In contradiction to the flippancy of that headline, PR is the most serious business of today. In the 24/7 news world, for a business not to be able to handle the media would be derelict, careless and possibly fatal.
We are all in the image business
In the past, PR agencies seemed to be full of leggy blondes drinking Bollinger and smoking Black Sobranie cigarettes (today the very un-PCness of this is gross – who’d dare say it today … who’d believe it appropriate … and wouldn’t it be bad PR?). But then it was all absolutely fabulous. And it still is … fabulous. But today everyone takes the power of PR a lot more seriously. Read James Harding’s Alpha Dogs and you’ll see PR moves governments. The people in PR are generally outward going, smart and fun. But they have the steel to take on self-deluding CEOs, secretaries of state and prime ministers. Their judgement, at the level of Brunswick, Bell Pottinger, Shandwick or Finsbury, is regarded on a par with the top guys at the biggest investment banks.
The PR business still has more than its fill of beautiful people – but nowadays they also tend to have a First or 2:1 from Oxbridge, or as good as. And the sector works harder and more intelligently than it ever used to. Now it’s a smart, savvy business, in tune and in touch with power, opinion formers and the ‘real world’.
How PR works
PR is about getting positive, fact-based stories about your company, its brand, its products and its people appearing in the media. But it’s also about fending off and managing negative stories and potential bad press. PR is now right at the centre of the marketing story because reputation has never been more important. As the founder of JP Morgan – JP Morgan himself – said, ‘Our clients’ belief in our integrity is our most precious possession.’ And if you think that is pompous, change clients to publics and JP to BP and you’ll see nothing changes.
Today PR has to work with lightning speed and 24/7/365 media coverage. There is nowhere to hide, no time to take cover and a constant threat of an idle remark that could become the defining line in a story (As CEO in a crisis, for instance, don’t lament missing your family and wishing you could regain your life.). But the PR professional should be adept at staying one step ahead of a story and recognising where it might go.
For PR agency people, be obsessed with proving you give great value for money. Make the answer to the question ‘What do I get for my money?’ ‘You get a stack of good news and avoidance of bad news.’
For in-house PR people, train your people to deal with the media so they don’t blow up all your hard work with one silly remark.
PR is suddenly a lot more important
It was in the 1990s, as business got more serious and the power of PR was appreciated more and more by the politicians, that the PR world changed. It was the Alistair Campbells and Peter Mandelsons of this world who realised the importance of the next day’s news story, but arguably they got too obsessed with media management, leading to a mass cynicism about what is true. In the end, PR is about solid, factual stories, not puffery. You need substance.
Following the takeover of Safeway, Morrisons had about as nasty a time with the analysts and business media as could be imagined. Sir Ken Morrison was pilloried as a dinosaur and the whole management and data system of the group collapsed.
Enter Mark Bolland – urbane, Dutch, ex-Heineken executive – and within a year Morrisons was (in relative terms) the UK’s best-performing supermarket group with great results, a good story and something else that was magic, called ‘momentum’. They even took on the OFT for untrue allegations about price fixing, won and were awarded damages. Bolland is showing a similar touch now at M&S.
PR became a professional business when its people looked at clients with a view to enhancing their clients’ businesses and not just having fun. No wonder PR Week has suddenly become such an important magazine. PR has moved centre stage. Some PR professionals believe it is the critical tool as it has the ear of so many CEOs.
And ‘spin’? It’s nothing more than putting the best slant on what you’ve got. You are expected to dramatise things, of course, but don’t lie. Don’t ever lie. Because they won’t believe you next time (which is the problem all politicians have).
But new media and the hard-to-impress opinion former have created a sense of driving downhill without brakes. Sue Wilkins of Panache PR put it like this:
‘PR still has to manipulate the messages, the media and the madness … it’s exciting and the most adaptable, cost-effective, credible weapon in the marketing armoury.’
How to write a press release.
Press releases are a necessary evil, which more often than not get binned by journalists because they are boring or blatant pieces of selling. Never assume that a press release is in itself enough.
Five pieces of advice:
- Keep them brief and always supported with good material – photographs, research, contacts.
