We’re back with another installment of our Breaking the Ice series. For this piece, we’re completing a deep dive into the world of public relations with the help of our in-house expert, Tom Walters.
In a world where headlines can travel around the globe in seconds, understanding how to harness the power of public relations is crucial for any brand looking to stand out, and stay ahead.
Thanks for joining us Tom, please introduce yourself and explain your role at The Dairy.
I’m The Dairy’s Account Director and, quoting how Nigel has introduced me to many clients over the years, our ‘King of Content’. My bread and butter tactical expertise is within content marketing and PR, which has been layered with brand building and strategic knowledge over an 11+ year career.
I support our clients with crafting audience-led narratives, compelling content and data-driven brand strategies which deliver the return on investment they’re looking for.
What is Public Relations?
Public relations, or PR, is simply about reputation management across a broad number of touchpoints. The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) say the following:
Public Relations is about reputation – the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you. Public Relations is the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.
Two decades ago, PR was predominantly the art of managing a brand’s reputation in print and the wider public domain through traditional advertising. Fast forward over those next two decades, and the landscape has shifted considerably with digital PR now the lead – and that extends way beyond websites for publications, newspapers and magazines. Social media is a fluid, often uncontrollable form of PR which many brands think about in silo. Instead, marketing departments and agencies taking PR seriously must now consider social as part of the PR mix.
This also makes reputation management harder than it’s ever been. I always say that if you’re not controlling the narrative about your brand, then someone else will – and those words never hold more truth than with social media. That’s why any brand turning its back on social media for fear of being in that space, is likely causing more harm to its reputation than good.
What are the benefits of incorporating PR within your brand strategy?
Reputation management is the first benefit. If you’re not controlling the narrative around your brand then someone else will. Whether your brand has been guilty of creating negative press or, your customers have had their say and are setting the narrative for you, you want to have as much control over that narrative as possible. As a PR professional, you need to be managing your brand’s reputation on all fronts – from the traditional magazines and newspapers, to review platforms, online articles and social media channels. One dropped ball across any of these mediums, and it can spell disaster for your reputation. Managing your brand’s reputation is one of the most effective ways of building trust with audiences, which in turn garners brand equity and consumer loyalty, leading to advocacy.
The second significant benefit is lead generation. We’re often guilty of only attributing lead generation with what are considered the primary digital channels such as social media, PPC and web, but a carefully crafted narrative around a business, brand or product story can be a great driver for lead generation. If you can succinctly sell the benefits of your product or service with compelling messaging and visuals, you can often see the rewards trickling through in next to no time. And when you integrate PR with the aforementioned digital experiences and tactics and analyse all of your data as an integrated brand story, you have the perfect recipe to create, test, optimise and analyse campaigns on an ongoing basis.
Finally, PR allows you to establish authority and credibility within your strategy. You want your brand to be the expert, the thought leader in your field of specialism. PR is a vessel for positioning your brand and its products or services as the go-to for consumers within that space. By discussing topics related to your industry through interviews and features, and securing coverage which promotes your brand as the best of the best, before repeating the cycle – because as we know repetition builds reputation – you can quickly establish the credibility and authority you crave in order to turn early pockets of discussion into serious purchaser intent.
How do you handle a PR crisis or negative publicity?
Take control as quickly as you can and never bury your head in the sand. That’s the best bit of advice I can give anyone working in crisis communications. There are many case studies of famous brands who have handled crises poorly – creating lasting damage which they never truly recover from.
As soon as you catch wind of a crisis, you need to be all over it. Get the facts, draft a holding statement, share a statement on social media and continue to request regular updates as the crisis unfolds so that you are forearmed to update both the public and the media as the situation evolves. You always want to be a step ahead, where possible, so that you’re not on the back foot. That’s when a crisis will quickly get out of hand and your control of the narrative will slip.
When I partner with a brand on their PR and communications strategy, one of the first questions I ask is “do you have a crisis management strategy?”. If the answer is no, then we need to create one pronto so that we understand who’s responsible for what in the event of a crisis, and what action those people need to take and when.
Many brands say that a crisis will never happen to them or if it does, it will be insignificant, but the old cliche of “failure to prepare, prepare to fail” is never more true than with crisis communications.
What impact has social media had on public relations?
An irreversible impact. Most people have either seen snippets of Absolutely Fabulous or had visions of the old fashioned PR agencies where outlandish retainer fees and champagne corks popping are commonplace, but social media has made the industry grow up’. It’s data-driven, analytical and more accountable than anyone in the 80s or 90s could have ever imagined.
PR is a digital-first practice. It never sleeps and requires constant attention. Take your eyes off it for a second, or make the tiniest slip up, and the consequences to a brand’s reputation can be irreversible.
Brands want to understand the return on their investment. Citing readership figures is no longer enough. We have to treat PR like any other digital tactic. Regular reporting, analysis and optimisation must be integrated into any strategy so that we learn from the past in order to create the next compelling narrative. Audiences crave experiences, so PR must be experience-led in order to offer something more. It must be a serious and memorable touchpoint in the funnel in order to convert anticipated interest into serious leads.
Get in touch with our PR experts today to see how we can help with your brand strategy.
