Well yeah, it is my first blog post, and I thought to dedicate it to the industry I'm (paid to be) passionate about, Public Relations!
"This is PR's time to shine," "PR is the key for all marketers looking to build meaningful relationships with consumers. When integrated effectively those relationships turn consumers into customers and customers into brand ambassadors."
I chose to start with this quote that came from Marc Pritchard, the global marketing and brand building officer of the world's biggest advertiser, Procter & Gamble, to state this as a close as possible for being a fact and not just wishful thinking.
For many years...
... public relations' role has been underestimated and misunderstood in the region by a considerable number of marketers, brands, companies, organizations and even PR professionals themselves (I may also add journalists but that needs another blog post).
But now...
... thanks to the unfortunate financial crisis and the age of social media, PR role has been redefined to the actual purpose behind it. The end of 2008 was when PR agencies started to learn, educate and practice public relations with all its different capabilities across a variety of disciplines. The financial downturn was one of the main reasons behind remeasuring marketing objectives against budgets' allocations for brands and organizations, and a satisfactory ROI varied from being able to survive as a name to the usual sales figures.
Then & there came...
... the delayed boost of social media in the region which helped public relations reshape itself as an integral and crucial part of marketing communications. We saw PR agencies being consulted in monitoring the different social media platforms to listen to the target audience and identify trends and focus areas, and this lead to the perception of PR as tool that amplifies big ideas and transforms them into enablers to communicate with target audience and invite them to become citizens of a brand or an organization.
Then how to shine even more?!
Well, the PR industry now has the chance to take the lead and speak up to generate the big ideas rather than waiting for the cue to magnify them. With digital giving room for more creativity in concepts and execution, and traditional (which will NEVER fade) helping to multiply reach figures and providing different angles to tweak those "Big Ideas", making them more relevant to people and utilizing them to interpret their success into a solid basis for all other brand building efforts and creating authentic relationships with people.
An example...
... from the P&G portfolio that clearly shows that traditional media is still a powerful tool in integrated marketing communications is the phenomenal Smell Like a Man, Man campaign, where news played a big role in driving people to look at the Old Spice Guy videos, and at the same time people who viewed the YouTube videos also were interested to follow news discussing it. PR integrated efforts in this campaign generated 1.4 billion impressions!
So What to do?
In Pritchard's words "You (PR professionals) have never had more potential to be fully baked in to the marketing mix or to lead brand-building efforts... You have to step up and make clear what your capabilities are."
"This is PR's time to shine," "PR is the key for all marketers looking to build meaningful relationships with consumers. When integrated effectively those relationships turn consumers into customers and customers into brand ambassadors."
I chose to start with this quote that came from Marc Pritchard, the global marketing and brand building officer of the world's biggest advertiser, Procter & Gamble, to state this as a close as possible for being a fact and not just wishful thinking.
For many years...
... public relations' role has been underestimated and misunderstood in the region by a considerable number of marketers, brands, companies, organizations and even PR professionals themselves (I may also add journalists but that needs another blog post).
But now...
... thanks to the unfortunate financial crisis and the age of social media, PR role has been redefined to the actual purpose behind it. The end of 2008 was when PR agencies started to learn, educate and practice public relations with all its different capabilities across a variety of disciplines. The financial downturn was one of the main reasons behind remeasuring marketing objectives against budgets' allocations for brands and organizations, and a satisfactory ROI varied from being able to survive as a name to the usual sales figures. Then & there came...
... the delayed boost of social media in the region which helped public relations reshape itself as an integral and crucial part of marketing communications. We saw PR agencies being consulted in monitoring the different social media platforms to listen to the target audience and identify trends and focus areas, and this lead to the perception of PR as tool that amplifies big ideas and transforms them into enablers to communicate with target audience and invite them to become citizens of a brand or an organization.
Then how to shine even more?!
Well, the PR industry now has the chance to take the lead and speak up to generate the big ideas rather than waiting for the cue to magnify them. With digital giving room for more creativity in concepts and execution, and traditional (which will NEVER fade) helping to multiply reach figures and providing different angles to tweak those "Big Ideas", making them more relevant to people and utilizing them to interpret their success into a solid basis for all other brand building efforts and creating authentic relationships with people.
An example...
... from the P&G portfolio that clearly shows that traditional media is still a powerful tool in integrated marketing communications is the phenomenal Smell Like a Man, Man campaign, where news played a big role in driving people to look at the Old Spice Guy videos, and at the same time people who viewed the YouTube videos also were interested to follow news discussing it. PR integrated efforts in this campaign generated 1.4 billion impressions!So What to do?
In Pritchard's words "You (PR professionals) have never had more potential to be fully baked in to the marketing mix or to lead brand-building efforts... You have to step up and make clear what your capabilities are."
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