Bring together your traditional, digital, and brand PR

Charlotte says: “Don't ignore digital and brand PR. They are becoming really entwined with SEO, GEO, and LLMs.

Ignoring branded digital PR is going to have a large impact on your visibility, particularly as we're seeing a move towards a zero-click world.”

What are the differences between traditional, digital, and brand PR? Where are they blurring, and where do they remain separate?

“Back when marketing first started, we thought of marketing as an entire piece, and traditional PR fed into that.

With the rise of SEO, particularly in the early 2000s, there came a brand-new side of things, which was link building. That has since morphed into what many of us now know as digital PR. However, we've been seeing a blurring of the lines.

We can no longer look at traditional PR (newspapers, radio, TV) and digital PR (online content) as two separate things because a brand is living and breathing. It should be the same message everywhere a consumer sees it.

It's making sure that we're working together, making content work as hard as possible for that brand – but also, really importantly, staying true to that brand, true to the brand voice, and true to the brand values so that, no matter where a consumer sees you, everything aligns.”

What can digital marketers or digital PR specialists learn from more traditional PR people?

“It's that age-old debate. The agencies or digital marketers are concerned about how your traditional PR team is holding their contacts and wanting to stay true to the brand, whereas the traditional PR team doesn't want digital marketers stepping on their toes. It's really an educational piece from both sides.

There's a lot that we, as digital marketers, can learn from more traditional PR teams. We can learn about building up those journalist relationships and making sure you're landing your press and messaging as widely as possible. Also, traditional PR teams can be learning from us.

It all comes down to making that content work as hard as possible. How can we pivot it? Can it also work for social media? Can we get a spokesperson talking about it on TV or radio? Can we make sure that we're sharing newsworthy content that online publishers would love?”

If you are building a one-on-one relationship with a journalist, and you give a story uniquely to them, can that negatively affect your broad coverage?

“It's about knowing what the journalists want, and also what you can do with a campaign.

We create campaigns that have multiple different angles, so we can share them with different journalists who will take different information and different pieces from that one campaign. It's about building that relationship with the journalist so that, when an idea comes about, you know exactly which publication and journalist would love to hear about it.

Also, perhaps there's another way that you can craft that, or you can also add an additional angle, which would work for X journalist and Y journalist. It's making that content work as hard as possible, and considering all of the different angles that you can push.”

You also say that relevance is everything. What do you mean by that?

“Relevance is becoming more and more important, especially with all of the changes that we're seeing with regards to AIOs, LLMs, and the way that people are searching.

Gone are the days when you could create a campaign which would be newsworthy and get lots of coverage, but nothing was relevant to the brand. We've all seen these kinds of campaigns – ‘Best Cities for X’, ‘Best Cities for Y’ – that don't have any relevance to the client.

This used to work five or ten years ago, because journalists just wanted content. However, we need to be thinking more about what people are Googling. Where do we want those brands to be seen in those searches?

Also, what are people searching in LLMs? What are people ChatGPT-ing? The way that consumers are searching is changing, and we need to make sure that we're keeping up with that, and changing our tactics in order to land where people are.”

If you can no longer get away with driving less relevant traffic from keyword phrases that are less likely to convert, how do you help a client hone their relevance?

“It used to be okay just to drive numbers. If your KPI is driving numbers and driving traffic, that's one thing, but the way in which the industry has been moving is that it's not just about those numbers anymore.

It's not just about the thousands of people that can be coming to the site; it's about making sure we're driving the right kind of traffic. How many of those thousands are actually going to click ‘purchase’? How many of those people are actually investing or purchasing something from the company?

When it comes to PR and talking to clients, it's really important to get an understanding of what their aim is. Do they just want to get their name out there? If they need to get their name out there (they want to make a big song and dance, and they want people to know them), then there are lots of different tactics we can play. We can do bigger out-of-home campaigns, some experiential PR, and basically get eyeballs on the brand.

However, if it's about conversion, that's where we really need to dig into their target audience. What are their target audience doing? What are they reading? What are they watching? What radio station are they turning on when they first wake up in the morning, to get the morning's news? As soon as you start thinking like that, about the target audience, that's when you can see the publications that they will be hearing, seeing, and reading.

There, we know what we need to do. We need to create campaigns that will land in those publications.”

