“We didn’t have a big budget as a startup business, and effective, engaging PR has been the best way for us to get noticed for a fraction of the budget that big breweries set aside for marketing and advertising. By pushing the boundaries of what beer and business could be through creative PR, we have been able to drive global conversation and build our community. Our mission is to make other people as passionate about great craft beer as we are. PR has been a key component of building our community through inspiring storytelling via the media,” James Watt, co-founder, Brewdog.
by Ian Hainey, Author of Promoting Your Business
In marketing there are few things more effective and that can bring more credible exposure for your buck than a newsworthy, expertly-written and deftly pitched press release accompanied by an impactful picture. Do not for one minute think your business isn’t big enough, or sufficiently interesting for PR. Every company has its own interesting stories and a competent PR professional can create stories for any company. Trust me, I was even once tasked with generating monthly media coverage for an oil industry offshore crane company. It’s a PR professional’s job to extract stories on a consistent basis, but then most business owners also could – if they regularly had the time to reflect on what’s happening. To deliver successful PR for your business, you need to think of your organisation and what it does as if you were a journalist – considering what readers would be interested in from an objective perspective. As an integrated communications agency, we’re big believers in the power of a strong story. Our monthly PR activity for clients is often built around a main story or angle we’ll push out through media and influencer contacts, then out further still through social channels and online advertising. It’s often these stories that elevate our clients’ profiles far above that of their competition in terms of awareness and competitive share of voice.
So, you have devised a story for your business and have organised it in a document as best you can, but you are a little reticent to pitch it to a publication. Don’t worry about bothering the editor based on the fear they might not like the story you are pitching. Get to know their publication first, offer to take them out for lunch to introduce yourself and company and discuss any potential future stories or partnerships. The best editors – and there are many great editors, as it’s not easy to get to that position within a decent media outlet – can create a story relevant to their audience out of almost anything. Of utmost importance is pitching the story in the right way – don’t waffle, just give the top-down facts. What editors cannot bear above all else is laziness and lack of preparation. PRs they have no relationship with, who pitch a story without even understanding the story, never mind having researched the publication they are pitching for, is the bane of their working lives.
While PR works for all types and sizes of organisation, it’s much more effective if a business is doing something fresh, interesting and exciting in the market. An extreme example is the craft beer brewer, Brewdog, which has exploded as a company, from two guys selling beers from out of the back of their van in 2007, to 1,800 employees and 80 bars worldwide at the start of 2019 – and its PR machine has played no mean part in it. The driving force behind the success of Brewdog’s PR is the bravery of its founders, James Watt and Martin Dickie, who I have been aware of for some time due to their PR exploits. Brewdog’s owners are masters of using PR for delivering their messages and you can spend hours browsing through their PR stunts online, which have included: dropping toy ‘fat’ cats from a helicopter in London to celebrate achieving a crowdfunding record; launching a beer called Hello My Name is Vladimir that poked fun at Russia’s ban on ‘homosexual propaganda’ ahead of the Winter Olympics and promoting their End of History ale by packaging it inside the bodies of dead animals – the list goes on. Brewdog is quite fearless, as it pushes ahead with controversial ways to get its brand into the media spotlight. Most recently it announced to the media it was launched its own airline claiming to be the world’s first craft beer airline, complete with a slickly produced video clip, which hit the global headlines – at the time of writing this, the story had over 12,000 hits on Google. Take a moment to consider the fact that Brewdog simply makes beer – but it is consistently turning ideas into priceless global media coverage using PR-led integrated communications tactics.
While Brewdog is selling its products to the general public, PR can be just as effective with business-to-business communications. We have clients in the construction, engineering and technical industries who get doors opened, added to tenders and win multi-million-dollar contracts from articles and thought-leadership pieces we create, get published and then push out for them to their niche target audience and decision makers. Nearly all industries have trade titles that are read by collective target audiences, so never consider your company too niche or ‘boring’ to bother with PR.
A strong story can appear in print and on the website of publications read by your industry and potential customers. The social media feeds of that media will usually share your news, often to huge audiences. Online news can massively boost your SEO and online presence. You have the opportunity to share this valuable content on your website, then through your social media channels to your own audience, then to a new audience through targeted social and online advertising. When potential customers are researching which company to use, their first stop is often Google and the brand awareness, credibility and online legacy you have created there can be the difference between drifting into obscurity or getting a meeting to land that next deal.
