Budgets lag to invest in influence building
By Robert Wheatley
This may not be surprising: A recent study published by Yahoo confirms the Internet is growing significantly as a source of influence for word-of-mouth conversations about brands.
According to the research, 38% of consumers, or 78 million people, have brand-related word of mouth conversations – both on line and off-line – that are influenced by content on the Internet. While most word of mouth conversations occur face to face, the Internet is increasingly important as a driver for those engagements.
That said, budgets and spending continue to show a disproportionate share aimed at communications through mainstream platforms in print and broadcast channels. While many in the marketing communications and PR world will admit they believe talking “at” consumers doesn’t work, and may also agree the most powerful form of communication out there is word of mouth, still spending aimed at cultivating influence on the Web is trailing.
So it goes without saying more assets should be shifted to managing online influence and reputation.
Of course this also puts more pressure on measuring the ROI. Yet social media is a different animal. It’s not about output and broadcasting messages. It is about listening, interacting and engaging on topics relevant to the consumer’s life. Does it work? Take a look at the video by Eric Qualman below:
Connections to key lifestyle interests invoke openness to engagement
By Robert Wheatley
“The problem with communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished.” — George Bernard Shaw
Business growth opportunities abound for brands that fully understand the conditions and events that set in motion openness to communication – as in “I’m listening.” Much of the time consumers are not. The presence of brand communication at any given moment is not nearly as important as the audience’s willingness to pay attention. That may feel a bit like saying water is wet. But hear us out: lifestyle interests and events drive the readiness to listen. There’s an optimal time and place when consumers will be primed to engage.
Our point: brand communication gains a whole lot more traction when it occurs in tandem with relevant consumer behavior than it does randomly. Yet all too often, brand outreach is showered broadly as a form of messaging rain, timed to coincide with retail distribution or promotion period considerations more so than consumer lifestyle connection. In effect, brands remain ever hopeful that consumers will simply collide with the message storm or will be magically lured into engagement through its ubiquity, entertainment value or sheer novelty.
Lifestyle events prime the pump of openness…
Brand communication and PR strategies anchored to a foundation of real insight about the consumer’s relevant lifestyle concerns and passions will help crack open the door to hyper-targeted communication that conveys the right thing at the right time to the right person.
Getting Alignment With Target Audience Interests
Here’s a living example — Nesties – as defined by market research firm OTX and on-line retailer The Knot – are a unique segment of 25 to 32 year old female consumers. They represent the low hanging fruit for an array of household and lifestyle products. When these women become engaged to be married it triggers a period of three to five years devoted to wedding planning, new household creation and starting a family. These events in turn motivate an array of purchases.
It is the events and changing conditions in their lives that activate a behavioral response. Collectively Nesties are long-range “planners” who feel they have primary responsibility in setting up their new households and take responsibility for decorating, cooking, social activities, household chores, caring for children and pets.
This group shows evidence of predictable purchase behavior. And offers brands an audience already receptive to establishing a relationship that could continue beyond these formative years. So investments should be made in carefully crafted dialogue focused on this unique tribe — and grounded in positioning the brandas helpful and involved with her changing lifestyle needs, concerns and aspirations. This will lead to business growth.
Finding The Optimal Moment
Strategic timing and location of communication can also yield added engagement value. Meaning if it occurs when a person is actively doing something germane. A simple example of this is what we call leveraging a food brand’s kitchen footprint or in effect building its “share-of-countertop.” There is increased receptivity to brand messaging when the delivery timing coincides with related consumer’s behavior – in this case when working in the kitchen space. An obvious starter is to provide useful meal ideas, entertaining suggestions, tabletop recommendations, recipe preparation hints and serving suggestion guidance. It is an optimal environment for having a conversation — because the consumer is naturally open to it and their brain is switched on to the subject matter.