You also say that PR campaigns need to align tightly with a brand's core messages and products. How do you go about doing that?

“You need to make sure that you're being true to the brand, that you're not saying something that is completely off the wall, and that a PR campaign isn't going against the messaging that you put out on social media a week prior.

It's about talking to your clients, spending time with them, and knowing what they will and won't say – but also, there is a balance. Something that we talk a lot about in PR is that not everything that a brand does is newsworthy to a journalist.

Opening a store isn’t necessarily the most newsworthy thing. However, can you do something that will make opening that store newsworthy? Can you pull a stunt that is going to get eyeballs on it? Can you get a celebrity involved? Can you create a world-first? Can you do something that suddenly makes it newsworthy?”

Are clients quite succinct with what their brand's core message is, or is that something that you help them develop?

“A lot of brands come to us with brand guidelines. They know what they want their brand to look like, they know what they want it to be about, but we've all seen brand guidelines before where there are pages and pages of things – colours, messaging, core pillars – but it's then talking to people and going, ‘Okay, this is the rule book, but what does this actually mean in practice?’

Get underneath the bones of it; get underneath the brand and talk to the people. A business is the people. It's the people who are doing the messaging. It's the people who are doing the websites and talking to the consumers. Getting to grips with that, and where they stand on things, is really important as well.

It's taking those brand guidelines and that messaging, but really humanising it and understanding what it means in living, breathing terms.”

What are some mistakes that brands make when defining what they stand for?

“In today's age, authenticity is everything. That is the currency. That's what I really mean when I say, ‘What does a brand stand for?’: What is its authentic voice?

The perfect correlation to this would be an influencer that you follow on social media. If they suddenly have an advert that is so against what they are doing in their day-to-day social posts, that's going to ring alarm bells. We're going to think, ‘Are they being authentic?’

Translating that from the influencer back to the brand, are they suddenly saying something which doesn't feel right? Being authentic is so important in this day and age.”

You've said that you shouldn't shy away from bold decisions. What bold decisions are you talking about?

“I'm talking about calling people out. If there is something that you are willing to stand behind as a brand, and someone (a politician or something like that) is going against that, then call them out. Add your name to that conversation.

We have seen a lot of brands shy away from these things. There's a balance. Is it go big or go home? Are you willing to take the risk? The risk might not pay off, but if it does, that's when you get some of your award-winning campaigns. That's when you get the national coverage. That's when people remember you.

It’s about being memorable. Sometimes, being willing to take that stance (so long as it's authentic) is what's important.”

Is social media the place to be bold?

“It depends. I think social media is perhaps a good place to trial it out. Immediately, I was thinking about the classic ‘McDonald's versus Burger King’ debate. That's something that we all know. As consumers, we know that there is a debate there. It's something that we talk about – ‘Are you a McDonald's fan?’, ‘Are you a Burger King fan?’ – but that lives throughout everything.

I've seen them pull ads before, next to each other in newspapers. We've seen the billboards. We've seen them on social media. That's authentic. If you saw something on social media, if you saw the billboard, you know that's true to the brand because we're seeing that everywhere.

That's what I mean about keeping that messaging consistent.”

There was a campaign back in 2018, when KFC ran out of chicken in a few different restaurants, and they remade their logo to ‘FCK’ instead of ‘KFC’. It got an incredible amount of online coverage, and it seemed to resonate with their target market.

They owned the mistake, made light of it, admitted that they'd messed up, and hoped they wouldn't do it again.

“Exactly. Owning it, showing humility, and showing authenticity go a long way. I can't believe it was that long ago, but that was all over the news: ‘KFCs Being Closed Down’. I can remember seeing interviews of people who'd gone to get their chicken, and it wasn't there.

This is kind of where it leans slightly into crisis comms. It could have been a big corporate crisis response, but that's where the creativity comes in. Crisis comms would only have got you so far; that would have made you yesterday's news. News publishers aren't going to be reporting on it.

By using that creative way to flip it, using the iconic font and those letters, we all knew what they meant – and we’ve all been there. It’s about having that humility.”

Charlotte, what's the key takeaway from the tip you shared today?

“The key takeaway is making sure that you are consistent across all of the different platforms and willing to be authentic but make a splash if you need to.”

Charlotte Crowther is Account Director at Kaizen. Find out more over at Kaizen.co.uk.