Particularly with corporate PR, there’s often the view that there ‘isn’t much to talk about’. This can be a common misconception among busy executives. As PR professionals, the people we’re speaking with, or interviewing for content, are nearly always in senior roles and time short. They rarely have the headspace to take a step back and consider all the important and interesting work they’re doing. This work is nearly always newsworthy for their niche target audience and, regularly, to a wider business audience. A good PR professional is highly skilled at digging out the golden nugget. They turn a conversation into precious stories that can engage an audience and disseminate a large number of important key messages about the company along the way.
Businesses can’t necessarily be expected to know what’s interesting about themselves or what the media would find interesting about them. PRs marry the key messages and reputations of businesses with what their target audience, and therefore the relevant media, is interested in. The best trick for organising your thoughts and sourcing the strongest news stories is to compartmentalise the three distinct categories the news topics fit into, which I call The Voices: Industry, Corporate and Product.
Industry Voice is opinion, commentary and predictions, or research and statistics relating to the industry as a whole, that will often be of interest to a broad range of media and readers. This type of PR is capable of generating the biggest returns in terms of coverage and, if you get it right, even the odd front page or page leader story. For example, we released a story from a financial compliance company called CCL, giving an expert opinion about the amount of money laundering he predicted was happening in a country, which went straight to front page of the national business news. Another we did for currency exchange, Travelex, on the most expensive cities in the world in which to celebrate New Year was one of the main stories of the day and led the nation’s news agenda.
Corporate Voice covers stories about the organisation itself, whether it is a senior appointment, plans for expansion, annual returns or project wins. These can be of particular interest to trade media and an audience within the specific industry sector. They can also appeal to a broader audience if the news is considered ‘big’ enough. The simplest form of this type of PR would be senior appointments, where the release may seem boring to some, but it is actually very interesting in the respective industry media, whether Energy, Construction or IT. For example, we released news of the appointment of regional head of Zurich Insurance, which hit the usual insurance and finance media, but also led to a host of interview requests and impressive mainstream business publications, television and radio coverage, due to the fact the brand is so well-known.
Product Voice stories are focus upon the products and services of an organisation. These can be a tougher sell to media, so the key commercial messages often need to be embedded within a topic or piece of content that provides value to the reader. For instance, we promoted a study by Zurich about what the cost of putting your child through university would be 18 years from that date and it made national news headlines, regardless of the fact we mentioned Zurich’s saving products in the release and all the broadcast interviews. The story was a means to an end of communicating to a huge audience and reminding them the importance of saving for their children’s education.
Over time, your public relations strategy should tell the story of your business, the people leading it and the individual parts that make it successful. On occasions when there are quieter months in terms of news, a proactive PR firm can generate a topical feature angle to ensure consistency of messaging and that new audiences are being continuously reached. In addition, the best ambassadors for organisations are usually their own employees, so never underestimate the power of profile articles. They provide the opportunity for experts within the company to speak with authority as thought leaders in the market, which can inspire confidence in the brand.
PR is powerful as it builds the identity of the brand and adds to its equity and value – even more so with the searchability of all articles online. While at Sportlobster, the global media coverage we were delivering, from celebrity partnerships, to hitting key milestones as a new social network, were prevalent in every presentation to potential investors, as a way of demonstrating credibility and affirming why they should invest more money into the social network. Similarly, when it comes time for a company to be sold, one of the first points of due diligence is to perform thorough searches on the organisation.
A simple example of PR’s ability to build real credibility is an experience we had recently with a construction consultancy client, for whom we generated an extensive project case study in the top aviation industry magazine, which detailed the client’s work on a high-profile international airport terminal in Abu Dhabi. Several months later they asked us to procure several print copies of the magazine, which they proudly handed over to the selection panel during their pitch to win a sizeable contract building another country’s new airport terminal. They won the contract and were convinced the glowing editorialised piece may just have given them the edge.
When we take on a new PR client, much of the creative work is done before anything is released. A brainstorming session will be scheduled, then a key messaging hierarchy created, which lays out the most important messages of the brand to be communicated through PR activity over time in order to demonstrate the brand’s identity and values. It also ensures key characteristics and USPs are carried over into any communication with media, whether written, or spoken during interviews. Regardless of whether your business requires business-to-consumer (B2C) PR or business-to-business (B2B) PR, the communications strategy should always include these factors, highlighting what your service or product is and how it is making a difference to your customers.
In general people like to do business with brands and people they trust, and PR is a top performing method of promotion in this respect. Most PR output is editorialised, usually with a level of implicit endorsement from a third party – someone else is delivering the message, not the brand itself. Therefore, it can be arguably the most effective marketing tool for rapidly building trust and credibility.