Nailing The Best Message
Messaging gains power when it is configured around the consumer’s lifestyle interests. Finding this sweet spot of alignment is what we call identifying a brand’s Higher Purpose. When the brand positions itself as an enabler, facilitator and supporter of a consumer’s personal passion, you’re able to forge powerful outreach tactics from this base. Consider the strategic possibilities that could fall out of sharpening your focus on consumer groups devoted to specific lifestyle interests such as fashion, travel, music, art, pet care, food enjoyment, cooking, child rearing, fitness, sports, home decorating or improvement, self-improvement, gardening, outdoor recreation, entertainment, entertaining, relationships and socializing. We could go on. The point is: the days of the hard sell, transactional style relationship are over and that form of messaging is out the window with it. So you want the consumer to understand some of the unique functional benefits in your product. Ok. And the path to getting their ears switched on springs from your willingness to be generous and unselfish — and thus play a role in their passions. It’s a richer, deeper and more personal relationship you want to construct.
The end result will be increased brand relevance, preference and sales.
Gold Sabre finalist rounds out heady award season…
Wheatley & Timmons took home two Silver Trumpet awards this year from the Publicity Club of Chicago annual campaign competition. The winning work was for Sargento Foods in the Sponsorship category for the South Beach Wine & Food Festival product launch of their Artisan Blends Authentic Mexican cheese; another Silver — this time in the New Media (as in social and digital) category — for the MOTHERHOOD program on behalf of Thermos brand.
What’s more, the Sargento work was also named one of five finalists for the coveted Gold Sabre – our industry’s top award, also in the Sponsorship category. Unfortunately the final nod went to Procter & Gamble for their Swiffer brand effort, but it was a remarkable achievement to make it through the hundreds of top-level submissions to hit the finalist “best-of-the-best” group.
We don’t by nature, personality or belief look at client work as a means to secure awards or generate a pat on the back. Rather we enter periodically to see how our strategies fare against other top-flight efforts in an independent review. So we thank the judges but even more we thank our great clients and our terrific staff for the work well done. Sargento kudos and recognition belongs to Kerri Erb, Carrie Becker, Krista Cortese and Jill Delaney. The Thermos triumph comes from the star quality efforts of Betsi Schumacher, Mary Clare Middleton, Krista Cortese and Jill Delaney. Bravo!!!!
In the end the final judge of our strategies and ideas is the consumer and their willingness to buy more of our client’ products more often. According to IRI’s April numbers, Artisan Blends continues its rise, up 135% overall in a tough, commodity category. The Thermos program was their first foray into social media and beat all of their objectives for audience building and engagement. So we’re especially happy with that – and pleased that our industry peers found the work laudable too.
Brands are fast becoming media publishers and producers
By Robert Wheatley
Is your brand ready to be its own TV channel? Magazine publisher? Is there a Chief Editorial Officer position looming on the horizon inside your organization? The answer could be yes.
We have entered the era of content marketing. Inbound rather than outbound communication strategies that serve to build Web traffic, remove barriers to purchase, activate brand ambassadors and support community building – all with a shelf life that has remarkable staying power. This shift will inevitably require optimization of brand communications strategies between the three primary platforms of Owned, Earned and Paid media. Of these, more and more momentum is surfacing around Owned Media. Here we discuss its role and value in the marketing mix.
What does your Owned Media plan look like?
We’re on a fast track now to define best practices in content creation for various forms of brand created media — videos, Webcasts, podcasts, blogs, e-zines, e-books and presentations. Not long ago brands worked with their PR counsel primarily to get product massages telegraphed through various editorial channels. While the world of “earned media” will continue to be a relevant and important mode of outreach — albeit along a refined path that assigns increasing priority to bloggers — ”owned media” is rapidly emerging as an important foundation vehicle for acquiring, building and retaining customer relationships. Now is the time to construct your own editorial and programming calendars that chart topics and story telling in a frame your audience will find useful in their daily lives.
Owned Media helps build trust, familiarity and mutual respect…
At the recent Pet Food Forum in Chicago, a conference of leading pet food brands and their minders, I presented the case for brand building that follows a new trail built around identifying a brand’s Higher Purpose – an effort to drive relevancy by aligning the brand value proposition closely with consumer (in this case pet parent) lifestyle needs and passions. Part of the presentation was dedicated to the over-arching requirement for trust-creation and how important social media will be to install the building blocks of confidence, familiarity, respect and comfort that must exist between brand and consumer. Interestingly the entire Higher Purpose proposition seeds and cultivates fertile ground for ongoing content creation that is by definition more meaningful to consumers – because its designed around their needs, interests and concerns.
