Why PR is Underrated

Lapses in communication

PR requires a bit of tenacity to get right. I am still trying to come to terms with it. The key is understanding public relations is actually communication and not hoping for anything more. The goal of the PR is actually to create another level of communication between him / herself and the client and him / herself and the designer so that they can understand each other because they do not speak the same language.

Which sounds pretty simple. But it isn’t. Because the nature of the business person who values PR, marketing and advertising means that they are generally incredibly busy. They are also generally not the best communicators. They are, after all, business people, and not PRs.

The nature of the designer or creative is generally an acquired taste. I mean that with respect- it is a statement of fact, not a judgement. Designers usually cannot follow more than one train of thought or instruction, and they usually get all caught up in whatever they are working with at the time. They read but generally do not respond to requests, and may very well be actioning them, they just don’t communicate that to anyone until they have finished. While most professionals use their professional know-how to educate and inform clients when their expectations are unreasonable, designers will refrain from communicating this and scoff at the ignorance of the client.

Here are my tips at surviving a career in public relations:

1. Use a numbered list when communicating more than idea at a time
PRs, it appears, have a bit more of a capacity to work through an email which contains more than one instruction / piece of information. Clients and designers do not. While the art of crafting a paragraph is a skill appreciated by PRs, journalists and media professionals, it throws an invisibility cloak over itself when seen by the eyes of a designer or small business owner. Use short sentences. Do not use bullet points. Use a numbered list. Where possible make the list a different colour. Despite these tips you will find it only on very rare occasions that anyone ever makes it to the end of the list. When that happens, record date and time. For the rest of the time, refer to point three. The logic? While neither may be able to work from top to bottom, they generally both understand numbers.

2. Chasing the deadline is your problem
Regardless of whether the designer misses the deadline or the client never supplies the vital parts of the project. Don’t just tell them both when the deadline, lay out your expectations and hope for the best. On some very important occasions it may serve you to go to the place of work of the designer. And remain there until the project is finished. Really.

3. Follow up on number one because of number two
Yes, there are only three things. Three nearly-impossible things to achieve and survive times x clients times x designers times x projects. Ha ha.

Note- I use the words generally and usually a lot in this blog post. The use of these words is intended diplomatically, not to demonstrate generalisation, because they generally apply to all designers and business owners I have worked with to date, and because I would like to continue to work with them going forward.

Low Cost Marketing Ideas

There’s free and there’s low cost. When you spend a bit of money your capacity to make an impact goes up; it’s something of an investment in your target audience. Here are some easy and cost-effective ways to get your brand out there.

Corporate gifts- unique and free Branding promotional goods that are unique and eye-catching is a great way to ensure you stay front of mind. The trick is to make them unique and useful.

Steal ideas from competition products and services Within reason, of course. What you are looking for is how much they appear to be investing, and where they are investing so you can compete. When it comes to marketing and creativity though, uniqueness is key.

Seek out new and different advertising platforms Look for innovative ways to get your brand out there, and look to put your business in a space that no one else or no one in your industry has ventured into.

Offer something for free- incentivise Give customers a reason to shop with you- what’s in it for them? A discount, something for free, a value-add- these are all ways your business can distinguish itself from competition products when a customer is weighing you up.

Use email to its greatest potential Use your company database actively- to communicate your specials and promotions. People you have an existing relationship with are much easier to convert into customers than people with whom you have no history. This is information you have on record, and it is free. Exercise it.

Don’t underestimate the power of client relationships Great customer service goes a very long way. Never underestimate the power of a solid relationship and exceptional communication skills.

The Global Village: Back to The Future?

Despite having left my academic days far behind me (such leisurely undertakings as reading, studying and following one singular train of thought at a time make a rapid exit at the entry of children), I had a flashback to McLuhan’s theory of the ‘global village’ and a relative understanding of it, at least in a South African context.

So, many years ago we were running rampant through undeveloped fields or velds, depending on where we lived. We had acquired the basic skills necessary to get by and had rudimentary means of transport, and figured out what we generally could and couldn’t eat. We were tribal beings living in rural areas and had very simple ways of life. “Work” was probably in the field or veld just down the way from the hut, or at the cattle shed behind the hut. We didn’t have to go far to get there, didn’t have the stress of daily commuter-type travel.

As time went by we went through a few hundred years of urbanisation where we all flocked to the cities, to where ‘it was all happening’, to where the money was to be made. Some people moved their families with them, others left their families in the rural areas and visited them when they could. Today not many of us want to stay in the city.

Now that we have cast our concrete hand on the areas known as towns and cities, and literally bled them dry, the novelty has worn off. How we as a South African community have responded is to bring the city to us. We now perform those functions, formerly reserved for the metropolitan web of cities and towns, inside of our comfort zones. Is this a return to what we, after centuries of modern evolution, originally fled from? Did we swop the urbanity of primal life for the sophistication of the cosmopolitan? Yes and no. it is here that we begin to see a split. Has the convenience of home-run business operations come at the cost of our comfort zones? We have managed somehow to ‘let in’ the modern evils that your average cluster compound has been created to inhibit.

