Brainstorming your way to PR success

With the technological transformations and innovations changing the communications industry every now and then, it has truly become difficult to master the art of Public Relations (PR) and marketing. From the time of physically clipping client’s coverage in media, the PR industry has now reached a time where digital especially the social media is the new scene to share the client wins in.

As argued by many of the PR experts it’s the adequate blend of the team effort, creativity and strategic thinking. Crucial most elements in this powerful blend are the creative process which involves a lot of brainstorming, both individually and as a team. This brings out the best of all the intellectual minds and is therefore considered an important part of the overall Public Relations method. But at times, these sessions also lead to conflicts and chaos in the team. Therefore, to avoid any such mishap and to ensure benefitting responses develop out from these sessions, here are a few tips to keep in mind when organizing a brainstorming session:

Goals Identification: Absence of predefined goals lead to either of the two conditions: One, the conversation breaks down awkwardly. Two, the result isn’t satisfactory and is all wastage of resources. When sitting for brainstorming rounds be clear with the problem that needs to be solved, a clear-cut strategy which needs just the implementation tricks and tactics. This clarity will guide the entire process, thus avoiding any ambiguity while performing tasks.

Be ready well in advance:  Advance preparation never goes off waste; instead, it creates more scope for revision and enhancement of plans. It’s one of the crucial most factors of the brainstorming session to do homework well in advance and prepare the team with all the relevant data available in the latest reports related to the subject matter. This will prep them up to better analyze the competitive landscape and hence, allow the team to reach the greatest of their potential. Always remember, doing research about competitors and industry problems will help the team move forward at a pace much faster than that it would have been before.

Set a clear time limit: Brainstorming round surely is a time-consuming process and can’t be rushed up randomly. Still, the team managers need to specify a time limit to cover up things as quick as possible.  Don’t be afraid to get together with your team for the brainstorming rounds again and again as great ideas were never generated in one go and involved several rounds of a revised session. The managers have a crucial role to play; they need to ensure that all such rounds of creativity building are moving forward only.

Keep a track of the activities: One of the simplest and effective most approaches of keeping track of ideas, themes and important things is to jot it down either on a paper or a digital device which you keep with you most of the time.  This is true especially in the creative areas where one need to keep the flow of ideas moving in one direction only. Always remember the key idea behind brainstorming is to develop tricks and tactics that translate into winning PR pitches and campaigns.

PR Industry is nowhere to go and will continue to grow rapidly

With the digital wave spreading all across the nation, the industries have switched most of their work from touch, feel and visit world to all virtual to keep up their competitiveness on a global level. Speculations are rife that with the digital booming, the downfall of Public Relations (PR) is to happen very soon. Thankfully, to the benefit of the professionals working in the PR industry, PR is nowhere to go and it will remain there till the very end of businesses. And, the recent PR industry report by Public Relations Consultants Association of India stating the industry value to double up and be at INR 2,100 Cr by 2020 confirms the constant growth of the industry and impending evolution of the PR industry in the coming future.

The digital has surely transformed the way PR campaigns and activities are happening these days but the fundamentals are still the same. Hence, instead of being dead, the PR world is still breathing and evolving with the advent of newer services like social media and digital platforms. While fundamental PR campaigns and activities will drive the future growth, other forms, such as social media, digital, and content-driven campaigns are going to be credited for nearly 25 percent of the revenues. Hence, far from being dead, the world of public relations is growing and evolving, especially with the advent of newer services like digital and social media.  

The growth predictions of PR industry are not just based on vague promises but are instead part of a deep and detailed research done after analyzing the status of various industries linked to the genre of Public Relations. The Information & Communication Technology tops the list of contributing sectors and is providing around 20% of the overall revenues accrued by the PR Industry. Firms providing financial services have contributions of around 12% while the third in contribution line is the consumer goods sector that provides nearly 9% for this sector. To clear the picture of past it’s better to take a step back and analyze the past performances and then take a step forward. The previous charts of the PR sector also registered an industrial growth of 13% in 2016 and 19% in 2017. This clears out the scene and provides a righteous view for PR experts. In fact, with more and more technological transformations taking place in public relations, the industry will continue to remain relevant and become innovative and creative in serving the diverse and dynamic needs of their clients.

