The Case for PR

This morning I recorded content for an upcoming webcast called The Future of Earned Media: Radical Integration. My topic was: 

"What do PR people understand that other marketers traditionally haven’t? "

Grammar aside, I was happy to help out - and my response (in two minutes or less) follows...

PR has always been driven by two key virtues that differentiate it from other marketing disciplines such as advertising

1. An understanding of narrative

2. A sense of campaign

In terms of narrative, we're storytellers. Since 1906 when the first true press release went out, we've built a profession around creating and most critically encouraging people to listen to and share our stories.

This has largely been through the news media, using tactics such as press releases, interviews and so on

In the digital age, this means we're using techniques such as blogger relations, campaign management through Facebook and twitter, YouTube videos and so on to tell our clients stories.

This history has given PR people a good ability to drive discussion towards a singular aim - to use stories to support our clients' business objectives.

The second thing that PR has is a sense of campaign.

We're in it for the long haul.

PR isn't driven by the 13 week advertising push - we tend not to create events with a big bang finish. 

We think about six, 12 month campaigns with complex, overlapping objectives. These campaigns are built on an understanding of what helps our clients' audiences make decisions.

Don't get me wrong, events naturally help - but are subset of the whole. We understand what creates attention, interest, forms decisions, then once someone has decided to buy, how to get them into a brand community, then ultimately become a brand advocate. 

-Jeremy