“We didn’t have a big budget as a startup business, and effective, engaging PR has been the best way for us to get noticed for a fraction of the budget that big breweries set aside for marketing and advertising. By pushing the boundaries of what beer and business could be through creative PR, we have been able to drive global conversation and build our community. Our mission is to make other people as passionate about great craft beer as we are. PR has been a key component of building our community through inspiring storytelling via the media,” James Watt, co-founder, Brewdog.
by Ian Hainey, Author of Promoting Your Business
In marketing there are few things more effective and that can bring more credible exposure for your buck than a newsworthy, expertly-written and deftly pitched press release accompanied by an impactful picture. Do not for one minute think your business isn’t big enough, or sufficiently interesting for PR. Every company has its own interesting stories and a competent PR professional can create stories for any company. Trust me, I was even once tasked with generating monthly media coverage for an oil industry offshore crane company. It’s a PR professional’s job to extract stories on a consistent basis, but then most business owners also could – if they regularly had the time to reflect on what’s happening. To deliver successful PR for your business, you need to think of your organisation and what it does as if you were a journalist – considering what readers would be interested in from an objective perspective. As an integrated communications agency, we’re big believers in the power of a strong story. Our monthly PR activity for clients is often built around a main story or angle we’ll push out through media and influencer contacts, then out further still through social channels and online advertising. It’s often these stories that elevate our clients’ profiles far above that of their competition in terms of awareness and competitive share of voice.
So, you have devised a story for your business and have organised it in a document as best you can, but you are a little reticent to pitch it to a publication. Don’t worry about bothering the editor based on the fear they might not like the story you are pitching. Get to know their publication first, offer to take them out for lunch to introduce yourself and company and discuss any potential future stories or partnerships. The best editors – and there are many great editors, as it’s not easy to get to that position within a decent media outlet – can create a story relevant to their audience out of almost anything. Of utmost importance is pitching the story in the right way – don’t waffle, just give the top-down facts. What editors cannot bear above all else is laziness and lack of preparation. PRs they have no relationship with, who pitch a story without even understanding the story, never mind having researched the publication they are pitching for, is the bane of their working lives.
While PR works for all types and sizes of organisation, it’s much more effective if a business is doing something fresh, interesting and exciting in the market. An extreme example is the craft beer brewer, Brewdog, which has exploded as a company, from two guys selling beers from out of the back of their van in 2007, to 1,800 employees and 80 bars worldwide at the start of 2019 – and its PR machine has played no mean part in it. The driving force behind the success of Brewdog’s PR is the bravery of its founders, James Watt and Martin Dickie, who I have been aware of for some time due to their PR exploits. Brewdog’s owners are masters of using PR for delivering their messages and you can spend hours browsing through their PR stunts online, which have included: dropping toy ‘fat’ cats from a helicopter in London to celebrate achieving a crowdfunding record; launching a beer called Hello My Name is Vladimir that poked fun at Russia’s ban on ‘homosexual propaganda’ ahead of the Winter Olympics and promoting their End of History ale by packaging it inside the bodies of dead animals – the list goes on. Brewdog is quite fearless, as it pushes ahead with controversial ways to get its brand into the media spotlight. Most recently it announced to the media it was launched its own airline claiming to be the world’s first craft beer airline, complete with a slickly produced video clip, which hit the global headlines – at the time of writing this, the story had over 12,000 hits on Google. Take a moment to consider the fact that Brewdog simply makes beer – but it is consistently turning ideas into priceless global media coverage using PR-led integrated communications tactics.
While Brewdog is selling its products to the general public, PR can be just as effective with business-to-business communications. We have clients in the construction, engineering and technical industries who get doors opened, added to tenders and win multi-million-dollar contracts from articles and thought-leadership pieces we create, get published and then push out for them to their niche target audience and decision makers. Nearly all industries have trade titles that are read by collective target audiences, so never consider your company too niche or ‘boring’ to bother with PR.
A strong story can appear in print and on the website of publications read by your industry and potential customers. The social media feeds of that media will usually share your news, often to huge audiences. Online news can massively boost your SEO and online presence. You have the opportunity to share this valuable content on your website, then through your social media channels to your own audience, then to a new audience through targeted social and online advertising. When potential customers are researching which company to use, their first stop is often Google and the brand awareness, credibility and online legacy you have created there can be the difference between drifting into obscurity or getting a meeting to land that next deal.
