Recession! Crisis! Scandal! Steady Your Brand with PR and Grab a Little Market Share While You’re At It

May 29, 2009 2:34 PM

By Denise Goodwin Pace, CCO/Co-Founder, The Halo Group

What do you get when you add a 24-hour news cycle to voraciously expanding social media to a pressured and shrinking cadre of experienced journalists to a worldwide recession to chilling headlines about multi-billion dollar swindles, tainted food sources, and corporate wrongdoings?

A crying need for good old-fashioned public relations.

Tell Me the Truth
Smart marketers keep PR as a central steadying component of their brand work. It’s part of the way they tell their story to the various people, customers, and “publics” that should know it. Right now, in the tumult of these crazy times, consumers are begging to believe. They want to find someone, ANYONE, to trust.

It’s basic – the brand must be true, inside and out, and the brand’s voice should be steady, trustworthy, clear. That message constancy, the happy hum, has always been created best through proactive public relations efforts. It’s not news to anyone in our business that positive media coverage is seen by consumers to be more credible than advertising. And fee-based PR, more “affordable” than traditional advertising buys, is a great way to reach them. It should always be part of the mix and its efforts can be targeted anywhere, from traditional consumer and trade print and broadcast, to the Internet and the exciting new world of social media.

How do you know when a brand is doing it? Simply ask yourself, “What company do I admire?” Even in the face of unexpected crises, that company generates good will. That company is true to itself, behaves responsibly, and then lets the world know. That company tells the good news. Hershey’s Chocolate, with its long-standing corporate social-responsibility commitments, national baking events, and cookbooks, is a great example of smart and proactive PR at work.

And While You’re At It, Inspire Me
Please PLEASE tell us something good. With so much wrong in the world, we want to know what’s right. Add the power of social media to the mix and who knows what can happen. Ask Susan Boyle.

Of course, she is not a company (though she IS developing as a brand), but within two weeks her talent-show performance, uploaded on YouTube (well over 100,000,000 views) and buzzing through the social media world, spilled over into traditional media with major TV, newspaper, radio, and magazine placements, turning the unknown Scottish woman into a worldwide phenomenon … with a brand new lucrative recording contract.

On the corporate side, think about Patagonia and Tom’s Shoes too – more good examples of good companies telling good stories and seeing growing numbers of customers because of it. All because we consumers are human first – we adore being inspired.

These are turbulent days. The brands that speak consistently, in a clear, powerful, coherent, and positive voice, like that delivered through a PR program, will be the ones heard. The ones remembered.

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