PR IN 2007: WHY WE’RE WINNING
This op-ed from an industry website was published today…
PR IN 2007: WHY WE’RE WINNING…
It’s 2007 and times have never been better for the Public Relations industry. Our services aren’t just part of an integrated communications program, for many brands Public Relations is THE key facet that companies are utilizing to build corporate identity and drive sales. The old axiom for many companies was to have earned media as reinforcement for paid media but with today’s technological advances the matrix has shifted. It’s made things difficult for media planners but has presented a golden opportunity for our industry.
However, as I am fond of saying the level of mediocrity that exists in our profession is one of the reasons why we have grown at such a rapid pace and others are stuck in their ways. Brands are looking to the industry to step up and claim the mantle (and dollars) that advertising once held but few firms have the sense of urgency. The media has changed, the marketplace has changed, but our rivals haven’t…. It’s no big secret why 5W and similar minded agencies are winning today’s PR battles.
No Yes Men: The first thing I tell our new business prospects is that they need to think of us as an active partner. Your PR Agency needs to be hired as if you would hire your lawyer. Too many agencies are willing to cash the check at the 1st of the month and blindly be led by the clients to “keep the peace”. Confrontation is not always a bad thing… If for a corporation, Public Relations is one of their chief concerns and they’ve taken your agency help them meet their objectives, than it’s your duty to explain to them their Public Relations strengths and weaknesses and what messages need to be tweaked and any potential hurdles that you will have to go through together. Ultimately, as the Public Relations professional, it is the agencies themselves that need to provide counsel on the best course of action—not to just simply agree for convenience sake.
Today’s client-agency relationship needs to be a two-way dialogue in order to determine and maximize ROI. So many of our new clients who come to 5W after leaving their previous agencies are nonplussed when speaking about them. Whenever we are pitching a new piece of business and when speaking about their previous agency the phrase “They were OK but…” is uttered, I know that this will become a 5W client. We aren’t always the nicest but our passion and honesty with our clients differentiate us from the complacency of our competition. I can’t imagine anything worse from the client side than writing a sizeable public relations expense check month after month and wondering if your agency gets or has even tried to get what makes you and your business tick.
Influence the Influencers: One of the reasons why we consistently win is that we understand the balance of media relations to influencer relations. Brands want exposure in front of celebrities and tastemakers as much as in major media outlets. We’ve built our business around having a strong stable of lifestyle and celebrity clients that not only help increase our billings but also give many of our corporate clients instant access to tastemakers that they would normally be unable to get to. When some of our high tech clients first came to the agency they didn’t ask what have you done for NICE Systems (one of our most longstanding and successful clients), they asked what have you done for Sean “Diddy” Combs and Pamela Anderson. While some agencies might compete with 5W on media relations, very few are a call away from putting brands in front of these people.
Case in point was our recent “5W Sundance Escape 2007” that we conducted at this year’s Sundance Festival in Park City, Utah. We conceptualized creating a unique venue to bring celebrities and brands together— but on short notice (less than one month), we needed to pull brands in as sponsors to make the house a reality. Because of our reputation of understanding both the celebrity and brand world— we were able to secure Evian, Budweiser Select and Boost Mobile as sponsors, knowing that they would not only gain access to major celebs but also in a way that would build brand equity. Did we deliver? We made our house THE Sundance hotspot and attracted the likes of Josh Hartnett, Sienna Miller, Harvey Weinstein and Sean “Diddy” Combs (IF you werent a celebrity or brand manager you werent getting in). Today’s brands no matter what sector, realize that they need to tap into the influencers one way or another—winning PR today is giving them this access.
Never Shut Down.. Or Shut Off: This one is simple but it’s actually probably the number one thing that we are doing right and our competitors are doing wrong. I don’t understand why the newspaper comes out every day, the evening news runs every night yet many PR firms shut off at 5PM Friday and ignore such a large part of the news cycle. We live today in a world of Blackberries and cell phones, where our clients have 24/7 access to us and we can quickly email a media outlet as a story breaks.
During the week between Christmas and New Year’s, some of the largest media outlets in the country call 5W Public Relations— do you know why? It’s because they have news to file and they know we are at work just as they are. The media is a 24-hour cycle and therefore so is Public Relations… we’re always on and have our mind on the media, whether we are at the office or now.
In the end, it is not accepting mediocrity that differentiates winning firms from the firms that consistently are stuck in the past and are doing just enough not to get fired. The days of “PR” standing merely for “press releases” are antiquated—we are carrying the torch for major brands and bringing their message directly into the lives of consumers.
The demand for our industry will continue to grow—I believe that we’re following the right playbook to keep us winning and ahead of the curve.
Ronn Torossian
5W PR