In the present scenario, one simply can’t deny the PR practices and along with it’s also extremely important to rope in the righteous PR agency that carves out the best of the PR campaign as per the needs and budget and pitches in the right media channels to touch in the right audiences like that of industry leaders, investors, customers and VCs.

Creating intriguing PR campaigns with the power of AI and Human Sentiment Analysis

Artificial Intelligence and machine learning might be the technologies creating sensation across several industries in today’s world, but for the communication sector, they aren’t alone. It is’ the natural language processing (NLP) that is supporting them and has even made their essence relate to the world of Public Relations (PR) and communications.  

Simply defined, NLP refers to the ability of a computer program to understand, analyze and revert to the human language as per their literal rules. At present, there are several innovations like Alexa, Siri and Google Play that has made commands like “Alexa, add milk to my shopping list” and “Siri, call Mom” possible. It took almost half a century and several technological innovations to bring the machine learning up to this stage and hopefully much more is about to come.

But, now the question is, how can we tap into the power of NLP and AI to serve better in the PR and communication world?

Natural language processing otherwise includes a broad scope of abilities for the betterment of humankind, but it’s their power of identifying audience sentiments that have worked to the benefit of communicators. It has empowered the PR professionals in planning and executing impactful earned media programs in a way that has never been done before.  

Earlier for technologies, communication only involved simple logic-based algorithms that identified words as either positive or negative and left many terms as unclassified. But today, the time and technology have transformed completely changed; thus, equipping the automated systems with the power to adequately interpret the nuances of human communication and deliver the context and attribute of the words true to their meaning.

With a crowd and noise of too many in the media world, the idea to lead with PR strategies is not limited to the number of coverage but is also to identify the stories and news issues that will get the desired impact on the target audience. All-and-all this is a time-taking and tedious process but with NLP engine built in the automated systems, it becomes a quick work to easily identify sentiments from the string of texts brought in through any relevant channel.

When it comes to crafting intriguing earned media campaigns, the sentiments of the audience both with regard to the brand and around its coverage is of extreme importance.  This insight will help the PR professionals better demonstrate the client with the impact of their messaging, whether positive, negative or neutral on the target audience.

How to manage Public Relations crises when your reputation is at stake?

A data breach, violation of terms & conditions or simply the mismanagement of the products and services may cause severe damage to an organization’s image. Whenever a scandalous or a fraudulent act is disclosed on the company’s part, its PR department or the authorities should instantly be engaged in developing a full-proof plan for saving the brand image. Hold on! I don’t mean you have to open the door, walk straight to the media, and speak your heart out. Whether you are responsible for it or the other, you need not have an instant and immediate reaction to disclosure. This calls for some time which you utilize to investigate the entire case, analyze the reaction of public and media, watch out for probable solutions to the situation and then confront the media to save your reputation.

PR crises happen every day to every other organization. It’s just that we get to know about the biggest of all only to leave us with some worthwhile lessons. Just look back to a few past years and you will get to know what I’m talking about.

What you can do when your public reputation at stake:

1.       Look for a modest spokesperson who can convey the inside story to the public diligently. CEO of the firm will be more preferable!

2.       Trace down the origin of crisis and the consequences. Meanwhile, do not forget to brainstorm the ways to manage the situation.

3.       Hold an open session meeting with your trusted employees, advisors and other stakeholders for bits of advice.

4.       Publish a press release on your website with the assurance of problem resolution or proper investigation of the matter. Maintain a complete honesty and transparency in it.

5.       Do not waste time on preparing your “The Finesse” speech or presentation skills when the crisis is going worse outside. Utilize it well in making plans how to tackle it.

 The two big lessons I learned from two major PR crises in the history:

1.    Watch out for the right time and effective means to communicate

In 2017 September, one of the greatest American credit reporting agencies had faced major public relations crises when the data of nearly 148 million people was stolen. The stolen data included social security numbers, addresses, birth dates, and drivers’ licenses.  The company knew the data breach occurred much earlier but deliberately chose to declare it after months.

