Category Archives: Public Relations

How PR Will Not Change in 2022

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Several weeks ago, a colleague sent me the link to an article by Arik Hanson titled “10 skills the PR pro of 2022 MUST have.”  Not surprisingly, these skills primarily relate to digital technologies and social media. The author also made the point that traditional PR skills, such as writing and media relations, will be more important as ever. The “emerging skills,” as he described the ones making his list, really are a layer on top of traditional ones.

While I certainly agree that the emerging skills he identified—such as the ability to manage social content creation, mobile and analytics—will be vitally important in the future, the reality is that public relations specialists should be doing or learning how to do these things now.

By 2022, I suspect we will be beyond what even the most visionary among us can imagine. Given the rate at which technology is changing our lives and work, it’s virtually impossible to predict how the PR profession will be shaped a decade from now.

What the article really got me thinking about, however, are the things that will always be important to the public relations profession. My top 10 list for success combines skills and qualities that are timeless.

Regardless of the channels and methods we use to communicate in 2022 and beyond, a PR specialist will always be in demand if he or she has:

  1. Integrity. Yes, I know there are unscrupulous PR people just as there are unscrupulous people in other walks of life. But sooner or later the truth emerges and the bad guys get exposed and discredited. If reporters, clients or customers don’t trust your word or character, you’d better find something else to do because you aren’t going to have much of a career in PR in 2012 or 2022.
  2. A positive attitude. Being a positive, energetic person with a can-do attitude will always go a long ways. The world is full of people who can give you a dozen reasons why something can’t be done or won’t work. And sometimes they’re right, but often it’s because they’ve allowed themselves to become negative and cynical in their thinking, always seeing the glass as half empty rather than half full.
  3. Relational skills. Being a team player and having the ability to relate well to people at all levels will never go out of style. It’s one of the most important traits of successful people, whether in PR or in other disciplines.
  4. A knack for networking. Being a resource and connector for others will pay off, even if there’s not an immediate personal benefit. From assisting reporters or bloggers looking for good sources to building relationships with key influencers in the community and industry, time invested in people is never wasted.
  5. Balance.Know how to strike the balance between needing to get information out quickly vs. ensuring the information is correct and credible. If you wait too long, in today’s 24/7 news cycle you may miss out on opportunities. But a quick response must also be a responsible one, and if you want to keep your credibility make sure the information you disseminate is accurate to the best of your ability.
  6. Strategic thinking. The ability to do effective planning and see the big picture separates the strategists from the order takers. Effective PR people are able to juggle multiple tasks simultaneously without losing focus on the long-term objective. Those who think tactically (what needs to be done) without also thinking strategically (why we are doing something and how we should go about it) will have a hard time advancing in PR.
  7. A cool head under pressure. Thinking quickly, clearly and calmly under pressure—and helping others do so in a crisis—will always earn respect among peers and leaders alike.
  8. Flexibility. A PR person’s day can change in an instant, and you need to be able to shift priorities at a moment’s notice.
  9. A yearn to learn.  A broad-based college education that incorporates working knowledge of PR principles, business, journalism, marketing and the social sciences is a good start, but learning should be a life-long activity. Keeping up with industry trends through blogs, conferences, industry publications, etc., will keep your thinking fresh and make you a valuable resource to others.
  10. The ability to communicate clearly, concisely and relevantly, regardless of the medium being used. A good PR person understands the audience he or she is targeting and what’s important to them. Knowing how to adapt a story to a particular niche and medium—and how to speak to people in a meaningful way— has always been vital to success. As audiences get more and more segmented, the demand for this skill will only increase.

Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to advertising agencies and businesses.

photo credit: x-ray delta one via photopin cc

Guest Post Explains How Ad Agencies Can Use PR Strategically for New Business

Want to learn how your ad agency can use public relations to drive new business? Check out my guest post on Michael Gass’ Fuel Lines blog. In it I explain how strategic use of PR can help small and mid-sized agencies—even a one-person operation—level the playing field with larger competitors.

Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to advertising agencies and businesses.

What Ten Years Running My Own PR Agency Has Taught Me

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Yesterday was the 10th anniversary of my PR consulting business. When I left my VP position with an ad agency to strike out on my own a decade ago, it was a grand experiment that turned out far better than I ever could have imagined.

