The first step of creating Great PR is to start from the greater plan of the organization or person you’re supporting. If you work for a company, this means starting from the business plan. I know some think this is overly ambitious, and some think that the exercise stretches the PR-activities too thin; that they land in something either way too abstract, or something much too close to sales and marketing. It does not have to. It can still be witty, edgy PR-content. But it is critical to align the PR-activities with what your business wants to achieve long-term.
The key question is quite simple; what do you want others to say about your business?
The goals and the desired position has to be the starting point for great PR-work. Where the company strives to be, that is where PR strives. Of course not by repeating business goals or company vision in every single text. Neither can you plan PR-activities connected directly to the sales measures monthly and believe that you’ll make great PR that way. Remember, different activities have different roles to play.
No, it comes down to telling the stories and packaging the news that creates good conditions for the business to deliver. Regardless if it is about getting a matter up on the decision-making-board, generate goodwill for a line of production or create calm for a questioned business. If you also have a brand platform and / or strategy, the PR-plan should harmonize with both the business plan and the brand platform.
PR-activities based in the business plan plays a somewhat different part than other, more classic communication activities. Let me paint you a picture to illustrate:
You may have business goals that include sustainability. You may have another set of goals tied to your industry and, say, the increase of one of the production lines. The increase of the flow from that production line may well have to be marketed in order for it to be successful. That does not mean that this increase is apt to transform into PR-activities. (while I am not saying that it can’t be done.)
The sustainability goals, on the other hand, are not directly connected to an increase of sales. That does not mean they cannot be used for PR-activities. Quite the contrary – a good PR-work around the sustainability goals, and progress, should give strength and support to the market-directed communication around the increase of the production line.
But a classic situation, which I have found myself in a lot of times, is that the business wants to focus all the communication on the production line, and leave the sustainability goal for the operations to handle.
With a PR perspective, you handle it in a different direction; you let the market-team work their magic on the sales communication about the products from the increased production line, and you and the PR-team focus on telling all the great stories about the sustainability process that your business is now developing.
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