Brand Managers - using PR as a tool

Published 2004

Consumers form their impressions about brands, products and services in so many ways today.  Advertising is still - at least by weight of visibility - dominant, but a carefully crafted advertising message can be undermined by comments in media.

A senior executive from international PR agency Ketchum recently summed up the challenges this way  - “Consumers and clients are growing more confused and unclear about the message, the messenger and the credibility of both. Advertisers/clients are having trouble determining where to spend and how to create a balanced marketing mix when all channels seem to be blurring”.

The US appears to be much further advanced in integrating PR into the full marketing mix.

In Australia many brand managers are still reticent and hesitant about working with PR people.

There’s been some progress in using PR on a project basis but how many brand or marketing managers have PR as an ongoing element of the marketing mix helping to ensure there’s a healthy brand profile?

When considering integrating PR into brand support activities, the brand manager has to appreciate and understand that:

• if PR is going to create ‘the buzz’ in the launch of a new product or service it usually has to lead the launch. For brand managers bought up in a conventional advertising-led environment that’s not always easy.

• messaging is just as important in PR as it is in advertising - albeit that the process is different and it may, by necessity, need to be expressed differently than  in advertising and other materials.

• PR-led activities need to encompass a range of audiences or stakeholders, often requiring the brand manager to take into account corporate considerations normally not part of his/her responsibility.

• PR is not necessarily always aimed at the end consumer or buyer.  PR plays a key role in reaching and influencing those whose opinions influence end users.  This means it’s often desirable or necessary to build an ‘influencer map’ in order to determine how best to identify and reach influencers.

• to ‘tell the story’ and interest media, PR may require access to more aspects of the product or the category  background and history than the brand manager has readily available.

• to fully leverage the PR, it may be necessary to do some additional research  -  probably quite different to that already done, and often this appears to be of little direct benefit to the product itself.  But this can help make the product or the category ‘news’ to the media - and thus generate publicity that would not be achieved by focusing on the product attributes as in advertising.

• if media is a strong component of the PR program (which it usually is) then the brand manager and other senior members of the team will likely need to devote time to attending media events and building relationships with individual journalists.

• advertising is simply bought in the media and it can be turned off and on like a tap. PR is about building relationships with media - so should be ongoing.  It may be three months after an initial contact is made with a journalist that he/she decides that they want more information to fit into a new story.  It’s no use if the PR assignment has finished and relationships forged with journalists at the time are left to wither on the vine.  A contact developed with a journalist may and should be constant.

The biggest challenge for the brand marketer is to get over the ‘big bang’ approach to marketing where there’s a heavy concentration of effort and expenditure often followed by periods of relative inactivity and/or spasmodic bursts of action. 

Beyond a launch situation PR works best on a gradual and cumulative basis. The PR task is to constantly look for opportunities and keep the product in front of key audiences.

Why therefore should brand managers use PR as part of their activities?

• editorial coverage is more believable and credible than advertising and gaining editorial coverage is a key task of PR

• the success of many products  is often determined by what peers, opinion formers and influencers say -  identifying and reaching these groups is a key task of PR

• given the diverse media channels that consumers access these days - many of them non-advertising -  brand managers can’t afford not to include PR as part of the marketing mix

Use this article to check how well you have PR integrated into your marketing plans.