So what I have learned in the past 10 years? For one thing, I had no idea I would enjoy having my own business so much. Unlike many entrepreneurs I’ve known, I never had a burning desire to be self-employed. But once I got a taste of running my own business, I discovered it was exciting and energizing having my own clients and handling their communication needs. If a problem or issue arises—and there have been very few—I’m able to solve it directly with the client.

Another thing I’ve learned—or had confirmed, really—is that with technology, you can work from just about anywhere and still provide top-notch service to clients. A laptop, e-mail, a mobile phone and Social Media tools are about the only things you really need.

I’ve learned also the tremendous value of referrals. With only a couple of exceptions, my business has all come from either word-of-mouth or from having one division of a company see what I’d done for another division and contact me.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve picked up the phone and someone would say something along the lines of, “I’m Bill Smith and so-and-so gave me your name . . . .”

Which leads me to another observation: You can’t beat starting out with a huge piece of business coming through the door. That’s exactly what happened to me. Initially I expected my first year to be a struggle and my goal was simply to make enough money to survive until I got established. Having a large piece of retainer business from day one gave me a roaring start and a strong foundation upon which to build for future success. I was exceedingly fortunate and blessed.

A friend and colleague who had launched his own ad agency a few years prior and seen it grow significantly gave me this piece of advice when I first got started: Be prepared for success. It was great advice, and he was absolutely right. If you’re going to take the plunge, focus on being successful, not hoping you’ll be successful.

One thing that I thought I’d miss more than I have is the opportunity to bounce things off agency peers. Turns out that several of them have their own agencies now, and we share advice and resources with each other as needed. In fact, I’ve collaborated with a number of my former agency colleagues on business assignments when they needed help, and I’ve hired some of them to provide services for my clients when I’ve been swamped.

I wouldn’t want to leave the impression that there haven’t been some bumps along the way, and my business certainly is not immune to downswings in the economy. But having my own firm has been a blessing far beyond what I envisioned. It’s been a great ride, and I’m looking forward to seeing what the next 10 years have in store.

Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to advertising agencies and businesses.

photo credit: Patrick Hoesly via photopin cc

Don’t Try to Fix Broken Communication Until You Have Completed a Communications Audit

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Several days ago, I finished a communications audit for a client that has customers throughout Tennessee. If you’re not family with a communications audit, it’s simply a management tool that helps an organization gauge how effectively it’s communicating with various audiences.

While people may think that others understand and accept their messages, we are often unaware of how the messages we send are received, understood or accepted. An audit helps identify strengths and weaknesses in an organization’s communications, as well as perceptions that exist and barriers which prevent or inhibit effective communication. An audit also flags areas that areas that may require more in-depth, quantitative research.

When I do an audit, I always include:

•       A review of past methods and vehicles used to communicate with various audiences.

•       The collection and analysis of information about perceptions individuals have about the organization; what they want and need to know; how they prefer to be reached; and the extent to which organizational communication is clear, consistent and relevant.

•       An analysis of what would make communications more effective in the future, along with specific recommendations.

In addition to reviewing this organization’s communications materials and vehicles, I interviewed employees as well as customers from one side of the state to the other to determine perceptions and how communication could be improved. By comparing employees’ and customers’ answers about key issues and perceptions, I was able to identify common concerns and trends, as well as to see where gaps exist between what they think about a particular matter.

As it turned out, there were three reoccurring themes I heard over and over again. All three are intertwined, and the good news is that there are practical ways in which they can be greatly improved, though they won’t be fixed overnight and they will require a financial investment.

It’s hard to fix something if you don’t know exactly where  it’s broken. A communications audit helps answer that question and provides a roadmap to get an organization’s communications back on track.

Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to advertising agencies and businesses.

photo credit: Calsidyrose via photopin cc

How PR Can Bring “Awareness Plus” to Ad Agencies

Many advertising agencies use public relations to generate awareness, but in my experience few use it as a strategic tool to drive new business.

While generating awareness is valuable, PR can do so much more if it works hand-in-hand with an agency’s new business plan. Agencies that utilize PR solely for awareness purposes are shortchanging the value it can bring them.

Public relations can help agencies drive sales, get discovered by prospects and retain existing clients. I like to think of this approach as “Awareness Plus.”

I use the term “Awareness Plus” because if utilized in a targeted, strategic manner, PR will give your agency the benefits of awareness plus so much more.

