EDITION 2

AT PUBLIC RELATIONS

2

Harriet Oakman Head of PR for Amazon Fashion

https://www.linkedin.com/in/harriet-robinson-78a23a47/

SUCKLESS:

EDITION 2 SPEAKER

The world of business is fond of giving grand names to stuff and ‘Public Relations’ is no exception. Frankly, it’s a bit of a boring title for “telling the right story at the right time to the right people, so that they like you more and maybe chuck money in your general direction”. Definitely snappier though.

Think about the places you find information – the websites you visit, the apps you use and where you get the latest news. The content has to come from somewhere and, as anyone who’s tried to make a soufflé will tell you, sometimes it’s just easier (and cheaper) to simply let someone else do it.

This also gives people, brands and organisations a golden opportunity to try and shape the way the world feels about them. We all know this in our heart of hearts, but it can be slightly scary if you think too much about it. So lets not.

BUT… everyone enjoys a good story, right?

THE ART OF NOT LOOKING

LIKE A DOUCHE

PUBLIC RELATIONS:

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SECTION 01

‘Good’ is the important word here. Managing the subtleties of human response to a piece of information is a bit of an art.

A truly persuasive and positive piece of PR should “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” – not as in your face as advertising, but leaving a lasting impression. The skill lies in knowing your audience and what will resonate with them. And what might make them vomit into their Starbucks.

Muhammad Ali was one hell of a PR man, btw.

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SO, JUST DO NICE THINGS AND TELL EVERYONE?

MEDIA RELATIONS

What we all know PR to be – the work of creating a positive impression through the media.

COMMUNITY RELATIONS

This is PR that targets specific groups of people, whether it’s in a physical space, like a town, or just a community of like-minded people. It’s about building relationships that change minds, drive support or just create a warm and open exchange of ideas and information.

CORPORATE AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY (CSR)

Thankfully, businesses are under a lot more scrutiny these days and are expected to conduct themselves responsibly. As a result, CSR is becoming less of a ‘specialist’ area and is simply an important part of the overall way organisations present themselves.

SOCIAL MEDIA

This could be viewed as the online equivalent of traditional media relations – creating campaigns, blogging, using influencers and buildingrelationships with media outlets – but this is an area that moves fast. Stories can quickly go viral and individuals have a way to speak directly to you and your brand. You need some serious smarts for social, but when it works well it’s really powerful.

EMPLOYEE RELATIONS

Actions speak louder than words. Employees already (hopefully) know the business, so employee relations are about making people feel positive and loyal. It might involve organising events, working with senior managers to build relationships or just keeping everyone up to date with company information.

PR is PR, right? No, actually.

Obviously, every industry has it’s own needs, but within that, there are plenty of reasons you might need PR and every one has it’s own specialism:

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INVESTOR RELATIONS

It all gets a bit serious here. When you’re involved in investor relations, you enter a world of legal compliance, marketing, financial and analyst data. Together they create investor or shareholder confidence in the financial stability of a business. Sounds heavy? Yep, it is.

CORPORATE AFFAIRS

Government policymakers can have a big impact on the way big businesses operate, so it’s fairly standard to find that they employ specialists (you might have heard them called “lobbyists” on the news) to monitor and influence the policymakers before their ideas become law.

CRISIS MANAGEMENT

Not for the faint hearted, a crisis manager is the go-to person when disaster strikes and is responsible for everything from spinning a negative story into a positive to full-on reputation rescue.

SO, JUST DO NICE THINGS AND TELL EVERYONE?

PR is PR, right? No, actually.

Obviously, every industry has it’s own needs, but within that, there are plenty of reasons you might need PR and every one has it’s own specialism:

SECTION 02

Without wanting to get all introspective and go on a deep emotional journey, it’s really important to know your business inside out before you can unleash your story on an unsuspecting public. You need to be absolutely 100% sure that you can talk clearly about every aspect of your business, its history, vision, ethics and attitude to…well, just about everything. If you’re planning to ‘put yourself out there’ you will be asked questions on all of these things and probably more.

