I have stated many times that the purpose of broadcast PR isn’t being viewed, listened to, or read by a large audience. The purpose of broadcast PR is to sell.
This looks like a bunch of theory put together, but it works as a matter of fact. If your broadcast PR campaigns have never increased the overall volume of your sales, it is mostly because of two reasons:
You can’t blame broadcast PR agencies for that. They are just intermediaries that get you what you ask them for: media coverage. Their function isn’t to care about you, make you prosper, beat the competition, etc… Their job is to get you media coverage and get paid accordingly.
Real entrepreneurs do not care that much about glory: they want to see the numbers.
It’s the only thing they consider relevant and gives them certainty that they will prosper. Broadcast PR (and PR in general) operates in a borderline environment which is the domain of branding and perceptions. MARKETING IS BRANDING == > BRANDING IS THE SCIENCE OF SHAPING PERCEPTIONS. As you can tell, you can’t tangibly measure people’s perceptions. It’s by far too complicated, and the range of error too wide. HOW TO MEASURE A BROADCAST PR CAMPAIGN? The answer is simple, and it is related to the distinction I made in a previous article between a PR BLITZ and a PR CAMPAIGN.
In his bestselling leaflet titled Growth Hacker Marketing (a 100-page book cannot be called differently), which contains plenty of approximations and wrong case studies, Ryan Holiday writes as follows:
«If I were in PR, I’d quit because it sucks. It’s a bunch of relationships with people who don’t matter that much anymore (i.e., legacy media reporters)».
Ryan Holiday should ask
if reporters are «people who don’t matter that much anymore». I understand that controversy is one of the very few ways that nowadays can help you get your message out there. But controversies must be justified. It might be because I am not that much into giving the people what they want, but giving the people what they need. |
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e-mail by clicking on the bottom below Robert LingardFounder and Managing Director at POWER BRAND. PR that Sells for Startups and SMEs, LATEST ARTICLES
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