Used to be awareness and implied endorsement

By Robert Wheatley

In the good old days, PR was too-often viewed within the brand marketing mix as a below-the-line bit part player that delivered relatively inexpensive audience impressions with a lovely parting gift: implied endorsement of an outside and respected third party – the editorial media.

While “earned media placement” as its called continues to be a centerpiece of client expectations from their agencies and PR staffs, the substantive contribution of PR has transitioned. Today it is most certainly an above the line strategic leader and thus is integral to generating brand growth and new product trial.

Why? The consumer mindset has changed. Dramatically. How they make buying decisions has changed. Emotionally. How, when and where they consume media has shifted. Radically. It is no longer possible to force and dictate consumer behavior through sheer tonnage in conventional ad media spending.

The incredible volume of new products (over-choice) chasing consumers in ever more narrow and specialized categories, combined with the awesome number of media and mediums (inundation) clamoring for everyone’s attention, has precipitated a near total shut-down of what was once thought to be rational buying behavior. Consumers no longer simply absorb and act on the facts arrayed near them through marketing campaigns, packaging, retail displays and other touch points. Instead they go with their gut and perceptions.

One more time with feeling…

Consumers make decisions today based on feeling more so than any factual assessment or analytic process. There is rampant skepticism about claims (better, best, improved) and anything that resembles marketing lingo. “Marketing at” is seen as just that and ignored for the most part. So where does PR reside in this milieu beyond the simpler view of tactics common to the discipline like straight media relations and its newer cousins, social media platforms and blogger relations?

Strategically, PR’s central role in the brand building mix (if defined within our understanding of the sea changes in consumer behavior) is about experience and validation. How I feel about a brand has great bearing on my willingness to buy. Relevance to my passions, interests and lifestyle needs is a pre-requisite to any form of engagement. This means brands must re-define their strategic mission to accommodate not just the requirements of commerce (sell more stuff) but also recognize the relationship building prerequisites that now define how brands achieve meaning and value. Said another way, how does a brand behave as an enabler and facilitator of my lifestyle interests?
It is through authentic, relevant experiences that brands can become real to its target and thus gain traction.

Brand Experiences

So PR is in the experience building business. In many ways we have always possessed these skill sets but they no longer exist on the outer edge of significance in brand development. Rather it is front and center. Certainly in the absence of experiences that drive the twin engines of authenticity and engagement, brands are not going to be heard. Traditional messaging is ignored and habit then becomes the principal driver of commerce, not endearment. Experiences by the way are environments where the distance between brand and consumer can be measured in feet (events) and inches (screen).

Brand Message Validation

Validation may be even more important in a world where trust is dramatically fractured following years of scandal after scandal. Just the other day on Tampa Tribune’s The Stew blog, Progresso brand runs an “attack” ad on Campbell’s Soup to counter their attack ad on MSG in soup recipes. So who is lying here? Everyone? Is this some sort of thin sliced definition caper where brands that know they have a little inconsistency going on attempt to pick a small bandwidth of “convenient truth” and run with it? Consumers have seen enough of this messaging shell game to place the effort squarely in the zone of “typical marketing behavior.”

Consumers want respected, trusted sources to “validate” assertions and representations made by brands and businesses. PR is at once about demonstration and validation of essential truths (yes, we know about the dark side of political spin-meisters and the grey underbelly of publicly disseminated half-truths by “flacks”). Core PR strategy centers on looking for the elements of what we here call the Circle of Influence – essentially the consumer’s Board of Directors and (kitchen) cabinet advisors they routinely look to for advice on things to buy. Media, especially citizen journalists, play a central role in the vital process of corroboration.

Demonstration

Looking at it from another angle, the lack of validation and confirmation from respected sources about what a brand claims to be or offer may foretell failure with a capital F. Validation doesn’t come by, as Captain Picard of the Starship Enterprise would say, a “make it so” command. It is an outcome of the remarkable and interesting being vetted as such. It’s simply hard for something that isn’t remarkable to pass muster. Hence the built-in “truth” value springing from validation by respected sources. It requires some naturally alluring, systemic and obvious proof to work properly. So assuming then the product has some of this grist going for it, PR strategies can elevate and bring to life that essence (validate the buzz) and drive it out nationally. Then work to help build momentum behind it. Make no mistake — consumers are demanding validation.

These are exciting times. And just may be best time ever to reside in the PR world. If I may be permitted just a short moment in the midst of all this economic gloom — to smile.