Then you need to understand what it is you want to happen and set yourself realistic and, most importantly, measurable targets to achieve, such as:

IT DOESN’TJUST ‘HAPPEN’

• INCREASING SALES

• INCREASING OR MAINTAINING AWARENESS OF YOUR COMPANY/BRAND

• ESTABLISHING CREDIBILITY OR AUTHORITY WITHIN A MARKET SEGMENT

• IMAGE BUILDING

• BECOMING A TRUSTED SOURCE OF EXPERTISE

• DRIVING TRAFFIC TO YOUR WEBSITE

• EXPANDING YOUR MARKET SHARE

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ONCE UPON A TIME...

Innovative/Disruptive

Competitive

Safe

Transparent

Doing something the rest of the industry haven’t – cashless, app-based

Remember that time you needed to head home from a party, but had run out of cash? And it was chucking it down with rain? There’s no way you’d accept a ride from a stranger, so you faced a cold and wet walk home in the dark instead…

But by using X, you can order a taxi at the click of a button, know exactly when it’s arriving, who is driving AND pay through the app by card. Why hasn’t it always been like this?

Accurate arrival times

Value for money

You can see your driver and their rating

HOW? EXAMPLEYOU ARE…

So, what do you need to say to make this happen? Grab a piece of paper; you’re going to write a story like the one on the right, where we’ve used a well known, on-demand taxi app as an example.

The ‘You are…’ section will be the values you hold dear as a business and should form the foundation for everything you say to the world. Your story can be happily adapted to different audiences, as long your core values run right through it.

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Your PR effort should play a part in your overall marketing and communications and each element should work together with a shared purpose. However, every activity, launch, important industry date should have a PR aspect to it.

...AND NO ONE IS AROUND TO HEAR IT, DOES IT MAKE A SOUND?

Now is neither the time nor place to get all metaphysics on you, but you get the point. It’s great having a story, but utterly pointless if you have no one to tell it to.

We’ve already touched upon types of audiences, but who are yours? What do you need from them? And what do they need from you?

We can safely assume, given you’re reading this, that you already have lots of lovely customers, and you’re already active in sales and marketing. So you know who you’re directly targeting, but you might not be thinking about the value of every person of influence in their world. They may not hold the purse strings, but they’ve got the ear of the person who does.

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IF A TREE FALLS IN A FOREST…

Let’s say your business is a consultancy that deals with tax issues for small to medium sized businesses.

(This doesn’t sound like the stuff of rock and roll legend, but stick with us…)

• WHO NEEDS TO HEAR YOUR STORY?

• AND WHO IS IN THEIR CIRCLE OF INFLUENCE?

The Finance Director is probably the final decision maker and budget holder for consultancy services – he or she is probably strapped for time and not particularly inclined to take sales calls. So, by communicating the value of your services to his or her fellow directors, or having your message heard by the members of the team responsible for tax, you’ll might stand a better chance of getting your foot through the door.

But…how? And where?

KEEP YOUR FRIENDS CLOSE…Someone, somewhere (no one can quite agree on who) once said “knowledge is power” and very clever they were too. Now you’ve built a picture of who your audience is likely to be, you can do your research, learn more about them and use this knowledge to persuade them that you’re the business for them.

Talk to your existing customers; send them a survey or a questionnaire. Maybe invite a few to take part in a focus group.

…and your enemies closer

Never take your eyes off the competition for a second. Look at their marketing activity and keep a close eye on where they are mentioned in the media. It’s an on-going and daily slog, but you need to know what they are saying, how, when and where they are saying it in order to be different. And better.

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FIND OUT:

• WHAT THEY’RE INTERESTED IN?

• WHAT’S IMPORTANT TO THEM?

• HOW THEY SPEND THEIR DAY?

• WHAT MEDIA THEY CONSUME?

• WHAT TOOLS THEY USE?

• WHO THEY RESPECT – AND WHY?