Equally important, engaging content lies at the base of aggregating an audience in social media platforms. If you do this skillfully, brands earn permission for a relationship. And that includes becoming a resource for news, information, entertainment and education.
Essentially we’re talking about how you can exponentially increase your brand’s worth and engagement value by delivering content that is instructive and helpful to those trying to make decisions about what products to buy.
“Our road to the future begins with understanding that attention is finite and is increasingly thinning. It is now our responsibility to connect purpose and value directly with individuals where, when, and how their attention is focused. We must help ourselves by introducing relevance, discoverability, and share-ability into the mix. Empowering consumers to view the most material information and in turn, make advantageous decisions is now a critical priority and will determine our stature not only in online societies, but also in the markets where we hope to thrive and excel. We are either part of the information gathering and decision-making cycles or we are absent from them. Where we rank once connected is established by our understanding of people and the information they seek combined with our mastery of the networks, tools, and services they use to communicate. And, through the creation of compelling media, we earn the presence, awareness and ultimately the influence we deserve.”
A great example of this at work is Whole Foods and their Secret Ingredient video blog that is aimed at helping home cooks learn new recipes, cooking techniques, ingredient pairings and other useful advice. It sits in the middle of a growing catalog of video material that spans the waterfront of visits to a dairy farm or other tutorials that surround the increasingly popular topic of “where your food comes from.” It informs, entertains, rewards while burnishing the brand as a knowledge broker on subjects their shoppers care about.
Taking responsibility for consumer interaction…
In a way, owned media offers brands a plausible shot to take responsibility for engineering consumer engagement in communications. Ads can be ignored. PR, while intrusive, still requires that messaging pass through an independent filter – one that will certainly be credible. But in the end may not fully expose the audience to all of the relevant information. Editing is editing.
Thus Owned Media allows brands to create and build communication that is delivered in tact to consumers. Of course this creates enormous pressure on relevancy and unselfishness — you cannot do this well if your primary motivation is simply to thrust a selling message in front of someone. This never works. But with a proper nod to relevance, value and sensitivity the door is wide open to put enriched multi-media content squarely in the mix of social media engagement.
We live in exciting times. The PR business has now acquired an added role to combine and synthesize editorial outreach with content creation. The end result is a rich treasure trove of meaningful communication that can hit consumer lifestyle interests squarely on the nose – assuming, of course, that you know what those interests are.
Just think of the possibilities for brand to live in a place that matters and has meaning to the lives of those they wish to sell to –
Cooking tips for the passionate kitchen commander
Destination hints and experiences for the inveterate traveler
Style immersions for the creative fashionistas
Parenting advice for the focused purposeful mom
Edgy ideas for the budding home decorator
Shared stories of adventure for the outdoor enthusiast
This just out from Packaged Facts: pet product and service sales are up 5% in 2009 to $53 billion. And the forecast going forward is rosier yet, despite the lingering impact of the economic downturn. According to Don Montouri of Packaged Facts, a reason for this stellar industry performance is, “the human/animal bond… and ‘pet parent’ sentiment has never been higher.”
The upper end of the pet food market was once the province of pet specialty retail stores. Now the larger chains like Petco and PetSmart have added natural and organic brand aisles to take advantage of the upswing as consumers continue to pursue higher quality diets. The super premium business is about 8% of the pet food overall and is growing at double digits.
What is the underlying condition that shores up and protects the pet products business while others reel from consumer spending cutbacks? For one it’s the rise of pets to family member status. The emotional bonds continue to grow stronger and take on added importance to consumers. This over-arching condition seems to get lost, however, at the shelf and in some super premium brand communications.
I’m Natural… Oh Yeah, Well I’m More Natural!!!
Despite the laudable fundamental conditions in the pet food market, pet brand competition these days is focused in many cases on a form of natural and organic one-upmanship. You can see the tell-tale signs of ingredient story specsmanship and analytical selling propositions, made especially evident in package communications and other forms of outreach at shelf, as well as what appears in consumer-facing media.
