When to select an independent PR professional

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There are really three types of public relations agencies and all of them can add significant value to any organization, especially in today's marketplace where customers are looking for more transparency and authenticity. But selecting the right type for your organization is very important.

I don't like to generalize much, but when you're talking about an industry with probably a 100,000 or more firms and/or independents, you kind of have to generalize just to get started. So, here I go:

• Large PR Agencies. These guys can do anything and everything under the PR umbrella. But their strongest points are crisis communications, media training and strategic communications for large organizations. They really know how to guide big-time executives to the strategic messaging that works best for their organizations. 
• Boutique PR Agencies. Some of my favorite firms to work with are boutique agencies. They are nimble, get the work you need done and can successfully dabble in strategy. Their strengths are often in creating and running unique PR campaigns, media relations, reputation management and social media development for mid- to large-sized companies. Often, you'll spend less and get very similar results when compared with large agencies.
• Independent PR practitioners. Full disclosure: I'm in this camp right now, but working hard toward being a boutique firm. If you're a small business that wants an inexpensive pro who can do just about anything, this is where you want to be. Independents are very good at just getting the job done, no matter what the job is. They're the jack of all trades that can do anything from copy writing to campaign management. 

So, when should you select an independent PR practitioner rather than their larger counterparts?

• When you have a PR project that needs to get done asap. 
• When you're not really sure what PR is and how to go about doing it.
• When you need publicity results ... yesterday.
• When your PR pro goes on leave with a big project looming.
• When your small business is ready to grow and you need positive exposure.
• When a small crisis hits your small business and you just need a little help managing the media calls.
• When you read an article in the local publication and you wonder why they didn't talk to you.
• When you're launching a brand-new website for your small business and need messaging fast.
• When a friend says your website has a million typos and grammatical errors on it.
• When a large or boutique firm says they can't accept any more business right now.

I could go on, but that should do it. If you need an independent PR practitioner, contact Jakel Communications. We'd love to help. 

PR’s place in decision making

Many years ago, I read an amazing issue of the Harvard Business Review on decision making. One of the things that has stuck with me since reading that issue is the question: Who has the “D”? “D” stands for decision.

It’s a very important question when it comes to decision making because eventually someone has to make the call or you’ll remain in meetings for the next 40 years, especially if things are decided based on consensus. As a PR pro, I know how important it is to make that decision quickly, especially in times of crises. But I also know how important it is that every decision be made with PR in mind.

Yes, that’s right – every decision should be made with PR in mind. Not in the sense that it should be made with the intent to promote it. Rather with the understanding that the decision will negatively or positively impact a public if not many different publics. The public could be employees, customers, investors, interest groups, other organizations, all of the above or any combination of them.  

When you don’t consider the potential impact on any one of the publics, you’re asking for either a crisis or a missed opportunity. I’ve experienced the impact of this hundreds of times in my career. You might call it job security for crisis management pros.

But PR is more than just a reaction-to-pushback machine. It’s meant to be your intuitive ambassador with the public, which is diverse and ever changing. It’s hard for a full-time c-suite executive to keep up with the changes. PR pros can help.

Contact Jakel Communications, a Denver PR agency, if you need help in this area.  

Public relations is a science … and an art

It’s kind of a trend, but not really. Today, communications and PR departments everywhere are being expected (not just asked) to measure their public relations activities and prove their value. I’m not sure it was ever cool to say you don’t know what your activities are worth, but I hear from the more experienced that there was a day when they didn’t have to prove their value.

Of course they didn’t. It was obvious to a person who could see the forest from the trees that public relations had value. PR was the group that really understood what was going on in the world and what could impact the organization in a negative way.

Good public relations practitioners have a feel for the risks the company is taking and how to fix the company’s activities to prevent disaster, as well as how to use what the company is doing right to generate a positive vibe. That is value.

That’s changed today because of big data. Big data, rightfully so, is constantly asking you to “prove it.” Prove that you are generating value by finding the correlation between your activities and the company’s success in meeting its goals. Unfortunately, the softer disciplines, like PR, have a hard time doing that without creating marketing-like activities to generate the numbers. PR professionals can do that because we understand the public and know what will resonate with them, but it begins to look a lot more like marketing than PR.

Yes, big data is important and proving your value as a PR practitioner is as well. But I have to admit that I’m not always on board with big data approaches to public relations or marketing. Sometimes, you can’t draw a direct correlation because you’re looking at too many trees. Sometimes, you have to take a step back and see that the forest works together as a whole to create the ideal ecosystem for life.

The same is true in business. It’s not the individual trees that have made you successful. It’s the ecosystem, or culture, that created the success. Public relations helps foster that internal culture and make adjustments as society changes. Public relations understands the softer side of business and the importance of the one thing that can make or break your organization – culture.