PUT THE KETTLE ON

• You know what you want your story to achieve

• You know what you want to say

• You’ve built a picture of the world you’re targeting, and the people who live in it

• You understand the best places to ‘be’ so that your target audience will read or hear about you

You have everything you need to start your campaign.

Make yourself a brew and have a breather. You might want to add an extra sugar – the next section might come as a bit of a shock.

THE WORLD DOES NOT

REVOLVE AROUND YOU

So, the first thing to ask yourself when you’re thinking about chucking a story out into the world is “who gives a sh*t?”

Because if you want to get your message out, you’ll need some help. And your caped crusader is pretty much always going to be some kind of journalist.

Make a list of people who would be likely to care about what you’re saying. If it’s just you, your mum and the half dozen people who you met once at a networking event, then chances are a journalist won’t touch it. Your story needs to appeal to the readership of their publication/website, and that’s likely to be a pretty decent amount of people.

It doesn’t matter where his or her content is published; no journalist alive ever woke up absolutely gagging to write about your business – unless of course you’re the subject of a serious bit of investigative journalism. In which case, you’ll probably want to skip this bit and head directly to page 18 – Crisis Management. Better still, call in the professionals. A brilliant crisis manager is like a laptop wielding Winston Wolf.

SO IF YOU WANT TO BUILD A SOLID AND BENEFICIAL RELATIONSHIP WITH A JOURNALIST, YOU NEED TO APPRECIATE THAT THEY ARE:

a) Busy.

b) Human.

Think about how you respond to unsolicited or blanket emails. You bin them, right? So remember that you’re not the only one belting emails at your journalist of choice. In fact, you’re probably the five gazillionth that morning. So you’ve got to be thoughtful and polite. You’d be better off sending a pleasant, personal note to introduce yourself and then follow it up with an invitation for coffee. Then you have the opportunity to talk about your story AND learn about your new journalist chum. This is your chance to shine. Don’t mess it up.

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SECTION 02

No matter how great your relationships are, you’ll need to nail press release writing pretty quickly. It’s not rocket science, but it does require an understanding of what a journalist will need and a good standard of writing.

The bad boy on the right is known as ‘The Inverted Pyramid’, catchy huh? It’s been used in journalism for pretty much ever and is simply a very triangular way of saying “put the important stuff at the top, yeah?”

WRITING APRESS RELEASE

MOST NEWSWORTHY INFO Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?

IMPORTANT DETAILS

Other General Info Background

Info

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REMEMBER:

• Try to write in such a way that your journalist needs to make only tiny adjustments to stay in the style of his or her publication

• Keep your first paragraph short – a maximum of about 25 words – making sure it explains the headline and summarises the story, so that it can be read quickly

• Keep it to a single page

• Press releases are not advertisements. Lose the sales patter, stick the buzzwords where they belong and keep to the facts

• Include a quote from someone relevant and interesting

AT THE END OF YOUR RELEASE:

• Make it clear that you’ve reached the end of the publishable information (usually with something like ~ENDS~ or similar)

• Always include any further information, such as links to any relevant reading

• Attach some great pictures to accompany the story (but we’ll talk more about that on page 15)

• For crying out loud, DON’T FORGET your full contact details.

WRITING A DECENT PRESS RELEASE IS LIKE RIDING A BIKE. YOU’LL COCK IT UP A FEW TIMES, BUT ONCE

YOU’VE NAILED IT, YOU NEVER FORGET.

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So that the journalist has plenty of background information (business profile, stats and the biographies of any referenced names) to work from.

It’s all about the helpful, y’all.

STILL STUCK? FIND PRESS RELEASE INSPO HERE:

Apple South Korea Store Opening

L’Oreal Aquires NYX Cosmetics

Unilever UK Publishes Gender Pay Gap Data

The Most Amazing Press Release Ever Written

YOU MIGHT ALSO WANT TO INCLUDE

A BUSINESS Q&A OR FACT SHEET

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WORDS AND PICTURES

PHOTOGRAPHY

It should go without saying, but make your subject interesting and ensure that it tells your story (a line-up of middle management, for example, is utterly dullsville by anyone’s standards). Photography can bring an emotive element to facts or set the tone for the reader. Give it a marvellous caption and you’re there.