Particularly with corporate PR, there’s often the view that there ‘isn’t much to talk about’. This can be a common misconception among busy executives. As PR professionals, the people we’re speaking with, or interviewing for content, are nearly always in senior roles and time short. They rarely have the headspace to take a step back and consider all the important and interesting work they’re doing. This work is nearly always newsworthy for their niche target audience and, regularly, to a wider business audience. A good PR professional is highly skilled at digging out the golden nugget. They turn a conversation into precious stories that can engage an audience and disseminate a large number of important key messages about the company along the way.
Businesses can’t necessarily be expected to know what’s interesting about themselves or what the media would find interesting about them. PRs marry the key messages and reputations of businesses with what their target audience, and therefore the relevant media, is interested in. The best trick for organising your thoughts and sourcing the strongest news stories is to compartmentalise the three distinct categories the news topics fit into, which I call The Voices: Industry, Corporate and Product.
Industry Voice is opinion, commentary and predictions, or research and statistics relating to the industry as a whole, that will often be of interest to a broad range of media and readers. This type of PR is capable of generating the biggest returns in terms of coverage and, if you get it right, even the odd front page or page leader story. For example, we released a story from a financial compliance company called CCL, giving an expert opinion about the amount of money laundering he predicted was happening in a country, which went straight to front page of the national business news. Another we did for currency exchange, Travelex, on the most expensive cities in the world in which to celebrate New Year was one of the main stories of the day and led the nation’s news agenda.
Corporate Voice covers stories about the organisation itself, whether it is a senior appointment, plans for expansion, annual returns or project wins. These can be of particular interest to trade media and an audience within the specific industry sector. They can also appeal to a broader audience if the news is considered ‘big’ enough. The simplest form of this type of PR would be senior appointments, where the release may seem boring to some, but it is actually very interesting in the respective industry media, whether Energy, Construction or IT. For example, we released news of the appointment of regional head of Zurich Insurance, which hit the usual insurance and finance media, but also led to a host of interview requests and impressive mainstream business publications, television and radio coverage, due to the fact the brand is so well-known.
Product Voice stories are focus upon the products and services of an organisation. These can be a tougher sell to media, so the key commercial messages often need to be embedded within a topic or piece of content that provides value to the reader. For instance, we promoted a study by Zurich about what the cost of putting your child through university would be 18 years from that date and it made national news headlines, regardless of the fact we mentioned Zurich’s saving products in the release and all the broadcast interviews. The story was a means to an end of communicating to a huge audience and reminding them the importance of saving for their children’s education.
Over time, your public relations strategy should tell the story of your business, the people leading it and the individual parts that make it successful. On occasions when there are quieter months in terms of news, a proactive PR firm can generate a topical feature angle to ensure consistency of messaging and that new audiences are being continuously reached. In addition, the best ambassadors for organisations are usually their own employees, so never underestimate the power of profile articles. They provide the opportunity for experts within the company to speak with authority as thought leaders in the market, which can inspire confidence in the brand.
PR is powerful as it builds the identity of the brand and adds to its equity and value – even more so with the searchability of all articles online. While at Sportlobster, the global media coverage we were delivering, from celebrity partnerships, to hitting key milestones as a new social network, were prevalent in every presentation to potential investors, as a way of demonstrating credibility and affirming why they should invest more money into the social network. Similarly, when it comes time for a company to be sold, one of the first points of due diligence is to perform thorough searches on the organisation.
A simple example of PR’s ability to build real credibility is an experience we had recently with a construction consultancy client, for whom we generated an extensive project case study in the top aviation industry magazine, which detailed the client’s work on a high-profile international airport terminal in Abu Dhabi. Several months later they asked us to procure several print copies of the magazine, which they proudly handed over to the selection panel during their pitch to win a sizeable contract building another country’s new airport terminal. They won the contract and were convinced the glowing editorialised piece may just have given them the edge.
When we take on a new PR client, much of the creative work is done before anything is released. A brainstorming session will be scheduled, then a key messaging hierarchy created, which lays out the most important messages of the brand to be communicated through PR activity over time in order to demonstrate the brand’s identity and values. It also ensures key characteristics and USPs are carried over into any communication with media, whether written, or spoken during interviews. Regardless of whether your business requires business-to-consumer (B2C) PR or business-to-business (B2B) PR, the communications strategy should always include these factors, highlighting what your service or product is and how it is making a difference to your customers.
In general people like to do business with brands and people they trust, and PR is a top performing method of promotion in this respect. Most PR output is editorialised, usually with a level of implicit endorsement from a third party – someone else is delivering the message, not the brand itself. Therefore, it can be arguably the most effective marketing tool for rapidly building trust and credibility.