- Get them to the right person – better still, someone you know and are building a relationship with.
- If possible make them an exclusive – especially if it’s an interesting story.
- See things from the journalist’s viewpoint. They want to look good. Help him or her by giving them something that is new or edgy or funny or interesting. Make it look as if it’s for them, not for you.
- Local press want to fill their pages. Indulge this need by giving them great pictures and well-written material. They’ll be grateful. A local slant is helpful.
Other tools of PR and how to use them
- Telling it clearly. The ability to create good, fact-based stories that say what the facts are, how it all happened, where and when, who did it and why and how much impact it’s all going to have. Put in numbers. Put in facts. Be specific.
- Engaging attention. Find ‘hooks’ or ‘levers’ that engage the poor, perspiring journalist you are sending this to. Something they don’t know or something that adds to what they do know. Something that is unexpected (‘Onions are better than Viagra’ might get their attention but only if it’s true). Some unexpected benefit or something that refutes previously held beliefs.
- Instant communication. Email is the most exciting way of spreading news fast and cheaply. E-letters can help you keep people up to date with what you are doing and be a great way of announcing things you want known. Blogs are a useful way of stating positions and starting dialogue. Your customers are at it the whole time, often reviling you. Are you responding and on the case?
- The web. Corporate web sites need constant updating and are usually a PR disaster – out of date and static. If you have one as a company or one yourself for your own company, update it every week. Better still, appoint a ‘site-minder’ who at very low cost will stop you looking sloppy and out of touch. PR is about news and your web site is a news medium. News is now, not last week.
- TV, radio and press interviews. Don’t be caught short. You need to have the confidence, the practice and the skills to do this. Two or three messages – that’s all you need to keep in your head. Plus good breathing techniques, looking the part (blue shirts on TV) and being upbeat, recognising the interviewer wants a ‘good interview’, not adversarial stuff, but not you doing a sales pitch either. If you try and do that you deserve to be beaten up. Anyone exposed to interviews needs training – a day with a professional coach will change your life.
How to use the latest PR tools
PR is now about more than the media. Increasingly, companies are using bespoke events to ‘showcase’ their clients’ activities, especially in business-to-business (B2B) where prestigious conferences that people see value in attending are being set up.
- Group working breakfasts. Where a group receives a short presentation, has a brief discussion and then shoots off to their office – getting in on time.
- Round tables. Where groups of people share ideas, expertise and knowledge. Places where breakthrough thinking sometimes happens. A place of debate and discovery when done well.
- Workouts. Where, a bit like town hall meetings, you assemble the people in the front line to meet and chew over how to improve a business issue. What you do with the outcome is the PR magic. Internal communications to external communications – there’s something about engaging those in the front line that says you are honest about what you do. The guys who masterminded this technique working with General Electric, the massive US and global industrial and financial services conglomerate, are Schaffer Consulting in the USA (www.scafferconsulting.com).
- Publications. Don’t be shy. If you have a great story to tell, print it, make it look important, publish (probably online or both online and in print) and be proud and be praised.
- Research. Do it, use it. It’s a huge tool if done well. Anyone who has a product that they believe or know has functional or remedial effectiveness needs to get third-party research to prove it, and to publish it if it works out. The media love research. And so do I, because research confers truth. There are usually too many reputations at stake for anyone to lie.
Research is about facts and in PR we like hard, shiny facts.
Heinz running a story based on research, which got picked up by New Scientist, the medical press and then ran in the Daily Mail, among others, about the high levels of anti-carcinogenic lycopene in Heinz Organic Tomato Ketchup.
The Porsche garden at the Hampton Court Flower Festival. Normally car manufacturers park their wretched car in front of a really dull flowerbed in a really dull garden, reducing members of the RHS to a spluttering rage. Porsche demonstrated their underground, hydraulically operated garage, complete with Porsche Carrera, in a great town garden. A fun concept and it all worked brilliantly.
Orange giving tickets to the biggest gig of the year to people who donated just four hours of their time to do volunteer work. What a brilliant double whammy – what a great story.
