicators do not operate like traditional ad agencies who generally use imaginative loud hailers (channels) to spread their one-way message from the brand to the consumer.
The role of public relations has always been to make products ‘cool’ through the right association and to connect people and brands and manage two-way communications.
Whether any of the disciplines in the marketing mix will ever be able to control the message is debatable – but what is very evident is that PRs time is definitely NOW.