And yes, while McLuhan’s global village is also concerned with the omnipresence of communication technologies and the faster connections between people from all corners, it is also a reference to the pervasion of the capitalist spirit in every sphere of life. While the Blackberry and the laptop are arguably physical extensions of modern man, extensions of the sensory potential of the human being, they are also intrusions. People who work from the home environment will tell you about how much more convenient everything is, how much more flexible everything is. That is only because things that may not have been entirely acceptable at the office, are now completely within limits at home. The shape-shifting of boundaries and the emotional displacement of the human spirit are not very stable or stabilising factors when played with together.

Did pre-urbanised man worry about his crop of mielies when he was sitting in front of his fire with the family around him? Probably. Did this cause him stress-induced insomnia, road rage or weight gain? Probably not; our social development into the value affixed to family time was completely different then. He was probably a patriarchal arsehole of an Alpha Male and didn’t share his fire or thoughts with anyone.

Ok, so maybe we can’t compare properly, but the point is that we have come around full circle and Mcluhan’s theory of the global village is developing at a rapid pace in South African society here lifestyles have been become ‘clustered’ and estates have morphed into self-containing ecosystems which function without completely autonomously- little worlds existing within their own frames of reference. One globe of villages.

Creating a Successful Marketing Strategy

“Satisfying needs and wants through an exchange process”- Philip Kotler on the phenomenon of marketing.

Here are some essential pointers to keep in mind when creating a successful marketing strategy for any business, regardless of its size, shape or composition.

Define the product / service Make explicitly clear what it is that you are offering, and on what terms that product or service is offered.

Know your target market Learn as much as you can about who you are targeting with your product or service and what their likes and dislikes are.

Know your competition Learn from your competition. Have a look at what they are doing and where they are most active and get some pointers. Most importantly, work out what they are doing and do it better!

Identify a niche The most successful products fulfil a need that nothing else does. Find your niche group and target it effectively.

Generate product awareness Just because your product or service has been born into the marketplace doesn’t give it a right to be known about. Find as many avenues as you can to market your business and do it with aplomb.

Engender credibility Never underestimate the power of word of mouth and make sure that your customers have nothing but the best to say about you, starting from day one. Reputations stick- make sure yours is pretty.

Keep consistent Ensure that everything about your business is consistent, from the messaging to the product you are offering, through to the service you are offering people.

Know when to step back Especially if the business is yours and let marketing professionals do what they do best! You may have conceived, carried and born this business all on your own but there comes a time when you have to let go and listen to good professional advice!

Where have all the good words gone?

I used to have conversations with people, read texts, and frequently encountered words I couldn’t define, couldn’t explain, couldn’t place in the correct context. It was intriguing, because it was the beginning of a fervent discovery: looking it up, writing it down, trying to use it and not forget it. Not forget it. Interesting. Does dis-use make it any less real? If a thing is not used for a use, it is useless, is it not? In literary terms, I believe the word is obsolete.

Am I surrounded by stupid people?
Are my social movements any less academic than they used to be? Possibly. Have my chosen media of engagement changed? Perhaps. My departure from the academic realm, however, was based on a desire to enter the ‘professional’ world.

How do we define ‘professional’?
It’s concerning, frankly. Synonyms and definitions bespeak competence, qualification, skill. Perhaps somewhat more concerning is the connection with habit, with routine, with continuing a cycle that is, not as professional as it purports to be.

Speaking of cycles
If we are to believe that words shape meaning (and in Victoria’s Empire, we do), and we lose all the good words, and the depth of meaning, description and emotion they evoke and, by extension, the shaping of our own realities within that meaning, because they fall out of use and because we have transferred them out of reality, and into a virtual space, where are we in a few decades’ time?

Modern Talking: Illiteracy in the Age of Information (a fairy tale for adults)

“The purpose of a fishtrap is to catch fish, and when the fish are caught, the trap is forgotten. The purpose of a rabbit snare is to catch rabbits. When the rabbits are caught, the snare is forgotten. The purpose of words is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words? He is the one I would like to talk to.” Chuang-Tsu

In the beginning was the word and, once upon a time, in all human-populated areas of the world people adhered to a system of grammar and punctuation, so that the meaning of the word could be preserved.

There were good words and bad words, formal words and colloquial words, polite words and swear words. There were people who couldn’t spell, and there were people who couldn’t punctuate, but there were also people who upheld a system of consistency and, by extension, the integrity and overall intellect of the people who read the words because words shaped thoughts, and thoughts shaped actions; and words, the meaning that they inferred and expressed, contributed to an abstract called culture.

Then one day, along came something virtual. Unfortunately a large portion of how this virtual thing operated was based on words, and the codes of letters and words. Because this virtual thing was so limitless, so infinite and so huge, humans, already ‘dumbed down’ by a large degree, felt obliged to fill this void with meaningless words, misspelt words, badly connected words. And they did it on a scale referred to as the ‘global village’ so that these ‘wrong’ words could be read by global village idiots everywhere.

The global idiocy spread by something ‘viral’; it spread its sticky web through single countries, and then across continents; its ease and sociability making sure that everyone picked up on it.
It happened at a time when people already struggled to communicate- they got divorced, got retrenched, overspent, overindulged. And then, they stopped talking to one another directly altogether. And what of culture? If a culture of self is anything to go by, a self-reflexive, self-centred kind of culture, then that’s what happened. And they all lived alone, unhappily ever after.