Seems logical enough if you have the high quality proteins, fruits and vegetables, and it is food after all, shouldn’t you be taking credit for bringing “human grade” nutrition to Fido’s bowl? On the one hand you can understand why this becomes the center of brand/pet parent communication especially via product packaging at the store level. But the decision isn’t in the tapioca or the real chicken meat, it’s in the feelings consumers have about the brand and about the relationship they have with their animal.
Bottom line: brand decisions are made based on feelings more than facts. For sure strong brand value propositions are holistic combinations of financial and functional benefits — and certainly nutritional excellence and food quality factor in. But the most powerful tool of all is in the emotional bonds that can be created when pet brands start examining how they can enable pet parenting experiences and communities.
Consumers are not fact-based analytical decision making machines.
Pet parents, if anything, are driven by their emotional relationship with their pets and the desire to express their love for the animal by providing a better quality of life (diet is absolutely connected to this goal).
So the call to action: high quality nutrition is important but it doesn’t super-cede the need to meet consumers where their hearts are invested. The brands that dial this in will create opportunities to accelerate their growth in what is already a favorable business environment.
Those that get this right will be the big winners as the pet food business continues to gain momentum in the year ahead.
There are so many wrong-headed thoughts and clichés bleeding from the last graph. It’s time to shed some light, shine a beacon on a new understanding of what great PR truly is. And bring a clear rationale to the reason why brand strategy guidance and PR should be, and in our case are, married.
Granted in varying degrees, some companies treat agency resources in more of a silo fashion – essentially keeping the terms of engagement focused on tactics. But here’s the rub: the difference between communicating for awareness’ sake and the kind of communication that helps build brands and open new markets, is firmly attached to how brand strategy and outreach tools feed from one another.
Successful brands now are built on a foundation of relevance and greater meaning to their users. We called this a “higher purpose” or strategic mission. And often in the early stages of an engagement with a new client, we are doing the spadework necessary to unearth the right path to alignment between the brand’s DNA and the lifestyle passions and interests of core customers.
It is in the grist of this strategic mission that we find the unusual coalescing of communication that is sought out and engaged by its prospective audience (the consumer is now in control of engagement, not the other way around), and our ability to construct a meaningful relationship with the brand – one that can withstand the tests of competition and even a bad economy over time.
Sure you can cast PR as an outreach tool that simply translates features and benefits through an “earned” media pipeline that runs alongside paid (ads) media as another message delivery vehicle – albeit one that is understood to be more credible. But that’s not going to result any longer in demonstrable, measurable connections between the deployment of PR strategy and bottom line business growth. Simple awareness or being in the presence of a message is not the same as acting on it.
Any PR is good PR?
Is mention in an article really the main thing? Well certainly it represents an achievement because you can’t buy it. But that’s only going half way to paradise. The real deal here is when your message truly connects with the audience on a consistent basis and in areas that go far beyond product features and benefits. Sure product coverage is important but it can be so much more when done in the context of an over-arching strategy for the brand that is chocked full of greater meaning and intrinsic value to the consumer.
PR is no longer a below the line tool anyway. PR has now merged with “owned” media to become a brand publishing and media platform universe. It combines what’s long been known as editorial outreach, with building online communities and social networks that make brands media players themselves – and in doing so jumps the shark of editorial gatekeepers to message directly to consumers (but in a fashion that’s very, very different from advertising).
So brand strategy guidance naturally must spring from a deep dive into the brand’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Combined with a working and thorough understanding of the brand’s competitive set and category behaviors. As well as respectful efforts to fully understand a brand’s historical legacy and cultural fabric.
Most importantly, however, is the requirement to invest in consumer insight so we can know with some measure of confidence what those lifestyle passions and interests look like. This sets in motion a platform for communications and PR strategy that resonates, engages, delights and validates what we hope consumers will believe about a client brands relevance and value to them.
This is our calling. Our path. Our way. Our point of view about PR.
Casting a wide net recipe for shallow customer interaction
1. We have access to over 50,000 sku’s in a typical urban grocery store, yet most people will purchase no more than 100 of them.