On February 8, I’ll discuss the building blocks for creating a performance-based PR plan for agencies at a Mirren webinar titled, “How to Craft a PR Plan that Will Drive New Business.”

For more information about the webinar or to register, visit http://www.mirren.org/workshops/130/77-How-to-Craft-a-PR-Plan-that-Will-Drive-New-Business/

Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to advertising agencies and businesses.

Developing an Effective PR Plan: Getting Started

“Publicity begets publicity” is a principle I learned early in my agency career.

As I’ve found time and time again while working with clients in an array of industries, once a story is done by one news media outlet, others media tend to notice and want in on the action.

Having someone from your agency or business repeatedly quoted in media outlets on a particular topic can go a long ways toward positioning that person as an expert. It’s hard to overstate the value of becoming a trusted source for reporters and the benefits such positioning can garner.

Organizations that make PR a priority through an intentional, ongoing effort to get their names in the marketplace can gain a significant competitive advantage, especially when it comes to new business development.

But in order to manage time, resources and activities in the most productive way possible, it’s vital to have a written PR plan to provide focus, direction, coordination and clear targeting for your efforts.

Without one, PR activities will manage you, and they may lack focus and consistency. Or, they will simply fall off your radar as the tyranny of the urgent takes over.

A good starting point is to nail down as specifically as possible what it is you want your plan to achieve and how you will go about it.

People sometimes use terms such as a goals and objectives interchangeably, so when you’re ready to establish you PR goal, objectives, strategies and tactics, it’s important that everyone is speaking the same language and sharing the same meaning.

I’ve found the following football analogy helpful when thinking through what needs to be accomplished:

Goals are broad and intangible, so the team’s goal could be to become the best high school football team in the world. Because there are no world playoffs at the high school level, the goal couldn’t be measured.

Objective: To win the game. An objective is specific and measurable. In this case, winning is the primary objective.  A secondary objective may be to enable a player to gain enough yards to break a school record or to score a certain number of points.

Strategy: The other team is bigger, but we’re faster.  Therefore, we’ll utilize our superior quickness to achieve the objective (i.e. to win the game).

Tactics: The specific plays we will run throughout the game, especially those that favor quicker players. You also could think of tactics as the action plan.

Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to small- and medium-sized advertising agencies and businesses.

Developing an Effective PR Plan: Identifying and Understanding Your Audiences

One of the most important aspects of a public relations plan is a clear delineation of who you want to reach, what motivates them, their level of interest/comprehension and the best ways to reach them.

Whether the PR plan is designed to stand alone or be incorporated into a broader marketing plan, identifying and understanding your audiences is critical to success.

Customers have different informational needs than employees, and a regulator will ask much different questions than a supplier. Likewise, a local reporter will be especially interested in the local angle of a story and what it means to the community, while trade and national media will focus on the “big picture” aspect of the same story. Even then, trade media will have different informational needs than national consumer media.

Some audiences are obvious, while others may be more challenging to identify. Depending on a number of factors, a PR plan may address a relatively small, targeted audience or more diverse, fragmented groups.

Whatever audiences end up in your plan, you’ll need specific strategies, tactics and messaging to effectively reach each segment.

When creating a public relations plan, it’s helpful to find a method for categorizing audiences to you make sure you don’t miss one. The following is a method I’ve used to segment audiences based on their links to an organization:

Enabling links – publics that set policies or goals and may control assets.

  • Board of directors
  • Government regulators
  • Congress

Functional links – audiences with a direct link between the services the organization performs and the product(s) it produces.

  • Employees
  • Suppliers
  • Users of products/services

Diffused links – individual members of a public who do not belong to a formal organization but share a common interest.

  • Community residents
  • Minorities
  • News Media
  • Environmentalists
  • Voters

Normative links – publics that share the organization’s goals and values.

  • Religious associations
  • Professional societies
  • Competitors

Always keep in mind that diffused links can quickly fuse by organizing to take action (over a common problem or opportunity) and can cause major headaches for you and your organization.  Unions, coalitions and environmental groups are prime examples.

Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to advertising agencies and businesses.

Managing Change Creates Opportunities for Ad Agency PR

As organizations scramble to adapt to change, their use of public relations as a vehicle to manage the constantly evolving landscape will only grow.

The challenge of managing change and remaining relevant is highlighted in a new IBM study of more than 1,700 chief marketing officers.