This might be a little strong for many of you reading this blog, but culture is the one thing you have to get right, and it has to show in everything you do. If you get it wrong or you fail to build it into your organization in a manner that shines through to your publics, you will either eventually fail or be relegated to second place for a lifetime.

Ignoring the importance of public relations (I use this interchangeably with corporate communications because they should be one in the same, but that’s for another blog post.) is a big mistake. Public relations/corporate communications should be responsible for internal communications as well as external communications, because your culture should be aligned in certain respects with your publics. 

When you get it right, the culture is magnetic. People choose you over the competition because of it. Take a moment to think about the iconic brands in the world. Apple, Southwest Airlines, Nordstrom and Starbucks have more than just good products. They have distinct, magnetic cultures internally that show to the public. That’s what superior public relations working with marketing can help you create.

That’s value that you can’t put a big data number on. That’s the art of public relations, and it’s worth more than a number in a spreadsheet.

If you need help building that kind of culturally relevant brand, contact Jakel Communications. We can help.

An important lesson about content from the PR network

Over the last week or so, I have been networking a lot with PR pros in the Denver area. I didn’t get their permission to write about them, so I’ll just thank them as a group – Thank you all for taking time out of your schedules to meet with me and giving me something to write about on my blog.

One thing stood out in all of the conversations I had with them – content is still king. Whether you’re making a post on Facebook or writing a history book for your employer, the content in words or pictures or moving pictures is what will connect with your audience.

Audiences can’t and won’t connect with your company or brand, especially in today’s message-saturated world, unless you have content that attracts them, pulls them in, makes them a believer and eventually inspires them to be an ambassador. Content is still the king. Without stellar content, you don’t have anything.

Content can come in many forms, words, pictures and moving pictures: flyers, point of purchase materials, advertisements, press releases, website copy, videos, Facebook posts, corporate intranet posts, corporate emails and memos, etc … I could go on for a long time so I’ll stop, but it should be obvious that without these things, we really wouldn’t be able to run a business, at least not successfully.

But the real trick isn’t just hiring someone or using someone you have to create content, it’s creating excellent, cohesive, compelling, creative, (insert positive adjective here) content. Many organizations look at content like it’s a giant task list that they will check off as they go along.

Unfortunately, the task list didn’t have a required form at the top that forces them to create a fully-integrated content strategy. Without it, companies pepper customers, employees, interest groups, government officials and all of their obscure family members with messages that often don’t coincide, let alone, agree with one another.

That’s why I’m a believer in fully-integrated communications, even if that means communications needs at least a dotted line to sales and marketing. Think about it. What would happen if half of your accounting team reported up to the CEO and the other half reported up to the CFO and you didn’t have a controller. I have a feeling you’d end up with a lot of numbers that just don’t reconcile with each other and you’d probably end up with a roommate named Bubba in a federal prison.

The same is true with corporate communication, except you’re more likely to end up in the unemployment line than in a federal prison. People want consistent, compelling messages, and they’re quick to point out inconsistencies. Having been in communications for over a dozen years, I’ve taken that phone call many times.

If you need help with your strategic communications structure and messaging, Jakel Communications can help. Contact our Denver PR agency today. 

PR: More than just media relations

It happens all the time. I talk about public relations and people immediately start asking about the reporters I know or what the media is saying about (insert your recent breaking news here).

Public relations has “public” in it for a reason. It’s not just media relations. It’s much more than that. It’s about connecting with the public in an authentic and transparent manner. You might think that sounds like marketing, but there’s a fine line between marketing and public relations.

Marketing in many respects is a way to sell something to a consumer and to get them to perceive a brand in a certain way. Sure, that’s evolving today and marketing is encroaching on the public relations space. In fact, many public relations professionals report up to marketing. I know because I was one of them.

But I was also a PR practitioner so I played the role at times of expressing during meetings what the consumer would buy or not buy from the marketing efforts. My healthy skepticism, I like to think, had the impact of making the messages more authentic or real.

PR isn’t necessarily about making sales. Sure, sales has to be part of the ROI on PR efforts or there wouldn’t be a reason for PR to exist. But sales are a product of the company and the public creating a mutually beneficial relationship. If PR can ensure that the company is creating benefits for the various publics they interact with, it saves the company money from unnecessary crises and it generates sales from the publics that have what they believe is a mutually beneficial relationship.

That’s why I’m such a believer in the PRSA’s recently published definition of public relations:

“Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.”

Jakel Communications is committed to this definition not just because it’s accurate, but because doing it well leads to significant value for both the organization and the public. If you need help making PR work, contact our Denver public relations agency today.

PR Lessons from March Madness

It’s March and for many of us that means March Madness. I’m fortunate this year in that I get to watch the day games while working. While it seems like it’s nothing more than entertainment to most, to me it’s a learning opportunity. Actually, for all PR professionals, it’s a learning opportunity.

