DOES PR SERVE THE BRAND OR START IT?

After last year’s emissions cover up scandal, questions continue to be asked about how VW will manage the resulting financial penalties…and the cost to the company’s reputation.

While investment in PR is usually infinitely smaller than it is in branding, PR is the mechanism by which a brand is supported during the good times and by which multi-nationals hope it can be rescued in times of crisis. It’s clear, therefore, that the two go hand in hand…and yet very few brand agencies use PR to help inform brand strategy.

The hard truth about PR is that it can be labour intensive, intangible and difficult to measure consistently. The beauty of PR, however, is that it is all about stakeholder engagement and changing perceptions; the very cornerstones of any successful brand strategy.

And yet, as a tool for understanding current perceptions, moving them forward and investigating what stakeholder groups actually want from a brand, PR is very much underused during the re-branding process. To me, that’s simply madness.

PR should be used to lay the foundations for a re-branding at least a year before the process begins in earnest. Like any good campaign, the PR should begin with benchmarking research to help understand brand perceptions so that changes can be measured as the programme is delivered.

With the benchmarking completed, engagement can begin, and this could include traditional media relations, social media, blogging, exhibitions and events. All of these tactics can be used to find out more about what stakeholders believe is missing from the marketplace, what they think your company is doing well and what they think you could be doing better.

PR can also be used to test new thinking on your brand by using analytics to measure engagement from new messages.

As a construction PR agency, Clare PR has a long track history of championing the value of specialist expertise, but that doesn’t mean that we believe in a silo mentality. Successful marketing relies on the integration of various disciplines to inform, develop, deliver and measure various parts of the whole.

PR needs to be an integral part of the brand development process rather than simply being there to support, protect or bail out the brand. Let’s stop protecting our individual pieces of the marketing pie and reap the benefits of interdisciplinary collaboration.