Often when we pitch to be an organisation’s PR – regardless of their scale, prominence and even if they rarely read the paper – they usually say ‘we’d like to be in The Guardian.’ People still love to be featured in The Guardian – and rightly so – we love it and the arts writers too. There is much much more to that in a PR’s tool kit, however.
The press landscape is shapeshifting faster than you can say Jack Robinson. It is falling to PR’s to be even more savvy and agile in keeping profile and visibility for clients – especially clients whose work is not ‘celebrity’, of more general press interest or with more well-known creatives.
Pride is important – and actually, it’s NOT vanity or self-promotion – it’s about keeping visible, being seen to be relevant and sharing excellent work and ideas beyond your company and funders. So we welcome clients who understand how essential it is to share their people and stories – but who are these stories for? Sometimes it is to industry and peers, but this also must be relevant for audiences.
Audiences are precious and valued and reaching new audiences and retaining existing audiences has never been more crucial. PR can support this through hyper-local, local, and regional press work and through working closely with micro-influencers. How we craft stories for these audience-developing opportunities is where some sophistication comes in from knowing what they need from you to how they like to publish.
The upshot is that you can have both types of PR sitting side by side – often though clients forget to ask about what a PR can do for audience development. So add that to the briefing and targets.
While I have you – I have published a case study for Contact in Manchester. It’s been truly great working with them on multiple projects and we had a lot of success, so I wanted to share it.