It’s the most celebrated tournament in all of sports because of what it offers to the public and how it’s delivered to the public by the NCAA. Here are a few lessons from the event.

1. Emotion is the key to connecting with the public. The NCAA Tournament is chalk full of emotion, and the brilliant marketing and PR minds of CBS, the NCAA and ESPN use it to their advantage. Even those who don’t like basketball can salivate over the tournament because of the underdog. Very little is more powerful than watching a 12-seed, no-name college take down a 5-seed school with traveling fans and shirtless super-fans with painted chests. Then, there’s the song CBS plays every year: “One Shining Moment.” It’s laced with emotion and relevancy for the tournament in that each team gets that one moment (one game) to shine. And if they’re the underdog that eliminates Duke, North Carolina, Kansas or any of the perennial Final Four teams, that moment is huge. 
2. Engagement is powerful. Who doesn’t fill out a bracket? Even the President of the United States fills one out. OK, there are some non-basketball fans who watch without filling out a bracket. But office bracket pools are abundant this time of year and they have a tendency to help the NCAA grow its fan base. How many people do you know in your office pool who know nothing about basketball? I bet there is at least one in small pools and at least 5-10 in large pools. Every year, a new someone or many new someone’s enter every pool. And inevitably there is someone who makes a side bet with a friend who loses and has to buy the jersey of the opposing team to wear it for a day.  There’s your ROI right there.
3. Loyal customers are invaluable to your reputation. No matter what organization you represent, crises are going to happen and something negative is going to hit the news about the organization at some point. If you don’t have a solid reputation, the damage is going to be significant. If you do have a solid reputation, you have loyal customers who will stick with you and help you weather the storm. That truth is most apparent in college sports. Many of the teams in the tourney have been hit with NCAA sanctions at one point or another because of how difficult it is to oversee the complex system, but they’ve weathered the storms because they have loyal fans – fans who will forgive them and stick with them through almost anything. Loyal customers and fans accept that the organization isn’t perfect and when someone within the organization makes a mistake, the organization will fix the problem and make it right.

There are so many more lessons PR professionals can learn from the tournament. Feel free to share them here.

If you need help using emotion to reach your customers, developing ways to engage your customers or securing loyal customers, Jakel Communications can help. Contact our Denver PR agency today. 

Reasons to not go social

No, I’m not one of those you-must-be-in-social-media-or-your-business-will-die guys. I don’t believe there’s a single communication medium out there in which that is entirely true. Even email could be done without in some industries.

Sometimes, social media engagement just doesn’t make sense for your organization or even your industry. For example, if your product is primarily for retired people and their children have no influence on the purchase decision, you probably don’t need to be in social media. (Detractors will cite how many 60+ customers are now on Facebook, but they’ll forget that those customers are primarily on the site to see pictures of their grandchildren, not much else.)

That said, I do believe that most businesses (99% or more) can benefit from a comprehensive social media strategy. Yet, the timing might not be right for you right now. Here are some reasons to not go social …

1. You don’t have any resources available to do it. If you can’t put any resources toward your social efforts to monitor the page every day, post new content regularly and respond to customers, you should not go social. In addition, you shouldn’t go social unless you’re committed to providing something of value to customers there. You don’t need a lot of resources, but you have to put some toward it for it to be successful. Look at it this way: you couldn’t start a magazine tomorrow with no money and expect 100,000 readers by the end of the week. You need to put effort and money into it for it to be successful.
2. You don’t believe there will be any return on investment. Let’s not kid ourselves. Nearly every time we have tried to convince ourselves that something was going to work that we truly didn’t believe would work, we found out we were right. Not because we were right but because we only acknowledged the negatives of the experiment.  If you don’t believe in it, don’t do it and keep researching until you see the real benefit.  In most cases, there is one out there and once you find it, you’ll be able to create an effective strategy for it.
3. Your customers aren’t using social media to engage with you or your product and are telling you they won’t. As odd as this sounds, it is really true in some industries. There is, however, something to be said about customers not knowing what they don’t know. In other words, you don’t have a social media page up, so your customers don’t know what value it can actually bring to them. You have to be careful with this reason. Make sure there isn’t any value in it and that your customers won’t use it before you assume they know for certain they wouldn’t. You don’t know what you don’t know either.

These are three basic reasons why you shouldn’t be in social media. Personally, I believe companies with these reasons are few and far between. So, don’t take this as an excuse for you not being more social. Really consider what branding opportunities you might be missing by not being in social media. And read my reasons for going social.

If you need help determining whether social media is right for your organization, contact Jakel Communications, a Denver PR firm. We can help you make the right decision and start moving in the right direction.