“We didn’t have a big budget as a startup business, and effective, engaging PR has been the best way for us to get noticed for a fraction of the budget that big breweries set aside for marketing and advertising. By pushing the boundaries of what beer and business could be through creative PR, we have been able to drive global conversation and build our community. Our mission is to make other people as passionate about great craft beer as we are. PR has been a key component of building our community through inspiring storytelling via the media,” James Watt, co-founder, Brewdog.
by Ian Hainey, Author of Promoting Your Business
In marketing there are few things more effective and that can bring more credible exposure for your buck than a newsworthy, expertly-written and deftly pitched press release accompanied by an impactful picture. Do not for one minute think your business isn’t big enough, or sufficiently interesting for PR. Every company has its own interesting stories and a competent PR professional can create stories for any company. Trust me, I was even once tasked with generating monthly media coverage for an oil industry offshore crane company. It’s a PR professional’s job to extract stories on a consistent basis, but then most business owners also could – if they regularly had the time to reflect on what’s happening. To deliver successful PR for your business, you need to think of your organisation and what it does as if you were a journalist – considering what readers would be interested in from an objective perspective. As an integrated communications agency, we’re big believers in the power of a strong story. Our monthly PR activity for clients is often built around a main story or angle we’ll push out through media and influencer contacts, then out further still through social channels and online advertising. It’s often these stories that elevate our clients’ profiles far above that of their competition in terms of awareness and competitive share of voice.
So, you have devised a story for your business and have organised it in a document as best you can, but you are a little reticent to pitch it to a publication. Don’t worry about bothering the editor based on the fear they might not like the story you are pitching. Get to know their publication first, offer to take them out for lunch to introduce yourself and company and discuss any potential future stories or partnerships. The best editors – and there are many great editors, as it’s not easy to get to that position within a decent media outlet – can create a story relevant to their audience out of almost anything. Of utmost importance is pitching the story in the right way – don’t waffle, just give the top-down facts. What editors cannot bear above all else is laziness and lack of preparation. PRs they have no relationship with, who pitch a story without even understanding the story, never mind having researched the publication they are pitching for, is the bane of their working lives.
While PR works for all types and sizes of organisation, it’s much more effective if a business is doing something fresh, interesting and exciting in the market. An extreme example is the craft beer brewer, Brewdog, which has exploded as a company, from two guys selling beers from out of the back of their van in 2007, to 1,800 employees and 80 bars worldwide at the start of 2019 – and its PR machine has played no mean part in it. The driving force behind the success of Brewdog’s PR is the bravery of its founders, James Watt and Martin Dickie, who I have been aware of for some time due to their PR exploits. Brewdog’s owners are masters of using PR for delivering their messages and you can spend hours browsing through their PR stunts online, which have included: dropping toy ‘fat’ cats from a helicopter in London to celebrate achieving a crowdfunding record; launching a beer called Hello My Name is Vladimir that poked fun at Russia’s ban on ‘homosexual propaganda’ ahead of the Winter Olympics and promoting their End of History ale by packaging it inside the bodies of dead animals – the list goes on. Brewdog is quite fearless, as it pushes ahead with controversial ways to get its brand into the media spotlight. Most recently it announced to the media it was launched its own airline claiming to be the world’s first craft beer airline, complete with a slickly produced video clip, which hit the global headlines – at the time of writing this, the story had over 12,000 hits on Google. Take a moment to consider the fact that Brewdog simply makes beer – but it is consistently turning ideas into priceless global media coverage using PR-led integrated communications tactics.
While Brewdog is selling its products to the general public, PR can be just as effective with business-to-business communications. We have clients in the construction, engineering and technical industries who get doors opened, added to tenders and win multi-million-dollar contracts from articles and thought-leadership pieces we create, get published and then push out for them to their niche target audience and decision makers. Nearly all industries have trade titles that are read by collective target audiences, so never consider your company too niche or ‘boring’ to bother with PR.
A strong story can appear in print and on the website of publications read by your industry and potential customers. The social media feeds of that media will usually share your news, often to huge audiences. Online news can massively boost your SEO and online presence. You have the opportunity to share this valuable content on your website, then through your social media channels to your own audience, then to a new audience through targeted social and online advertising. When potential customers are researching which company to use, their first stop is often Google and the brand awareness, credibility and online legacy you have created there can be the difference between drifting into obscurity or getting a meeting to land that next deal.