2. Recent Pew Research confirms while the choices for online news sources is almost limitless, around 57% of consumers rely on just two to five sites for information.
3. The same is true in television viewing. Despite the hundreds of channel options now available, most viewers stick to a relative handful of re-visited choices. Consumers tend to gravitate to those brands and businesses most relevant and interesting to them, based on how they see their needs and themselves.
Over Choice Favors Narrow-Cast
Consumers can’t possibly keep track of all the possibilities in all of the categories that compete for their attention. Despite this fact, brands continue to labor heavily to get in the consideration set through broad appeals, shot-gunned through vast expanses of media territory hoping to heard more fish into the widest net possible.
More is better, right?
Well if more were really more. What if there’s no “more” there? Increasingly we’re seeing demonstrable, measurable reasons to focus narrowly on audiences of brand fans, heavy users, and potential ambassadors who for personal and lifestyle reasons are already engaged in the category.
The call to go deep with your best customers runs counter to history and legacy behaviors in marketing – a well-worn credo that believes exposure to a message is the same thing as reception, understanding and appreciation.
We don’t see it that way…
Seth Godin has an interesting post today on what he calls “drive by culture” that suggests capturing an eyeball momentarily might constitute success? Well, no. Today’s click-and-go behaviors are the polar opposite of what engagement can truly mean with a consumer who is paying attention — because they find relevance and value in the interaction.
So perhaps consumers who are already plugged in from a lifestyle standpoint are more important and thus warrant more time and investment in relationship building? This is the fundamental principle underneath moving from a transactional view of the consumer relationship to one based on mutual understanding and reciprocity.
The Recipe for Better Relationships
Time to take a hard look at your brand DNA and value proposition. Combine that with efforts to gain more thorough insight into the lifestyle interests, concerns and aspirations of your core users.
Based on this insight look for ways of constructing a higher purpose and greater meaning that transcends the product itself and hits squarely on the consumer’s lifestyle interests. Mine those connections more fully so the brand can become an enabler and supporter or teacher in those activities and experiences.
Surprise and delight your fans in tangible and meaningful ways.
Your best users will become active evangelists for your brand and in doing so reach others less involved by extending their own credibility on your behalf. Sure it’s scary to let go of tactics more closely resembling carpet bomb than precision targeting. Who wants to leave business sitting on the table, right? However, if consumers aren’t listening then the resources spent there isn’t working very hard.
In the end, consumers are congregating now in communities of self-interest. Meaning it’s better to play tennis with someone on the other side of the net. Going deep puts you onto the court, while a strong social media strategy gets the volley flowing back and forth. Your higher purpose is the right ball everyone will pay attention to. It’s the kind of game engaged consumers want to play.
Periodically we celebrate excellent work, great campaigns and ideas that represent a measure of vision and innovation. For the most part we chronicle higher-calling projects that can impact brand behavior. But every so often a more tactical bit of communications wizardry comes along that you just have to recognize and salute for its sheer out-of-the-box brilliance.
Certainly there’s strategic linkage between the Tropicana brand of OJ and sunshine – the warmth and glow often attributed to Florida orange groves where this delicious fruit gets its healthy props.
So the brand evidently decides that working with portable sunshine can serve as a platform for effective, engaging and maybe entertaining online video communication – as well as serving to underscore a bright metaphor that’s tied to the juice’s origins.
I would have loved to be in the Tropicana conference room when this idea was presented — just to see the reaction, the questions and the process that led to approval. I say that because of the boldness and uniqueness of the project.
Just imagine for a moment: in a small Arctic Circle town in northern Canada each year they go through a period of near total darkness – a continual and unrelenting nighttime. So Tropicana sends an expedition to the town, hauling in a giant gas filled balloon-like object in the shape of the sun. The orb is erected and lit, spreading artificial sunshine and undoubtedly some cheer to local residents…. Not to miss a product tie-in opportunity, the crew passes out OJ bottles to the enraptured onlookers as they marvel at the spectacle of man-made sunshine.