•       According to the executive summary, “One of the most surprising findings to emerge from our study is the degree of consensus among the respondents. No matter where they work, their industry, or how large or successful their organizations are, CMOs are facing many of the same challenges and most feel underprepared to manage them.”

The number one area in which CMOs report not being prepared (76%) is the explosion of data.

•       “CMOs are . . . overwhelmingly underprepared to take charge of the growing volume, velocity and variety of data,” the executive summary notes.

PR can help CMOs mine data to unlock perceptions, preferences and concerns, but understanding customers, stakeholders or citizens is not enough.

An organization has to take action based on what it learns—and do so more quickly than its competitors. That’s where PR can play an especially helpful role.

“PR firms in general are quite adept at leveraging change, especially those who have shifted their models and strategies in recognition of the importance of digital, online, social, and mobile communications,” writes Jim Weiss, CEO of WCG, in PRWEEK.

He continues: “We are increasingly seeing the role of communications, and PR pros within companies and organizations, taking on a broader remit than ever before because communications are happening online in real-time where multiple stakeholders are seeing them all at once . . . Responsiveness and transparency with relative speed and immediacy have always been qualities the best PR professionals possess.”

Whether connecting with a reporter on deadline, responding to an irate customer using social media to vent his or her displeasure, or dealing with an actual or impending crisis, reacting quickly (yet responsibly with facts in hand) has long been a forte of the PR profession.

In the age of digital media, smaller ad agencies not only can compete against much larger competitors, but often times do so more nimbly and effectively. Those who are prepared to lead this critical PR function will ensure they remain relevant to the companies or clients they serve.

Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to advertising agencies and businesses.

Increase in Web Advertising Has Implications for Ad Agency PR

It was bound to happen: Web advertising revenue in the U.S.has surpassed that of newspaper advertising revenue.

An April 14 article in The Wall Street Journal cites a PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP report for the Interactive Advertising Bureau that shows a rebound for Web advertising after a modest decline in 2009.

The IAB estimates that Internet-ad revenue in 2010, which rose 15% to $26 billion, surpassed that of newspapers, which amounted to $22.8 billion, as well as $22.5 billion from cable TV networks, $17.6 billion from broadcast TV networks and $15.3 billion from radio.

Given the growth of the Web and the decline in newspaper readership, this changing of the guard was inevitable. Still, it is amazing to think about the relative speed with which all this has happened.

The prominence of the Internet as an advertising vehicle also has implications for ad agency PR. Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc., as well as free and paid Internet news release distribution services, are important ways to get news out to key audiences beyond traditional print and broadcast outlets.

While social media plays a vital role in generating awareness for public relations initiatives, some are still not up to speed on its potential.

Commenting on the gap that exists between the percentage of time consumers spend using digital media and the percentage of spending that marketers allocate to the Web, John Suhler, founding partner with private equity and media forecasting firm Verohnis Suhler Stevenson, noted: “Dollars always follow eyeballs.”

More and more, eyeballs are turning to the Internet for news and information, and that trend likely will continue growing in the years to come.

Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to small- and medium-sized advertising agencies and businesses.

GM, Ad Agency Form Powerful Alliance to Revitalize Detroit

This Thanksgiving, the city of Detroit ought to be especially thankful for Joel Ewanick, General Motors’ new marketing chief. His duel mission of reviving Detroit and selling cars is something that any city struggling with an image problem would appreciate. 

Mark Reuss, GM’s North American president, recruited Ewanick from Nissan.  According to the Detroit Free Press, after jumping on board with GM and taking up the challenge of helping Detroit make a come back, Ewanick flew to San Francisco to pitch ad agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners on the idea of having an office in downtown Detroit.  It worked so well that after he spoke, employees were volunteering to relocate there. 

Plans include partnering with five Detroit schools, having ad agency employees teach Detroit School of Arts students how to create TV public service announcements and assisting the city with creating better recreational area.

“We have a rare opportunity to launch a new company…but it also can be a very exciting rebirth of the city,” the Free Press quoted Reuss as saying. 

As GM emerges post-bankruptcy, it’s encouraging to see the company looking beyond its immediate concerns to address ways in which it can improve life in the local community.  It’s a move that will pay dividends down the road as a revitalized company and city grow and mutually support each other.

As a community relations case study, this one would be hard to beat.

 Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to small- and medium-sized advertising agencies and businesses.