Communication Mind

I choose to write this post about “placing” your publicity, rather than “channel” or “media”. Of course, a lot can be said of different channels and medias, but there are simply so many of them that this entire blog could not assume to cover them, even if it was a blog about channels and media alone. And it is not. Hence, I’ll talk about placing your publicity here. 

When you think about PR it is easy to confuse it with press releases. For a good reason. Even with all the new channels and platforms, and all the trust-crisis old media suffers, editorial media, or old school media, still holds a very special place in our public mind. Robert Dilenschneider describes this situation in a great way in the The Public Relations Handbook. 

Editorial media are still substantiated, and transparent in their press-ethics, in a way that most new platforms can’t compete with. But the press release is not the only way to get your message out there. 

One of the most heartwarming public events that took place in the early 21st century, was the Ice Bucket challenge – a social media campaign that went viral. A lot of celebrities did the challenge, thus collecting money for the noble cause of ALS-research. And a lot of ordinary people. I’ll see if I can find and share the (embarrassing) clip where I do the challenge, with my 9-year old son. 

A lot of you would have heard of, if not seen, the Netflix-production La Casa de Papel. One of the great PR-stunts they pulled off was when season 3 was about to be launched. Suddenly, different bags started to appear on random luggage belts at major airports around the world – tagged “Tokyo”, “Denver”, “Helsinki” and so forth. For all followers of the series, this of course meant the characters in the series, and people went nuts taking photos, shooting films and selfies and posting on social media. A clever hybrid-campaign; word-of-mouth in the digital era. 

When I was young, and no such thing as social media or smartphones existed, we worked with “drop-notes” – a bunch of handwritten notes with our key messages printed, dropped “accidently” in strategic places such as cafés, libraries or supermarket counters. (sometimes, we hid behind a corner to study the person who picked it up, and their expressions. An early attempt of effect-measurement, you might call if you want to be kind). 

Also, we made a really creative use of “invisible theater” as a method on a few occasions. Maybe, I’ll roll back to that later. But just to mention a few methods of PR that does not involve a press release.

Different channels are good for different things. The multichannel environment we operate in is both a huge challenge and a great opportunity. Public relations is all about trust. It is about building trustworthy relations with your audience. That the “deserved” channels stand out to this cause, makes sense. Even if owned, or bought, channels also can do a job here. 

So you need to take a moment and consider which placement benefits your publicity the most. Is the controlling of the message the foremost factor? Consider owned channels, with a tail of following activities. Is the size of the buzz you create your head goal? Consider out-of-box activities, and prepare for that your audience will be co-producers in the message. Is the reliability of facts the most important part? Consider your connections to well-informed, seasoned journalists that could be interested in following and writing about your topic in an objective and independent way. 

Remember – with our connected world and social media-era, nothing lasts more than the blink of an eye. And at the same time, what you put out there, lives on forever and can suddenly spring back to life in a new and unexpected form. It’s the paradox of our time; “A second, an eternity”.