As instantaneous, utterly transparent media forces PRs to focus on truthful storytelling, isn’t it a bit ironic that a big fat lie remains right at the heart of what we do?
When we talk about results, we have tended to concentrate on the volume of publicity achieved. Yes fragmenting media is changing that and increasingly campaigns are being engineered to target commercial outcomes, but fundamentally a lot of targets that agencies work to are to get high quality and quantity of media exposure.
Chance and best guesses
So the flimsy fib upon which PR is based is that getting stuff about you in the papers, on radio and on TV will actually make a difference to you or your business. Because we have, ultimately, no way of knowing whether anyone is going to read it, see it or believe it. We don’t know whether it’ll be of influence and what they’ll think.
PR has always been a game of chance and best guesses.
But before I get my coat having completely done myself out of a job, let me qualify those brash statements a little. Of course publicity can have an enormously positive effect on brands and their reputations otherwise PR firms wouldn’t exist. And of course PR agencies can’t be taken to task when publicity campaigns don’t have the desired commercial effect because these things can’t be guaranteed.
Indeed I have successful argued that last point in court on more than one occasion.
Fantasy footfall
Yet the PR game has always been over reliant on its supposed ability to influence people. We talk about it being more effective than advertising because of the power of third party endorsement, and that is probably true. We have even dreamed up daft ‘industry standard advertising value equivalent ratios for measuring PR output. Because we had nothing better and had to do something to justify ourselves.
The lie, then, is that we’ve been planning PR activity and telling people that the topics or content we pursue will be effective ‘because that’s what will convince people’ or ‘because that’s what will inspire the audience. Guff like that. When we have no real way of knowing that, or didn’t until relatively recently, beyond a smattering of largely unrepresentative focus groups.
And yet PRs and those paying for their services were always happy (or mostly happy) to pursue the illusion, knowing that their competitors were all doing the same thing and they had to do what they could to influence the market through the established media.
Now though the lie is being undermined by the very thing that lies get brought down by: the truth. Because the transparency of two-way digital media – not just social media, but conventional media publishing online, and branded media assets too – means the audience can actually tell us what they think of the content they’re presented with.
They can answer back
When we undertake a campaign, carry out sustained communication or even answer a question posed by a customer or critic, we can actually see what that person thinks. It’s direct, visible feedback, and it’s typically provided because they really care about the topic. For better or worse, as we heard at Speed’s Control in the Age of Anarchy event last week. Providing they’re being truthful of course.
What’s more, this level of engagement enables brands to actually learn from their audiences over time – not just about what might influence them better, not just about their purchasing habits and views on issues that might impact them, but about how to better tailor products and services to what customers actually want. Over time, we can even get them to participate in the brand’s story.
So why haven’t more PRs woken up and realised that, while it may be imperfect at the moment, the possibilities for finally measuring what we do more accurately, using direct feedback from the audience we want to reach, is obvious and we should start to change the way we plan and deliver our work accordingly?
We could start to put an end to the intangible nature of PR, start to think about how we could offer consultancy that has a more clinical commercial outcome, and stop coming up with daft, unsubstantiated statements about why the results we achieved were really good. We could fill our boots with this.
Growing up time
Instead, while more progressive agencies are investing time, money but most of all energy in enhancing how they measure their work, a lot of firms seem to be burying their heads in the sand.
PR’s days of being a game of chance are numbered. It’s a really good thing for us. We can devise clever long-term communication strategies and deliver on them. We can be braver in pushing the boundaries of how brands can plan and create influence, because it’s no longer built on foundations of fudge.
Let’s man up, grow up and say goodbye to guesswork.
