Jimmy's Guide to.... PR

Yes, I know. ANOTHER blog from me. They’re like buses – you get nothing for ages, then two come along at once. Why, it’s almost as if I’ve suddenly got a lot of time on my hands or something…

Come on, it could be worse. At least I’m not ‘ living my best life ‘ by making fancy bread from scratch, or anything pretentious like that.

This blog though is one that I’ve been promising / threatening to write for a while though, because it concerns a subject I care deeply about: PR.

Not everybody I’ve worked with sees the value of PR. One of the first marketing directors I worked for once told me “ PR is like pissing yourself in a dark blue suit. It gives you a nice warm feeling for a while, but nobody else notices. “

Not only did this give me a worrying insight into his personal hygiene, but I just flat-out disagree. Not only do I believe that PR is an essential part of any marketing communications plan, but – done properly – can be more powerful, and more efficient on a bang-for-buck basis than any other part of it. And hopefully this blog post will explain why.

So, let’s start with looking at what I consider to be the four main types of PR activity. And then we can see how to get the best from them.

1)     Ongoing ( or reactive ) Press Office.

This is the unglamorous bit of PR. This is the grunt work. Sending out samples to journalists, many of whom don’t give a damn about what you’re sending them. ( Or, conversely, are only in it for the freebies. ) It’s putting in the long hours forging relationships with feature writers, editors etc, finding out what they’re working on, and figuring out how to position ( or sometimes crowbar ) my brand/product as relevant to it.

Unglamorous it may be – but for me, this is probably the most important part of PR. And when it comes off – it can be worth its weight in gold. Sometimes being featured in a taste test, or a ‘ 10 New Gift Ideas for Father’s Day ‘ feature ( or whatever ) can make a big difference to sales. And the only way to get that coverage? Press Office, every time.

One word of caution. I’ve often been tempted to make savings on Press Office. After all, it’s a fixed cost in the marketing plan each month, and some months are quieter than others, right? So we don’t need a full year of Press Office, we can just trim it back to six months when we’re at our busiest, or cut it now and bring it back just before we launch our new range…

Wrong. Cutting it back means that sometimes when that all-important journalist query comes in, you’re not in a position to respond. And the coveted ‘ Best fresh pasta ‘ or ‘ Best cookie ‘ feature ( or whatever ) ends up going to your competitor instead. Not good. Also, don’t forget that a lot of journalist lead times ( particularly on monthly magazine titles ) are a couple of months out – so you can’t just start your press office the month before your product launch and expect to get coverage.

One other thing to say here – Press Office is the area where I really think it helps to have a PR agency that really knows your industry. I’m not saying that PR agencies can’t work in different sectors, or anything like that – but obviously, if the objective is to build relationships with the relevant journalists, then it helps to have one that specialises. Now, here I’d like to give a shout out to Tony Norton at Norton PR, who I worked with when I was at Hornby. Tony would probably be the first to remind me that Nortons have clients in many different fields – but for me, what made the difference was that Tony ( and his team ) knew absolutely everyone in the toy industry. They knew who to talk to, and how, and when. And that made a massive difference.

On a side note – I was out hunting for a PR agency a while back, and went to meet a couple of prospective options. The first one I met held the meeting in their swanky boardroom. It looked a lot like a creative agency – lots of inspirational/provocative artwork on the walls, slogans about their values and mission statement painted on the stairs, that kind of thing..

The second agency also held the meeting in their boardroom. But – and this was the thing – their boardroom also doubled up as their sample cupboard. No fancy artwork on the walls, just shelf upon shelf of product samples to send out. And, even while we were having the meeting, people kept coming in to grab boxes from the shelves – “ Sorry, I just need to send these to Ideal Home.. “ or “ Sorry, can I just grab some samples for Good Housekeeping. “

The first agency may have seemed more ‘ creative ‘ ( whatever that means ) but I had the feeling the second one was going to work harder.

Which brings me on to -

2)     Headline-grabbing stunty stuff.

