“Let’s build companies where creativity becomes part of our everyday practice.”
Jo Malone
PR is an industry built around ideas.
It is an industry that takes news and makes it newsworthy. We manage the delivery and circulation of information from a client to the public in a way that best conveys their message – and to achieve that, creativity is essential.
It’s no surprise that almost all PR job roles are advertised as needing a creative candidate. A creative PR professional takes a key message and presents it such a way that it reaches the people it needs to reach, in a way the audience wants to hear.
Whilst a brand will decide what they want to say, a PR agency will decide how to say it, to stand out and achieve cut through. We are advocates for our clients – we are their public voice – so although creativity is essential to engage with our target audience, insight and consistency is also crucial as the custodians of the clients’ voice.
So how should PRs approach creative campaign ideas whilst maintaining brand insight and tone?
Campaigns anchored in messaging
Our primary goal is to engage with target audiences and demographics while achieving communications objectives. This means that whatever exciting or unusual ideas we come up with, they must also have purpose. Ideas need to be tailored to the target audience and should be able to capture their attention; otherwise, it is just noise for the sake of it.
Last year, for example, Twelve helped design a press pack to send to fashion journalists and social media influencers made from recycled denim. It contained a set of Instagram polaroid postcards alongside a press release to mark the collaboration of second-hand fashion website Re-Fashion with High Street store, VERY.
Whilst the arrival of a press release wrapped in a piece of recycled fashion was certainly memorable, it was firmly anchored in Re-Fashion’s core message. The partnership aims to to reduce the amount of good quality, wearable clothes going to landfill by encouraging Very’s customers give up their unwanted clothes for a second life. With the key messaging in mind, we wanted to use fabric that had come through Re-Fashion’s donation process and include key phrases from the brand’s social media campaign to strengthen their voice in communication to the fashion press.
Storytelling and emotional response
Storytelling has always been a major component of creative PR and bringing a brand to life with compelling narrative is key when generating both interest and long-term reach with target audiences. One of the most challenging areas to achieve this is in a B2B setting, where the subject matter can be very specialised and often, quite technical.
At Twelve, we look for opportunities to bring colour and human interest to technical subjects – one recent example was Metal Packaging Manufacturers Association (MPMA) whose key message is that metal is a permanently available material and can be recycled infinite times, whilst also having a long first life. We launched a competition ‘Hunt for Treasured Tins’ across several platforms to ask people to find their most treasured tin.
It was a popular campaign, with entries up to 103 years old entered and many accompanied with fond family memories and meaningful uses for those tins today. Participants delighted in uncovering lost treasures and sharing their stories with MPMA. Not to mention the flood of images that arrived, of beautifully decorated and delicately embossed vintage tins and historic artefacts.
It really served to bring the subject of metal packaging to life and generated a positive emotional response. It is the human stories behind metal packaging which helps secure the understanding and long-term reach that Twelve strives to create for MPMA.
Provide opportunities for creative PR
PR agencies should be looking to bring new ideas and angles to their clients’ brands continually and consistently. Getting into the habit of creative brainstorming is a good way to regularly achieve and evaluate this element of coverage. Twelve worked with ACS International Schools for 14 years and pledged to present a fresh new idea every month. That’s 12 ‘Twelve Ideas’ a year – or 168 new ideas in the duration our contract with ACS!
To remain focused on the agreed brand messaging, we would assess our results against targets on a monthly basis, identify any potential gaps and then brainstorm ideas to cover any underrepresented message, target audience or platform the following month.
The combination of creative group brainstorming, often informed by current affairs, calendar events and social media trends with a focus on core messages resulted in successful campaigns which enjoyed great pick up in target media titles or delivered against challenging objectives.
Highlights included ‘Beyond the Classroom’, an idea to reach out to local families and introduce non–expats to the school for a range of open events featuring interesting speakers on parenting or education.
Nine working days after Boris Johnson announced the closure of schools last March, Wild Days was launched by international environmental charity, Earthwatch Europe; a digital service serving up a daily package of nature-based content backed by scientific and outdoor learning expertise.
The communications challenge was to sustain interest and keep raising Earthwatch’s profile, at a time when new online resources were coming out every day, within a short turn around.
Limited time does not necessarily have to hamper creative thinking. Twelve helped Earthwatch develop a hero campaign, ‘How to Watch Well’, for which we worked alongside the charity and a child development expert, commissioned an omnibus survey, issued press releases and top tips from the Wild Days ambassadors.
We also created taster articles based on weekly Wild Days themes, which were widely shared with media titles and platforms to maintain interest and showcase a range of fresh angles on the campaign. Wildlife guides were negotiated from Princeton University Press, for use as poetry competition prizes and social media influencer incentives, and these additional outreach ideas ran alongside more traditional methods such as focused blogs on the Earthwatch website.
View this post on Instagram
In a tight timeframe, Wild Days secured a combined estimated press reach of over 79 million, with a total of 49 earned media cuttings. By the end of the 12-week campaign, 4,570 families signed up and as a direct result of the campaign, Earthwatch’s social media following grew by 37.2%, with over 50,000 visitors to the Wild Days website.
