The Sleeper Awakens: Is this the year that Public Relations finally gets its s*it together?

Public Relations (PR) experts are a long-suffering bunch. To outsiders, we’re the jaded Championship players that are still trying to cut it in a fast-paced Premiership world. Put another way, we’re perceived as the profession that’s still trying to use a ‘fork in a world of soup’ - an analogy I’ve stolen from that great 90s pharmacologist / icon / (decidedly average) guitar player, Mr Noel Gallagher who famously used it to describe his youngest sibling.??????

I’ve ‘been a PR’ (yuk!) for the best part of 15 years now, and every year I see the same tired old question asked by self-styled gurus inside and outside of the industry…’Is PR Dead?’.?

Well, if PR was dead (which it wasn’t), I firmly believe that 2022 marks the year it will be given a shot in the arm - like some Russian Olympian - and start to throw its weight around once again in the Pantheon of marketing legend.?

Here’s why…

Superpowers

Let’s be honest, the last two years haven’t exactly been a barrel of laughs. However, PR was (and still is) the means by which many companies and organisations delivered vital - and often complex - comms to key audiences in a business landscape which was changing hourly, particularly in the high-tide of the pandemic. In short, the ‘old timer’ of the marketing mix has earned back its spurs, and possibly prevented a number of the businesses and brands we know and love from going to the wall.

But why has it become so relevant all of a sudden? Well, PR has two key superpowers up its sleeve. Firstly, it has a proven ability to spark conversations and drive engagement. And secondly, if done well, it provides humanoids like you and me with the vital information we need quickly and with clarity.?

Over the last two years it’s been a much needed tonic in an age that had frankly become tone deaf and over populated with frivolous marketing crap. When real lives and livelihoods are on the line, you need to get back to the good old human principles of empathy, and ensure you're geared-up to generate dialogue and interaction - not persist with firing out the one way, monetised messaging we’ve come to know and reluctantly endure as consumers.??

Keeping it connected and creative

Apple for a starter got the magnitude of the situation from the get go. With scores of people under mandatory lockdown, it did what it does best and fired people’s creative impulse with its Creativity Goes On campaign. What I liked about this is that at its core the campaign stayed true to Apple’s own long embedded values and managed to give people some good old hope that they could carry on regardless. As well as the campaign, Apple also put its mind to developing its own COVID-19 app which was designed to keep US citizens up-to-date with the latest pandemic developments and ensure they were taking the right steps to keep themselves and others safe. I love a ‘tech for good’ story!

Another standout campaign for me - and one which was particularly close to my heart as an aspiring portrait painter - saw a loose collaboration occur between Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, Getty Museum and an Insta account called Between Art and Quarantine.?

The #GettyMuseumChallenge saw people the world over trying to create famous art works using the everyday household goods they were effectively incarcerated with. Again, another demonstration of how brands came together, got back to basics and gave each and every one of us hope, laughter and creative energy in the face of adversity.?????

Unsurprisingly, there were a few organisations that missed mark completely when it came to reading the room - many of which got severely, and justifiably, burnt.?

Subway’s now infamous ‘buy two sandwiches and get a free face mask deal’ saw them needing to switch quickly into crisis comms mode. This was an existential crisis after all, not the long awaited commercial opportunity to sell us more Meatball Marinaras.?

And, let’s be honest, the UK Government came under some heavy fire too as it emerged that a little known virus was turning into a full-scale pandemic. I certainly don’t envy those that had to communicate some pretty complex rules to a nation that was slipping into a state of all out anxiety. As I write this, it’s quite ironic to see a PM in crisis mode as it emerges that even he didn’t understand the rules he and his team were firing out.

Although there have been a few flies in the ointment, on the whole PR-driven initiatives had certainly brought some positivity back to proceedings.?

Coping in a crisis?

It’s good to look back at a couple of examples of where PR has come into its own once again. However, as a new year serves us up yet another variant of the dreaded lurgy in the form of Omicron, the profession will still have some work to do. What’s more, the pandemic is a mere trifle of the shitstorm that is about to hit us in the form of climate change. Afterall, if we carry on the way we’re going as a species there’s going to be no one left on the face of planet earth to contract the next super virus anyway - we’ll literally be in a ‘world of soup’…one where large land masses are finally overpowered by a raging sea and turned into diminutive croutons.

As a result, the collective expertise of the communications industry is going to be drawn upon like never before. Not only are we the go-to department in any crisis, we’re also the guys that can forge relationships between people, and organisations of similar and/or polar opposite viewpoints. It’s in our DNA to find the common ground and create messages and positions that bring the best outcomes for all.?

In a world that is steadily on the slippery slope to ‘the ultimate crisis’ there’s a huge responsibility on our shoulders. However, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to drive consensus in a world that is becoming even more fragmented due to competing types of media.??

How can we unite the world population on a big issue like climate change? How do we transcend the tribalism that will ultimately be our collective undoing??

Navigating the Brave New World?

An old friend of mine, along with his colleagues, has been working on a piece of modelling which I think brings a lot to the table when it comes to charting PR’s future, relevance and ability to unite in a fractious landscape.?

The Purpose Pathfinder is a really interesting articulation of how comms professionals may be able to drive forth purposeful messages at a time when we’re perhaps more fractured as a society than ever before - the ‘Great Vaccination Push’ and Brexit being two recent examples.?

Developed by a comms organisation called Engine | MHP, The University of Cambridge, YouGov and More in Common, the Purpose Pathfinder helps organisations to design brand purpose narratives that resonate with their audiences in the strongest possible way, while also balancing the polarised views of different audiences. The model sets our three narrative routes available to brands:

Change: Fight injustice and take a stand on one side of an argument. Change narratives are adopted by brands including Patagonia, and encourage polarisation.

Community: Taking care of people and the world around you, bringing everyone together. Community narratives are used by the likes of John Lewis, and encourage depolarisation.

Utility: Focus on personal flourishing and helping customers live their best lives, such as Porsche does with its high-performance engineering. Utility narratives sidestep social issues and focus on the individual.

Scoring against these, the Pathfinder modelling essentially gives brands the roadmap they need to make impact whilst also navigating the various tribal fractures that can occur on any given subject or situation.

Personally, I think this level of thought and innovation is a step in the right direction if we are to navigate and rise to the challenges of a new era. It’s tools like this that will help us to keep our comms human, whilst also keeping them a uniting, rather than dividing, force. Let’s face it, we haven’t got much time on the clock for tribalism, so every little helps when you’re staring down the barrel of extinction, right?!

Go BIG or go home

The last two years have seen the ‘milk of human kindness’ start to resurface in the collective psyche in the face of existential threat. Encouragingly, values such as empathy, transparency and truth are gaining renewed currency in a world that has renewed purpose and is starting to be driven by deeds not spin.?

For the PR community, there’s a huge opportunity for it to reassert itself in the marketing mix and demonstrate the real power of nurturing human relationships to assert unprecedented and united change for the better.?

Alternatively, we may well look back in a decade or so, and mark 2022 as the year PR choked on its own inaction.??

As a result, now really is the time to grasp that spoon.