Ok. So this is where it gets interesting. And this is where results can be a bit hit-and-miss. I’ve done PR stunts before that have cost a bomb and sunk without trace. But I’ve also done them where they’ve cost buttons, and generated a ton of coverage. The trick here is to be both a) genuinely newsworthy ( because how are you going to grab headlines otherwise? ) and b) relevant to your brand.

Here’s where I give another shout out – this time to Hope & Glory PR. I really wanted to work with them on Halo, and sadly never got the chance before the marketing budgets were all pulled. But one idea that they came up with – and that I absolutely loved – was to ‘ borrow ‘ Southwark beach in London, and cover it in discarded plastic / aluminium coffee capsules, as a way of showing the damage they do ( and by extension, the difference that switching to Halo would make. ) Was it going to be expensive to do? Oh yes. Difficult? Undoubtedly. But think of the pictures it would have generated! Think of the coverage! And it couldn’t have been more on brand. I’m convinced it would have been brilliant. Such a shame we didn’t get the chance to do it.

Another word of caution here ( I’m full of them today! ) – is don’t make the mistake of thinking that the stunt is the thing you’re trying to drive coverage of, and not the brand itself. I worked with one PR agency ( who shall remain nameless ) who put together a survey for me. Relevant subject, very newsworthy, so got loads of responses, and a decent amount of journo interest. So, job done, yes? Well, no. Because not one of the newspapers mentioned the brand that was behind the survey.

And when I spoke to the junior account exec at the PR agency, she was convinced that the survey had been a roaring success. “ Because we got loads of coverage! “

Yes, I said. The survey did. But the brand didn’t. And that was kind of the point of the exercise….

Bless her, even after having it explained to her, I don't think she could see what she'd done wrong.

Anyway. On to the next bit:

3)     Proactive launch support.

Often overlooked, this one. And that’s because sometimes it gets lumped in with Press Office, - because it involves phoning journalists and sending them samples - and sometimes it gets lumped in with headline-grabbing-stunty things – because that’s a great way of gaining attention for a new brand, right? – but it CAN be different to both.

Often, this is as simple as a good, old-fashioned press event. You know the kind of thing. Invite a bunch of journos to somewhere swanky in central London, get them all plotzed on free champagne, and in return, they’ll write reams of copy about your new range of pasta / range of cookies etc.

Simple, no? Well, yes. But they work! As always, though, there are a couple of caveats. The first, is that journalists are becoming increasingly hard to pry away from their desks. So you have to make it as easy as possible for them. Forget trying to do it outside London, even if the factory is really interesting, and you have a great ( and free! ) boardroom that you can host it in. These people will very rarely travel far. In fact, the best press events I’ve done have actually been in the newspaper offices themselves – so all the journalists have to do is traipse downstairs for twenty minutes on their lunch break, grab a champagne flute, and pick up some samples. Seriously, make it as easy as possible for them, and you won't go far wrong.

Secondly, make it different. Journalists get invited to these things all the time. So try and come up with something that they haven’t done/seen/tried before to give them a reason to choose your event over someone else’s. Again, for Halo, I looked at partnering up with a sustainable gin distillery to host our launch event. Complete with guest speakers from the world of environmental activism and sustainability. Because that’s more tempting than some handouts and a few glasses of fizz at All Bar One, right?

At this point, I really should mention the time that I took part in ASDA’s Christmas Range launch event. The PR agency had hired a swanky Soho office space, and decked it out beautifully with fake snow, tinsel, xmas trees, and lots of models dressed as santa’s elves wandering round with the trays of prosecco. They even had carols playing softly in the background. It was beautiful.

It was also July. And we were in the middle of a heatwave. Because – and this is a good example of how crazy magazine leadtimes can be - that’s when most of the Xmas gift guide work starts. So outside everyone else was gobbling ice cream to try and cool down, and inside I was eating xmas pudding with the editor of BBC Good Food Magazine.

Strange times.

Of course, you don’t HAVE to do a Press Launch. You can always just craft a great press release and send it out with samples and photos – but I do think a Press Launch is a good use of budget if you can afford it.

4)     Issues-led / campaigning PR.

Another interesting one. And if anyone ever thinks that PR can only ever produce ‘ a nice warm feeling ‘ then this is the place to start. This is about taking an issue and campaigning on it. It’s about raising public awareness, sure – but it’s also about pushing for real change.