What was the company’s take on this: The Company made many mistakes in a series. Neither its own customer service staff nor the people affected were informed about the breach. Instead, the company created another Wordpress website with a spam-like URL to deal with the situation and asked customers to sign up on it if they had to know whether their data had been stolen or not. The sign-up for credit monitoring PR service required the users to give up on their rights to sue the company for the data breach. Also, it came into news that the company would offer this credit monitoring service free of cost for initial one year and would later charge for it. Later, the company waived this off when consumers started complaining and the media started bringing this to the limelight. The company took too long to come forward and apologise for not keeping the users’ data secured.

What was the impact: Millions of users lost trust with the company due to the delayed announcement, apology, solutions, lack of transparency, and careless attitude towards the crisis. If the company had a plan and waited for the right time to communicate with the users and media, the brand image could have saved. Their unsatisfactory stance towards the crisis resulted in a huge loss to their business as well as their reputation.

2.    Personalize the communication with the public & act in favor of them

Not a long time ago, the social media industry experienced a lot of criticism as a popular social networking site was claimed to be involved in a data breach. The private data of around 87 million users was stolen by a third-party agency to manipulate the electoral results in the US. A year ago, the company got to know about the act, but only lenient actions were taken against it. When the whistleblower broke off the news next year, the social media users doubted the data security and privacy policies of all social networking sites and had quit on their accounts furiously. The millions of users trolled the company on social media and severely criticized the company.

What was the company’s take on this: When the news of data breach broke off, the Company took a few weeks to react. Along with a sincere apology, it presented the complete narrative of data breach till the date on its website with accurate and precise details.  A complete transparency was maintained between the company and its users. On the lawmakers’ order, the CEO of the company testified the whole scenario and conscientiously took the responsibility. Later on, the company came up with a variety of tools, techniques, solutions, and everything else possible to effectively communicate with the users and let them know whether their data was stolen or not.

What was the impact: The users could not resist the repeated apologies made by the company for the grievances caused. With immediate effect, the company rolled out various tools and techniques using which users can customize their data protect settings. By giving the latch in the hands of users, the company made its site useful and secured for the users. Unlike the previous case we discussed, this company let the users know if their data is stolen or not with a simple, quick, and free process at their online help center. All these measures taken by the company in favor of the users regained their trust and have been slowly normalizing the situation. I call it a perfect way to manage the PR crisis.

Has print media lost its credibility against digital?

No doubt, online news media is now counted as an inevitable part of the mainstream media but does it mean that newspapers, in particular, have lost their popularity? Where reading news reports and articles is made easy with free and unlimited access across the globe, does print newspapers charged with pennies still matter? This can be best explained by expert PR consultants in Delhi who still prefer print newspaper more than online for wide coverage in this digital age.

•    Reach & Accessibility

Certainly, the reach of the internet is larger-than-life and extended beyond the physical barriers. It means any news can be read by global audience creating a universal brand identity quickly and easily. However, there are innumerable areas where internet is still not available, and they stay tuned to current affairs through newspapers only. Therefore, overlooking news coverage would simply hint at the loss of visibility you are having.

•    Trustworthiness

A lot of news websites are competing with each other online to reach the users as quickly as possible. For this, they require tons of articles, press & matte releases, and every other sort of content that helps them drive the users in lesser time. And hence, many publish the news lacking data or originality. This is not the case with newspapers. Many PR companies in Delhi believe newspaper coverage is far better than online as credibility and trust are communicated with print more than digital. The journalists and editors of the newspapers work following all ethical norms and investigation process and deliver only the worth content to its readers.

•    Brand Salience

The entire purpose of Public Relations is to foster good relations with the audience in general. And, good relations influence the consumer’s behavior when he is in a state of buying product or services. Unlike online media where a consumer skims over a hundred of articles, one article published in a newspaper is 2X effective in creating brand salience. After all, print media has a long-lasting impression in the minds of readers.

With all these solid reasons, we may decipher that the credibility or popularity of print media may have declined but not lost. In fact, the PR companies in Delhi are delivering the fine-tuned quality content on both online and offline platforms to the readers. For instance, if anything goes viral online, it will surely be published on the first page of the newspaper.