The entire story is deftly shot on video with a thoughtful music track underneath and made share-able with the rest of the world through YouTube and Facebook. Watch it here:
Bravo to Tropicana for bringing a little light to the lives of these Arctic dwellers — and then allowing the rest of us to observe and enjoy the experience. Disruptive isn’t it? Unexpected. Entertaining. Memorable. Emotional. What do you think?
Forever and a day I’ve seen this concept play out in various categories from beverages to food, travel services to floor care and cleaning products, that 80% of your profits can routinely come from 20% of your customers who constitute the most engaged, heavy users in your business. Call them your best fans.
Yet routinely we focus our efforts, strategies and spending on casting a broad net. We try to be appealing to everyone because we keep telling ourselves that our brand and business not only deserves high household penetration, but “we can’t ignore the volume opportunities.” To be sure, but the 20% that’s mainlining your brand and paying attention to your messaging with a little help and “enabling” can become a more productive core of real-world ambassadors. People who can help spread the word effectively to those who are not as fully invested and who don’t buy as often.
Take cheese and pet food for example. Cheese is one of the most popular food categories in supermarkets. We like cheese, so it’s a big volume business. Yet a closer look reveals that consumers who are more emotionally engaged and devoted to cooking represent a “heavy user” profile that purchases more cheese products, more often and in many cases will go for higher priced items when they feel the value proposition is credible. So paying closer attention to this group of emotionally charged ‘kitchen commanders’ can yield incremental benefits in talk value and word of mouth, once they’re fully embraced, recognized and rewarded by the brands they love.
Or in pet food: a dynamic audience combination we refer to as indulgers and doters consists of a high percentage of higher income households who treat their animals like family members — and will even go as far as cutting back on some of their own discretionary purchases in order to keep Fido in tip top shape by feeding him a super-premium pet food diet. Industry statistics show this group continues to fuel an incredible growth track record in the emerging natural and organic segment – even though the tough economy has weighed in heavily in many segments to compel “trading down” behaviors.
Your call to action…
Think of it this way, your PR communications ROI outcomes will improve when communicating with an audience that’s really, genuinely paying attention. Those who have emotional, personal lifestyle connections to a brand are listening — first at the category level. A brand that works over time to mine relevance with this audience has the opportunity to build a unique relationship and bond. Conversely broad awareness tactics can perform as a “reminder mechanism” for the larger audience segments out there who may buy less often but who have ties to the franchise through their habit behaviors.
1. Consider for a moment the opportunities from investing more fully in courting your heavy users. What would you do differently? What efforts might you undertake to help create a community around these groups and empower them to interact with each other – especially important for home chefs and pet parents who want to share tips, ideas, experiences and insights with each other.
2. What rewards and recognition can you offer to your most devoted followers that surprise and delight – and thus are often the triggers to generating strong, credible and organic word-of-mouth communication.
3. What sponsored experiences can you create and deliver that bring your brand as close as possible to your best fans and allow them to interact with you and each other. In food this could include unique culinary experiences that reward your best customers with an opportunity to learn from the food heroes they respect like celebrity chefs. For pets it could be local dog park events and contests that allow pet parents to engage in shared experiences with their animal and with each other.
But wait there’s more…
Today, excellent blogger and thought leader Sonia Simone has an interesting post at Copyblogger that talks about the personal side of the Pareto Principle and how it impacts you and what you do. Her observations:
“…Which means that 20% of your customers provide 80% of your revenue. 20% of the time you spend behind your computer provides 80% of your best work. And 20% of that great meal you had last night provided 80% of the pleasure. (It was the chocolate mousse cake, wasn’t it?)
Because of the Pareto Principle, there’s always a “20%” you should be spending your time on. And in just about every discipline, it’s known as the fundamentals.”
Have you sat down to think about your day, your activities and to reflect on this idea – that 20% of your efforts will produce 80% of the great results and accomplishments you’re looking for? So what do the fundamentals look like for you? Maybe it’s a good idea to start by putting more energy and investment into courting your biggest fans…
It’s Wheatley & Timmons’ 10th anniversary — a time to reflect and think ahead.