So, again sticking with Halo ( not just because it’s most recent for me, but also because I’m really proud of some of the things we did ) I looked at working with Megan Greenwood at SeeSaw PR. Now, I’m sure Megan could have done some of the more ‘ fluffy ‘ PR stuff… but her take on the Halo opportunity was very interesting. She suggested that we specifically target politicians, environmentalists, experts, opinion-formers – and actively campaign to get plastic coffee capsules banned in the UK. Not only driving awareness for Halo ( and revenue! ) but actually change the law, and make a difference to the environment. When was the last time your social media campaign did that?

I'm just about to wrap this up - but it strikes me at this point that there’s probably a fifth category of PR that I haven’t talked about – and that’s the Reputational-Damage-Limiting-Corporate PR bit.

Perhaps I’m lucky, but I’ve only ever come across this a couple of times. Most of the time I’ve been very focused on Consumer PR, rather than Corporate PR, and I’m actually pretty glad about that. But the time that sticks most in my memory was when I was at Tesco, dealing with the horsemeat issue. It’s not something I talk about often ( what’s the point of having therapy, if you can’t bury troublesome memories? ) but I’m sure you all remember what happened. Basically, someone found trace amounts of horsemeat in some of the beef products that we sold, and suddenly Tesco was knee deep in ( justified ) consumer outrage and newspaper articles about ' Unexpected Items in the Bagging Area ' ...

I was Head of Food Marketing at the time, and it was my job to manage the response to it. I’d been in the job a week.

Anyway, as soon as the problem arose, I put together a hastily-assembled team and created the best marketing plan I could. A website to host the DNA test results, posters in store, newspaper ads, billboards…

… and so naturally, I figured I’d need PR too. But, as I reached for my phone to contact my lovely-if-a-bit-fluffy PR agency, my boss shook his head.

“ No, not those guys. “ he said, looking slightly nervous. “ You need the other guys. You know, the corporate PR agency. “

It was like he'd suggested hiring the A-Team. I suddenly got the sense that I was operating wayyy outside my comfort zone.

But, boy, they were good. Slick, professional, and very very quick to respond. We had a press release ready in less than an hour, and a dedicated phone number set up for journalists to call. They handled all queries with ruthless efficiency, even the ones that I would have wanted to run a mile from. We're not talking about BBC Good Food anymore, and we're also not talking Horse and Hound magazine. We're talking The Guardian, The Financial Times, The Grocer. Serious journalists, asking serious questions, and the agency managed it all exceptionally well.

I was impressed. But something about it left me feeling a bit cold, and it made me glad that I work in the more frivolous world of branding and marketing, and not anything more serious or corporate.

If the world of brand marketing is like a children’s birthday party ( bear with me on this ) then I consider the consumer PR agency to be like the clown. It’s their job to make sure everyone is having a great time, and feels really warmly about the brand. So they do tricks with balloons, and hand out cake, and play party games. Everyone goes home happy, ok?

The corporate PR agency lurks at the back of the party, wearing a dark suit, and sunglasses. And if any kid threatens to become too disruptive, or starts complaining that they’re not having a good time – well, then, the corporate PR agency takes them to one side and… makes them stop.

They make problems go away. And like I say, the corporate PR guys I’ve worked with have all been very good at making problems go away. But I much prefer working on the consumer side.

( There’s a separate blog that could perhaps be written here about how it’s better as a brand marketer to make sure you don’t ever need the corporate PR guys in the first place – ie how it’s better to stop problems occurring rather than trying to deal with the fallout when they do. Like, I’m proud of the way we responded to the horsemeat issue at Tesco, but it would still have been much, much better if it hadn’t happened in the first place. Anyway, like I say, that’s another topic for another day. )

So, that’s that. I’m sure there are PR professionals out there who can point out something I’ve missed, or categorise PR activity differently. And I’d love to hear from anyone who has a perspective on this, good or bad.

But for now, I need to stop writing and finish baking my cheese and jalapeno bread.

Stay safe, and take care.

J