VIDEO/ANIMATION

If you’re reaching your audience through online or social media, this is the content you need to be providing, as it’s perfect for consuming on the go.

GRAPHICS (CHARTS, GRAPHS AND INFOGRAPHICS)

These are incredibly effective when done well. Take a look at the superb ‘Information is Beautiful’ by David McCandless for inspiration.

To paraphrase an entirely outdated quote “behind every successful story, there stands a jolly decent bit of photography”

To be fair, it doesn’t have to just be photography – there are lots of different visual elements that can bring your story to life. Yes, it’s eye-catching, but there’s also plenty of incredibly sciencey evidence that supports how visual content helps with the impact of your story, how quickly the information is absorbed and how easily it is recalled.

Wherever you’re targeting, take a look at the visual content they typically use. No matter what you choose, you’ll need to spend some cash on it – don’t be tempted to attack it yourself unless you’re a professional designer/animator/filmmaker/photographer. And even then, it’s often better to have a fresh pair of eyes.

Even if you give your contact everything they need to publish your story, they may ask for an interview – or to interview any significant people who feature. This is great, as it can add a real edge to your message, but take care – if you think that this is something that may happen regularly in your organisation, or you plan to have figures in the public eye, then you must seriously consider investing in professional press training.

SOCIAL PROOF IS

NOT BULLET PROOF

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Remember that it’s a two-way conversation. You’re not talking into the void and should always be ready for a very human – and honest – response.

Be warned: using your social media as a pushy sales tool will backfire. People follow businesses on social media because they have interesting, valuable content, or are entertaining or useful in some way. The whole point is to make your customers – and potential customers – warm to your brand and feel positively towards your business.

FINALLY

Keep it up. Continually push out decent content and your followers will be happy. In fact, you’ll probably get lots of lovely new ones. But remember that a gazillion followers is not the same as a gazillion engaged followers.

If you want value from your social media, you have to work at it.

DIY is great. It can save you loads of money, give you a sense of achievement and you get to chat with the lovely experts at B&Q, who are god-like geniuses when it comes to selecting the right screws.

The same applies to social media (except the B&Q bit. Their experts are ace at coving, but media relations, not so much). You can make some real wins if you know what you’re doing, but it’s also easy to end up with a DIY SOS.

HAVE A SENSE OF PURPOSE

Take a look at the channels you think are appropriate for your business. What do you plan to use them for? An inconsistent mish-mash of information will cause confusion at best, irritation and unfollows at worst.

FOR EXAMPLE, YOU MIGHT WANT DEFINE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA AS FOLLOWS:

TWITTER: Customer Service

LINKEDIN:

Blogging/Thought Leadership Articles/Recruitment/Company Announcements

YOUTUBE:

Innovations/Presentations/ Expertise/How To…

FACEBOOK/INSTAGRAM:

News/product launches/Recruitment

SOUNDS SCREAMINGLY OBVIOUS...

You may want to add a ‘press area’ to your site, containing current and archived press releases, your company history and FAQ and any other appropriate media (copyright free, of course).

but don’t forget your website. It’s the one place that customers or the press will head to if they want to find out about you. It should be:

• Error free (no broken links, typos etc.)

• Great on every browser

• Easy to use

• Up to date

• Consistent with all other communications

• Linked to your social sites

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A Public Relations catastrophe will never happen to you, right? Think again.

Even the best-loved and most well-intentioned brands make a boo-boo sometimes – and our beloved social media has a tendency to take even the weeniest issue and turn it into a Twitter-storm at a speed that would make your average hurricane look tame. That said, if you’re party to something heinous then you’ve got it coming.

Find yourself in a nightmare scenario and there are some hard and fast rules to follow. They won’t guarantee that you’ll be home and dry by teatime, but you’ll definitely look like less of an asshat.

