PR Strategy: What It Is & Isn't (With Examples)

In our experience most people don’t really know what a PR strategy is. This includes some very senior PR people who’ve been working in communications all their lives!

When talking about their PR strategy they jump straight to ‘the what.’ What they’re doing. The PR activities – media relations, blogging, events, working with influencers, social media. They’re busy, but tactics are not a PR strategy.

Some also have an objective such as building brand awareness or supporting growth. But they still don’t have a PR strategy – the bit that’s going to make sure all that PR activity actually delivers the objective.

You may think, as many do, that simply using media relations to build brand awareness is a PR strategy? Not really.

There’s nothing in that which assures the media relations will have cut-through, that hearts and minds will be moved, competitors out-gunned. There’s no killer insight which the campaign is going to play on and leverage.

It’s all too vague.

So how can you avoid this? The first step is to appreciate what a PR strategy is and what it is not.

As we’ve already seen, a PR strategy is not:

• PR tactics – such as media relations, social media, or an event.
• PR tools – like press kits, great photography, a crisis and issues plan, media training
• A firm objective like “we’re going to use PR to grow market share by 20%”.
• A dream like “we’re going to make our company the most exciting in the market”
• Nor is your strategy a combination of the above, no matter how much you dress it up with words!

A PR strategy is the leveraging of a truth/observation – in other words an insight – to help you address a specific communications goal/challenge.

The insight might be based on:

• The audience – something about the audience, a behaviour, belief, fear, issue, trait, the way it consumes information, something it holds dear, something it struggles with. If there are multiple audiences, you can sometimes find something that all the audiences share.

• Your company – its resources, a unique strength/expertise, its distinctive personality, a defining value (as long as it’s not something trite that everyone claims like we’re a quality provider, we put the customer first – yawn!)

• The market/need – the need you satisfy, the problem you solve, a negative perception in the marketplace which you can leverage

• Competitors – a weakness competitors have compared to you

To show you how insights inform the strategy, here are two real-world examples.

1. The BBC

Some years ago we worked with BBC Training & Development.

The objective

The broadcast industry was changing so fast. To stay ahead of the game, the BBC needed its people to regularly train and refresh their skills.

The problem

But broadcasting is a creative industry. Talent is valued above everything else. This bred a potential perception that if you needed training, you were not ‘naturally talented.’  So, people were reluctant to ask for training or be seen doing it. Added to this, training was seen as an outdated concept – courses in classrooms.

The insight

When digging deeper into the audience (the 26,0000 staff at the BBC) we identified that around 100 of the most prominent employees within the organisation – people like Alan Yentob, Jeremy Paxman – had a huge amount of influence over the rest. Everyone looked up to them. If these people were seen using the services of BBC Training & Development, others would follow.

The PR strategy

The idea ‘even top talent finds time to train’ was spawned.

Our PR strategy was to get this top 100 to be seen to be training (and therefore implicitly endorsing) BBC Training & Development. By doing this we’d start to shift the hearts and minds of the rest.

Executing it 

To get these 100 to a training event with BBC Training & Development we created a future-focused event, looking at the changing consumer landscape and how this is impacting on broadcasting.

At this time new competitors were entering the market, and the license fee was up for renewal. These 100 senior BBC people were all trying to get to grips with how the BBC should respond – and this event did just that, featuring experts including a leading futurologist – people they would otherwise not get the opportunity to see and question.

Building on the idea of finding time to train, learning lunches then soon followed – times when all people from across the organisation could complete short bursts of training, fitted into their day.

The result

Almost all the 100 attended the event. Even if they didn’t realise it, they were refreshing skills and knowledge with the help of BBC Training & Development. This event helped to break the taboo and communicated that even the most talented need help, and training is relevant and sometimes cool.

Learning lunches became part of the BBC’s vernacular and over the course of three years, the percentage of BBC staff undertaking some form of training increased by 23%.

2. Persil

Persil’s dirt is good campaign is well known, it’s been around since 2004.  But what you perhaps hadn’t realised is the PR strategy behind this campaign.  Let’s fill you in…

The objective

Persil wanted to build a deeper, more meaningful and emotional connection between the brand and its consumers.

The problem

However, washing clothes is a mundane task, and one washing product is much like another. Standing out was difficult, and linking washing to our emotions seemed impossible.

The insight

Yet detailed thinking identified a truth about the market/need.  “If you are not free to get dirty, you cannot experience life and grow.” This led to the idea that dirt equates to creativity.

Some thinking about audience took this a stage further.  People want to parent differently to the generation that came before. They want to have creative, free-thinking and playing kids, rather than pristine-clean conformity. Getting dirty is to be welcomed.

The PR strategy

So, the PR strategy was to leverage the insight: Dirt is good.

Getting dirty is good for child development and creativity. Let’s identify and celebrate the different areas in a child’s life where getting dirty happens in the pursuit of something great – creativity, playing, free-thinking.

Executing it

Since 2014 Persil has used a variety of tactics to bring the strategy to life, from creating painting competitions through to championing outdoor activity and sports.

• ‘Pockets full of promise’ an initiative which celebrated children’s pockets as “the theatre of their experience and repository of all their finds”
• ‘Play in Balance‘ – a report looking at the lack of outdoor play. This was based on global research which found kids spent as little time outdoors as maximum-security prisoners. The report focussed on the amount of screen time they get instead of outdoor play and the impact of the British weather. It included a partnership with Sir Ken Robinson, a leading global expert in creative education, in his first-ever brand partnership.
• ‘Outdoor Classroom Day‘ – a one-day initiative in partnership with NGO Project ‘Dirt’ and Keep Britain Tidy. This involved celeb parents Giovanna Fletcher and Sophie Ellis-Bextor.
• Now Persil’s activity has adopted a more eco dimension, but it is still rooted in the truth that “Dirt is good.”

Results

20 years on, the Persil PR strategy is still going strong and arguably has yet to be bettered. It’s a story that is indelibly linked with the brand, is truly meaningful, can take many forms and still has lots of life in it.

Dirt Is Good challenged perceptions of dirt as an enemy and positioned it (and Persil) instead as an ally – a brand helping parents be the parents they want to be.

As you can see, a PR strategy involves some serious (and sometimes lateral) thinking. And it’s not until you’ve done this thinking that a strategy emerges. You can’t force the result. But there are definitely some things you can do to make it easier.

1. Don’t try to rush it. We typically take two weeks to identify the perfect PR strategy.
2. Don’t get wedded to one idea early in the process. You’ll often have lots of thoughts and false starts before the killer strategy emerges.
3. Don’t be led by your preferred PR tools. Just because you like using a hammer doesn’t mean every problem is a nail! Keep an open mind. Don’t think about the actual activation of the strategy until all the PR strategy thinking is done.
4. Don’t prejudge. It’s no good going into the process thinking “well I know things will centre around media relations” Without properly thinking about the audience, the problem, your competitors, your capabilities, the market, how can you know what the solution will involve?
5. Involve others in the process, but don’t let senior people dominate. As with brainstorms, everyone should have an equal voice and feel able to speak up.
6. Get external help. In our experience most brands cannot do this alone. They’re too close to the problem, they’re too caught up in the day-to-day and lack the time, perspective or (sometimes) the skills to think about their situation laterally. We’d recommend either hiring a PR agency or in-house PR support.

Want to discuss how we can help you develop and execute your PR strategy? Get in touch with me at louise@energypr.co.uk.