Particularly with corporate PR, there’s often the view that there ‘isn’t much to talk about’. This can be a common misconception among busy executives. As PR professionals, the people we’re speaking with, or interviewing for content, are nearly always in senior roles and time short. They rarely have the headspace to take a step back and consider all the important and interesting work they’re doing. This work is nearly always newsworthy for their niche target audience and, regularly, to a wider business audience. A good PR professional is highly skilled at digging out the golden nugget. They turn a conversation into precious stories that can engage an audience and disseminate a large number of important key messages about the company along the way.
Businesses can’t necessarily be expected to know what’s interesting about themselves or what the media would find interesting about them. PRs marry the key messages and reputations of businesses with what their target audience, and therefore the relevant media, is interested in. The best trick for organising your thoughts and sourcing the strongest news stories is to compartmentalise the three distinct categories the news topics fit into, which I call The Voices: Industry, Corporate and Product.
Industry Voice is opinion, commentary and predictions, or research and statistics relating to the industry as a whole, that will often be of interest to a broad range of media and readers. This type of PR is capable of generating the biggest returns in terms of coverage and, if you get it right, even the odd front page or page leader story. For example, we released a story from a financial compliance company called CCL, giving an expert opinion about the amount of money laundering he predicted was happening in a country, which went straight to front page of the national business news. Another we did for currency exchange, Travelex, on the most expensive cities in the world in which to celebrate New Year was one of the main stories of the day and led the nation’s news agenda.
Corporate Voice covers stories about the organisation itself, whether it is a senior appointment, plans for expansion, annual returns or project wins. These can be of particular interest to trade media and an audience within the specific industry sector. They can also appeal to a broader audience if the news is considered ‘big’ enough. The simplest form of this type of PR would be senior appointments, where the release may seem boring to some, but it is actually very interesting in the respective industry media, whether Energy, Construction or IT. For example, we released news of the appointment of regional head of Zurich Insurance, which hit the usual insurance and finance media, but also led to a host of interview requests and impressive mainstream business publications, television and radio coverage, due to the fact the brand is so well-known.
Product Voice stories are focus upon the products and services of an organisation. These can be a tougher sell to media, so the key commercial messages often need to be embedded within a topic or piece of content that provides value to the reader. For instance, we promoted a study by Zurich about what the cost of putting your child through university would be 18 years from that date and it made national news headlines, regardless of the fact we mentioned Zurich’s saving products in the release and all the broadcast interviews. The story was a means to an end of communicating to a huge audience and reminding them the importance of saving for their children’s education.
Over time, your public relations strategy should tell the story of your business, the people leading it and the individual parts that make it successful. On occasions when there are quieter months in terms of news, a proactive PR firm can generate a topical feature angle to ensure consistency of messaging and that new audiences are being continuously reached. In addition, the best ambassadors for organisations are usually their own employees, so never underestimate the power of profile articles. They provide the opportunity for experts within the company to speak with authority as thought leaders in the market, which can inspire confidence in the brand.
PR is powerful as it builds the identity of the brand and adds to its equity and value – even more so with the searchability of all articles online. While at Sportlobster, the global media coverage we were delivering, from celebrity partnerships, to hitting key milestones as a new social network, were prevalent in every presentation to potential investors, as a way of demonstrating credibility and affirming why they should invest more money into the social network. Similarly, when it comes time for a company to be sold, one of the first points of due diligence is to perform thorough searches on the organisation.
A simple example of PR’s ability to build real credibility is an experience we had recently with a construction consultancy client, for whom we generated an extensive project case study in the top aviation industry magazine, which detailed the client’s work on a high-profile international airport terminal in Abu Dhabi. Several months later they asked us to procure several print copies of the magazine, which they proudly handed over to the selection panel during their pitch to win a sizeable contract building another country’s new airport terminal. They won the contract and were convinced the glowing editorialised piece may just have given them the edge.
When we take on a new PR client, much of the creative work is done before anything is released. A brainstorming session will be scheduled, then a key messaging hierarchy created, which lays out the most important messages of the brand to be communicated through PR activity over time in order to demonstrate the brand’s identity and values. It also ensures key characteristics and USPs are carried over into any communication with media, whether written, or spoken during interviews. Regardless of whether your business requires business-to-consumer (B2C) PR or business-to-business (B2B) PR, the communications strategy should always include these factors, highlighting what your service or product is and how it is making a difference to your customers.
In general people like to do business with brands and people they trust, and PR is a top performing method of promotion in this respect. Most PR output is editorialised, usually with a level of implicit endorsement from a third party – someone else is delivering the message, not the brand itself. Therefore, it can be arguably the most effective marketing tool for rapidly building trust and credibility.