GET YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT

Don’t just dive in at the deep end without knowing EVERYTHING. If you make a public statement without being in possession of all the facts, you can make the situation worse. Understand exactly what has happened. And fast.

ACKNOWLEDGE, ACCEPT, APOLOGISE – AND BE HUMAN ABOUT IT

There’s been a cock up. You’re a grown up – put your hands up, take the flack, be sure to come across as genuine and sincere in your apology. Making excuses and trying to shift blame makes you look like a weasle, both personally and professionally.

DO SOMETHING, DAMMIT

Take action to repair the damage. Make a statement of how you intend to make sure such an incident never happens again – and compensate anyone affected by it.

IT AIN’T OVER ‘TIL IT’S OVER

Keep a planned response to the worst-case scenario on the back burner and closely monitor all media for mentions and negative sentiment. Lock down your teams and make sure that everyone has an approved statement to respond with, should they be approached.

GET ON IT.

The one thing you do not have on your side is time. So don’t waste it. Take action immediately.

CAREFUL, NOW…

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EXAMPLES:

H&M MONKEY

NIVEA

ADIDAS

GREGGS

FEARLESS GIRL

A bronze sculpture of a brave little girl, fearlessly facing the ‘Charging Bull’ of Wall Street, hit the headlines on International Women’s Day 2017. It was commissioned by State Street Global Advisors in conjunction with McCann New York and intended to draw attention to gender diversity in the workplace. But no one quite anticipated the overwhelmingly positive public response to this 130cm statue, which went viral and became a worldwide symbol of female empowerment and resilience.

GREGGS BABY JESUS SAUSAGE ROLL

When they included an image of the Three Wise Men, gathered round a manger and gazing in wonder at a sausage roll, Greggs the bakers took a gamble that paid off. The image formed part of their advent calendar, which went on sale in-store during November and while some took offence, the vast majority saw the funny side. It was shared furiously on social media with caption challenges and gained Greggs a massive share of press coverage.

SCIENCE MUSEUM VS. NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM TWITTER SPAT

Few spats have been funnier or more adorable than when two London museum heavyweights went head to head on Twitter. Sparked by stand-up comedian @bednarz, who asked, “Who would win in a staff battle between @sciencemuseum and @NHM_London, what exhibits/items would help you be victorious? #askacurator”, the ensuing fierce exhibit-on-exhibit face off only had one winner – the profile of our wonderful free museums.

THUMBS UP TO…WINNERS

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H&M MONKEY HOODY

The bargainous Swedish clothing company found themselves slap bang in the middle of a racism row after a style blogger shared their advert showing a black child modelling a hooded sweater with the words “coolest monkey in the jungle” on the front. The tweet was shared over 14,000 times in one day and H&M swiftly responded by pulling the offending product from shelves, removing the photo and issuing an apology. However, the backlash, demonstrations and boycotts continued, with celebrities from all over the world adding their voices to condemn H&M.

PEPSI/KENDALL JENNER

This one will go down in history as an example of a catastrophically misjudged advertising campaign that simply couldn’t be rescued. Even if PR crisis managers worldwide pooled their powers, it was just too fundamental a cock-up. During a time of civil unrest, multiple reports of police brutality and the #blacklivesmatter campaign, Pepsi recreated a generic protest where police and protesters put aside their differences over a can of Pepsi. They even

drew on the iconic image of Ieshia Evans, who peacefully faced police at Baton Rouge. The ad was rightly considered downright insulting, trivialising and an appropriation of a serious human rights issue. To sell a soda.

ADIDAS BOSTON MARATHON EMAIL

A thoughtless blunder that will rightly make everyone wince, the morning after the 2017 Boston Marathon, Adidas emailed the participants with the subject line “Congrats, you survived the Boston Marathon!” In 2013, terrorists targeted the finish line of the marathon, killing three people and injuring hundreds more. The email was deemed highly inappropriate and caused an outcry on social media, sparking negative press coverage and unreserved apology from Adidas.

THUMBS DOWN TO…LOSERSAND