Calvin Klein launching a fragrance called ‘Secret Obsession’ using actress Eva Mendes in the advertising. The commercial was a raunchy piece with an apparently naked Mendes writhing suggestively on a bed. And yes, we do see one nipple. Briefly. The commercial was banned in the USA, leading to an outraged response from the client, leading to the commercial appearing on YouTube and then being removed from that and its reappearing on other sites with a volley of blogs saying ‘Show us that nipple.’ It was a PR coup of massive proportions.
Brilliance lies in hitting headlines. It also lies in creating momentum.
Bad PR stories
You can get salmonella in your chocolate, or the water in your bottle can have benzene in it, or your crisps can be made from decomposed potatoes, or something worse can spin out of control. Losing control of the media is like having vertigo. Very frightening, and the sort of thing that keeps you awake in the middle of the night.
When a rogue trader loses your bank billions there isn’t a big enough sorry you can say or a statement that can do more than allow you to play for time. Just look as though you’ve regained control.
A good piece of advice for coping with disasters comes from the ex-US President Calvin Coolidge, who though terse had a great way with words:
‘If you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you.’
Some PR disasters
The Galaxy problem. A nice little poster for Galaxy: which chunk of chocolate shall I have. Headline? ‘Eenymeenyminymo’. No problem. Not a brilliant concept – on the OK side of workmanlike. Until it fell into the spitting pit of damnation when someone in the press noted the next line would be ‘catch a nigger by his toe’.
When near facts become whole facts or suppositions become truths.
Fact: MMR jabs cause autism … no, they don’t but … (there’s no smoke without fire … oh yes, there is …).
Fact: plastic bags kill seabirds in their millions. No, plastic does but bags alone don’t. But killer supermarket bags make a better story than industrial waste.
Fact: imported flowers cause damaging carbon emissions through being flown into the UK in big planes … er … truer fact – heated greenhouses growing flowers nearer home do far worse damage.
Brand reputation is the key measure of corporate health
The best adman became one of the best PR men – Lord Tim Bell. He understands better than most the role intelligent PR brings to bear. Here’s what his company’s web site says:
‘In today’s media-led environment, brand awareness and recall are only vague indicators of how a company’s marketing is performing; brand reputation is the measure that truly matters.’
(Chime Communications)
Brilliant PR is about three things:
- Having a strong sense of the zeitgeist surrounding a product or a market.
- The ability to be a compelling story creator and storyteller.
- An understanding of how to protect reputation.
The art of thinking small
In this unforgiving world there is nowhere to hide. Even if you are a small business, on a bad day you may be chased in the media by a discontented customer, or a journalist with a story to find, or a competitor who wants to have a go at you. Andy Grove, ex-CEO of Intel, said it paid to be paranoid. But let’s be more positive.
Remember what we said about stories. In the 21st century the abundance of media means we can also pepper the world with good upbeat stories about your business. Because there are two qualities more powerful than paranoia and they are confidence and optimism.
Sit down and see how many untold, half-told and hidden stories there are in your business.
Brilliance in PR
- PR ideas
A brilliant PR idea gives the media a newsy story they can use, consumers something they enjoy and staff a level of satisfaction and fun. It’s achieved by a combination of creativity (the wow factor), connectivity (knowing the right people to get the job done and talked about), hard work, motivated staff and luck (nothing in PR is guaranteed). - Human qualities
Brilliance in PR is about having a few key qualities:- Knowing how you want to be seen.
- Having great antennae (knowing exactly where danger and opportunities lie).
- Having a nose for a good meaty story.
- Being a persistent salesperson.
- Being clear about what a story is (and what it is not).
- Engagement (if you’re in a PR agency)
Love your client and want to see them do incredibly well. I have never come across anyone any good in marketing services who didn’t want their client and their brand to win – not for the money but because winning is what they felt they deserved. And there’s nothing more exciting than a good piece in the media about your client. Imagine how their mum feels when she sees it … and you do it by finding a good story, telling it well, relevantly and compellingly.
Brilliant PR is about being on the front foot, not waiting for something to happen.