“We didn’t have a big budget as a startup business, and effective, engaging PR has been the best way for us to get noticed for a fraction of the budget that big breweries set aside for marketing and advertising. By pushing the boundaries of what beer and business could be through creative PR, we have been able to drive global conversation and build our community. Our mission is to make other people as passionate about great craft beer as we are. PR has been a key component of building our community through inspiring storytelling via the media,” James Watt, co-founder, Brewdog.
In marketing there are few things more effective and that can bring more credible exposure for your buck than a newsworthy, expertly-written and deftly pitched press release accompanied by an impactful picture. Do not for one minute think your business isn’t big enough, or sufficiently interesting for PR. Every company has its own interesting stories and a competent PR professional can create stories for any company. Trust me, I was even once tasked with generating monthly media coverage for an oil industry offshore crane company. It’s a PR professional’s job to extract stories on a consistent basis, but then most business owners also could – if they regularly had the time to reflect on what’s happening. To deliver successful PR for your business, you need to think of your organisation and what it does as if you were a journalist – considering what readers would be interested in from an objective perspective. As an integrated communications agency, we’re big believers in the power of a strong story. Our monthly PR activity for clients is often built around a main story or angle we’ll push out through media and influencer contacts, then out further still through social channels and online advertising. It’s often these stories that elevate our clients’ profiles far above that of their competition in terms of awareness and competitive share of voice.
So, you have devised a story for your business and have organised it in a document as best you can, but you are a little reticent to pitch it to a publication. Don’t worry about bothering the editor based on the fear they might not like the story you are pitching. Get to know their publication first, offer to take them out for lunch to introduce yourself and company and discuss any potential future stories or partnerships. The best editors – and there are many great editors, as it’s not easy to get to that position within a decent media outlet – can create a story relevant to their audience out of almost anything. Of utmost importance is pitching the story in the right way – don’t waffle, just give the top-down facts. What editors cannot bear above all else is laziness and lack of preparation. PRs they have no relationship with, who pitch a story without even understanding the story, never mind having researched the publication they are pitching for, is the bane of their working lives.
While PR works for all types and sizes of organisation, it’s much more effective if a business is doing something fresh, interesting and exciting in the market. An extreme example is the craft beer brewer, Brewdog, which has exploded as a company, from two guys selling beers from out of the back of their van in 2007, to 1,800 employees and 80 bars worldwide at the start of 2019 – and its PR machine has played no mean part in it. The driving force behind the success of Brewdog’s PR is the bravery of its founders, James Watt and Martin Dickie, who I have been aware of for some time due to their PR exploits. Brewdog’s owners are masters of using PR for delivering their messages and you can spend hours browsing through their PR stunts online, which have included: dropping toy ‘fat’ cats from a helicopter in London to celebrate achieving a crowdfunding record; launching a beer called Hello My Name is Vladimir that poked fun at Russia’s ban on ‘homosexual propaganda’ ahead of the Winter Olympics and promoting their End of History ale by packaging it inside the bodies of dead animals – the list goes on. Brewdog is quite fearless, as it pushes ahead with controversial ways to get its brand into the media spotlight. Most recently it announced to the media it was launched its own airline claiming to be the world’s first craft beer airline, complete with a slickly produced video clip, which hit the global headlines – at the time of writing this, the story had over 12,000 hits on Google. Take a moment to consider the fact that Brewdog simply makes beer – but it is consistently turning ideas into priceless global media coverage using PR-led integrated communications tactics.
While Brewdog is selling its products to the general public, PR can be just as effective with business-to-business communications. We have clients in the construction, engineering and technical industries who get doors opened, added to tenders and win multi-million-dollar contracts from articles and thought-leadership pieces we create, get published and then push out for them to their niche target audience and decision makers. Nearly all industries have trade titles that are read by collective target audiences, so never consider your company too niche or ‘boring’ to bother with PR.
A strong story can appear in print and on the website of publications read by your industry and potential customers. The social media feeds of that media will usually share your news, often to huge audiences. Online news can massively boost your SEO and online presence. You have the opportunity to share this valuable content on your website, then through your social media channels to your own audience, then to a new audience through targeted social and online advertising. When potential customers are researching which company to use, their first stop is often Google and the brand awareness, credibility and online legacy you have created there can be the difference between drifting into obscurity or getting a meeting to land that next deal.
