Quality over quantity in PR

A first impression is what could make or break a campaign, and it’s important that PR is involved in the project from an early stage. We help to set the right tone, and also in creating ideas that could help the brand be seen in a different way.

In plain terms, a campaign has to resonate with the public. It also has to communicate the right message in order to be understood by the right audience.

A large part of our day is building and maintaining relationships with clients and journalists, but at an arm’s length. It’s a mutually beneficial understanding for all parties, and the end-goal is usually the same. It’s very similar to working with other teams here at Distract, in the way of collaboration and communication.

There’s other aspects of digitisation in PR that’s a standard for us; backlinking, ebooks, podcasts, they all fall under the same umbrella of helping a client to communicate their message to a wider audience.

But even in Digital PR; finding existing brands to see how they could work with the clients that we work with. It can be a movie brand, it could be a gaming brand; it all revolves around making it relate to the campaign in question, and making it timely.

For example, the next James Bond film is arriving in cinemas soon, and we are already thinking of ways that we could use the style and the memorable styles of the character to mix in with some campaigns we are currently working on.

For example, last year we were working with travel bloggers to promote and raise awareness of the Lincolnshire Wolds and coast. The results were fantastic, and it really helped with giving potential visitors an idea into what the Lincolnshire Wolds has to offer. Our brief was simple, get journalists or bloggers to come and stay in the area to show off the alternative offering that the area has. Visitors and audiences had to fit an identified criteria, but through collaboration, we were able to find new audiences. 

These were then segmented into categories, from dog walkers who needed pooch-friendly beaches, to those who wanted to see history heritage all the way to visitors who just wanted to visit unspoilt market towns to relax. If we’d ploughed on with one aspect of this and not looked into other avenues as the campaign developed, we would have been limited in our scope and may not have achieved more. It’s in pushing new ideas and working with the team involved that you get results. Being bold and determined can really pay off here.

The people I talk to every week vary, and travel bloggers are no exception. It’s all about building and expanding upon those relationships, so that any campaigns that the other teams come up with at Distract are amplified; we can then help spread the word out about a brand even more.

Digital PR is making sure that relevancy and consistency are key to a campaign. When we’re given information by other departments with what they’re planning for new clients, we usually brainstorm many different ideas as to how we could spread the message of them out there, but to their audience.

Some may not be aware that their target audience can be found on different channels now. From TikTok, to podcasts, effective PR can help connect brands with their target audience in a way that advertising alone cannot.

That’s what we try to do in PR; we collaborate, not just with our teams at Distract, but with many clients, journalists and content providers that we speak to on a daily basis. We find our clients’ strengths and use those to better push their messages, ethos and brand identity into the wider world.

It’s all about quality than quantity with our clients, and that’s where collaboration really shines for us.