When I first got started in the PR business, I was impressed with our unique ability to bring a higher standard of proof, credibility and demonstration to new products and brand promises. But additionally I was concerned by an all-too-frequent focus on tactics (read: publicity) and what appeared to me to be an absence of connecting the dots between our work and business strategy. You know the old saying, “if the only thing you do is a hammer then the answer to every problem will be a nail.”
Just seemed to me that a stronger business proposition was to help client’s better understand their barriers to growth and success – before applying the cure. And in doing so to make sure the remedy laddered back to specific business outcomes, not fuzzy claims of “increased awareness.”
My first attempt at changing the view that PR was the province of press releases came in the form of a brand guidance plan developed for a regional food company called Nalley’s Fine Foods, based in Tacoma, Washington. My client didn’t ask for the plan, instead I treated this as “extracurricular” homework that might open the door to a larger playing field for our firm. It did.
In its day Nalley’s was a successful brand playing effectively in categories dominated by national stalwarts like Kraft, Frito-Lay and Vlasic – from salad dressings to snacks, canned meals, pickles and other packaged food categories. The platform I worked on was a refined recipe for go-to-market strategy and new product development behaviors appropriate for a business that sat in between generic store brand and large national players.
To get it done I had to study the categories and more fully acquaint myself with the channels of distribution and the growth drivers within each product category my client was competing in. There was no mention of PR in the brief. It was a great exercise and I learned a lot. The client was impressed that a PR guy would come to the table with this sort of perspective. Their opinion of what we did and were about changed. It was interesting to watch the transformation in their views and opinions. The experience had an impact to this day.
Wheatley & Timmons is a unique joining of similar strands of thinking – that the craft of editorial and social media forms of communication are enhanced and our value to clients improved as we marry our great creative work more closely to brand strategy guidance and the consumer insights required to make that leap.
It would probably be easier just to continue cultivating our best practices along traditional lines and devote all of our energies to being great tacticians. We think that’s table stakes. We fundamentally believe the world needs a better, more strategic PR firm and so we’re not satisfied with the traditional scope. My partner, Rich Timmons, shares this view and it’s our collective mission to redefine what a PR firm is all about. Missionary work to be sure given the perceptual baggage we carry with us — that “get me on Oprah” thing.
I couldn’t be prouder of the great people who’ve joined our team and their ability to embrace our calling and to deliver on this promise every day in the services we provide. It’s a challenge, but I think part of what makes you successful is your willingness to embrace a higher calling – to tackle something that goes beyond the communications training you’ve had. Makes you stretch.
Have we got it all figured out? Not by a long shot. Everyday is a learning experience, a chance to grow and refine our premise and our capabilities to deliver. We remain steadfastly determined on this path. Persistence can be a great ally, so we forge ahead and believe it’s by “demonstrating and doing” that all of this comes to life. This agency’s work for Sargento Foods is an example of bringing new perspective and ideas to the table about a brand’s future business opportunities in their category. Much the same as Rich and our team has done to such dramatic effect for Thermos brand and for Crescent in the art framing business.
We’re in the early stages of a new relationship with Crown Imports and the Corona beer franchise. It’s exciting. And not just because we know the beer business, but also we believe we can play a measurable role in helping improve their business outcomes and relevancy to a consumer — who is evolving right now.
The future
We believe that earned media (various forms of editorial media from conventional to digital) will continue to be vital but also see incremental growth for “owned” media – content created, published and distributed by brands themselves. Technology now allows us to leapfrog reporters, editors, producers and other media gatekeepers, to talk directly to consumers in environments that are more interactive and thus seen as honest.
Profoundly we see the mix of media solutions moving to embrace social platforms and other venues where brands and consumers can meet each other on more equal terms. Thus the over-arching need for relevancy between brand propositions and the lifestyle interests of their users.
One lesson remains true, from the days with Nalley’s to our work at Wheatley & Timmons over the next ten years: whatever we do in communications must be tied to a foundation of consumer insight and understanding. It’s what will inform our future and our ability to change and improve the growth path of the brands we represent.
![[Post to Twitter]](http://www.wheatleytimmons.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-twitter.png){kind=icon}
|
| 