Particularly with corporate PR, there’s often the view that there ‘isn’t much to talk about’. This can be a common misconception among busy executives. As PR professionals, the people we’re speaking with, or interviewing for content, are nearly always in senior roles and time short. They rarely have the headspace to take a step back and consider all the important and interesting work they’re doing. This work is nearly always newsworthy for their niche target audience and, regularly, to a wider business audience. A good PR professional is highly skilled at digging out the golden nugget. They turn a conversation into precious stories that can engage an audience and disseminate a large number of important key messages about the company along the way.
Businesses can’t necessarily be expected to know what’s interesting about themselves or what the media would find interesting about them. PRs marry the key messages and reputations of businesses with what their target audience, and therefore the relevant media, is interested in. The best trick for organising your thoughts and sourcing the strongest news stories is to compartmentalise the three distinct categories the news topics fit into, which I call The Voices: Industry, Corporate and Product.
Industry Voice is opinion, commentary and predictions, or research and statistics relating to the industry as a whole, that will often be of interest to a broad range of media and readers. This type of PR is capable of generating the biggest returns in terms of coverage and, if you get it right, even the odd front page or page leader story. For example, we released a story from a financial compliance company called CCL, giving an expert opinion about the amount of money laundering he predicted was happening in a country, which went straight to front page of the national business news. Another we did for currency exchange, Travelex, on the most expensive cities in the world in which to celebrate New Year was one of the main stories of the day and led the nation’s news agenda.
Corporate Voice covers stories about the organisation itself, whether it is a senior appointment, plans for expansion, annual returns or project wins. These can be of particular interest to trade media and an audience within the specific industry sector. They can also appeal to a broader audience if the news is considered ‘big’ enough. The simplest form of this type of PR would be senior appointments, where the release may seem boring to some, but it is actually very interesting in the respective industry media, whether Energy, Construction or IT. For example, we released news of the appointment of regional head of Zurich Insurance, which hit the usual insurance and finance media, but also led to a host of interview requests and impressive mainstream business publications, television and radio coverage, due to the fact the brand is so well-known.
Product Voice stories are focus upon the products and services of an organisation. These can be a tougher sell to media, so the key commercial messages often need to be embedded within a topic or piece of content that provides value to the reader. For instance, we promoted a study by Zurich about what the cost of putting your child through university would be 18 years from that date and it made national news headlines, regardless of the fact we mentioned Zurich’s saving products in the release and all the broadcast interviews. The story was a means to an end of communicating to a huge audience and reminding them the importance of saving for their children’s education.
Over time, your public relations strategy should tell the story of your business, the people leading it and the individual parts that make it successful. On occasions when there are quieter months in terms of news, a proactive PR firm can generate a topical feature angle to ensure consistency of messaging and that new audiences are being continuously reached. In addition, the best ambassadors for organisations are usually their own employees, so never underestimate the power of profile articles. They provide the opportunity for experts within the company to speak with authority as thought leaders in the market, which can inspire confidence in the brand.
PR is powerful as it builds the identity of the brand and adds to its equity and value – even more so with the searchability of all articles online. While at Sportlobster, the global media coverage we were delivering, from celebrity partnerships, to hitting key milestones as a new social network, were prevalent in every presentation to potential investors, as a way of demonstrating credibility and affirming why they should invest more money into the social network. Similarly, when it comes time for a company to be sold, one of the first points of due diligence is to perform thorough searches on the organisation.
A simple example of PR’s ability to build real credibility is an experience we had recently with a construction consultancy client, for whom we generated an extensive project case study in the top aviation industry magazine, which detailed the client’s work on a high-profile international airport terminal in Abu Dhabi. Several months later they asked us to procure several print copies of the magazine, which they proudly handed over to the selection panel during their pitch to win a sizeable contract building another country’s new airport terminal. They won the contract and were convinced the glowing editorialised piece may just have given them the edge.
When we take on a new PR client, much of the creative work is done before anything is released. A brainstorming session will be scheduled, then a key messaging hierarchy created, which lays out the most important messages of the brand to be communicated through PR activity over time in order to demonstrate the brand’s identity and values. It also ensures key characteristics and USPs are carried over into any communication with media, whether written, or spoken during interviews. Regardless of whether your business requires business-to-consumer (B2C) PR or business-to-business (B2B) PR, the communications strategy should always include these factors, highlighting what your service or product is and how it is making a difference to your customers.
In general people like to do business with brands and people they trust, and PR is a top performing method of promotion in this respect. Most PR output is editorialised, usually with a level of implicit endorsement from a third party – someone else is delivering the message, not the brand itself. Therefore, it can be arguably the most effective marketing tool for rapidly building trust and credibility.