PR was never meant to work alone
I’ve spent almost two-decades working in communications and I’ve never really understood the obsession with putting everything into neat little boxes.
PR sits over here, social in another team, influencer straddling both worlds, merchandise is somewhere else - everyone in silo, having completely different conversations, usually about the same thing, but ultimately giving the customer a disconnected story to follow. Usually, everyone gets together at the end of the month with a slightly cobbled together report that explains how each ‘bit’ performed brilliantly.
Looks great on the inside, but not how a customer experiences the brand. They just see the one name, in lots of places (hopefully), but it’s making them figure out the picture.
That’s why I’ve always believed the strongest communications strategies are joined up. Not because every channel needs to be doing the same thing, but because they should understand what everyone else is doing and most importantly, what we’re all trying to collectively achieve.
What is an integrated communications strategy?
Removing any jargon, an integrated communications strategy is simply the plan that connects the different ways a business can communicate around a common objective to their audiences, in a relevant way to where they’re experiencing and consuming the message.
That doesn’t mean copy pasting everywhere. Different channels play a different role at different moments.
PR can help businesses earn credibility and authority by creating moments for conversation and engagement. Influencers can connect brands with their audiences, using their authentic and relatable voice to communicate key messages. Social media allows businesses to have a two-way conversation with their audience, acting as a shop front beyond websites and bricks & mortar, and mostly as a customer service tool these days! Great content gives audiences a reason to spend more time on an idea, and sales teams can mop all of this up to use in conversations with customers.
Different disciplines, just inevitably more useful when they pass the baton to each other when needed.
Speaking of the baton, good ideas need to travel
I’ve seen brilliant pieces of PR coverage land and disappear just as quickly, because no one outside of the PR discipline knew how to amplify it.
I’ve also seen the magic when everything connects.
A strong piece of research can spark media conversations, give spokespeople something genuinely interesting to talk about, create weeks of social content, provide a platform hook for the right influencer and give the sales team some credible consumer opinions to put in front of prospects.
That isn’t forcing across everything channel there is, sometimes a press story can absolutely be just that.
It is, however, about spotting where an idea has the opportunity to go further and make sure the right people talk to each other early enough to make it happen.
Start with the challenge, not the channel
“We need a bit of PR” isn’t really a brief. Though, I have to admit, I don’t mind if that’s where we start!
Why do you need PR?
What’s happening in the business?
Who are we trying to reach?
What do they currently think about you?
What do we need them to understand?
What do we hope will change?
Once we’ve got that, we can figure out the role that PR can play and crucially, whether other channels should sit alongside it (yes, I’m happy to advise you to spend somewhere else first…)
Sometimes PR won’t be the answer to it all, and that’s ok, it doesn’t have to be as long as we can work towards your goal.
Being commercially minded about communications means recommending what your business needs, not trying to find a problem where the solution is something to be immediately sold.
Integrated communications need integrated relationships
Everything can start SO WELL. The most beautiful integrated plan could exist, but if no one is talking to each other the intention falls apart quickly.
Good working relationships between internal teams, agencies, leadership and commercial functions are essential. People need to share information, not gate keep, and be willing to let a good idea belong to the business first.
That also makes measurement more meaningful as instead of proving you did something that worked on a department level, you can come together to show what happened to the business when all of those things worked together.
Did we increase awareness? Are more people searching for us? Did we land that message? Did we grow?
The answer won’t fit on one channels dashboard, but neither does the customer journey.
For me, integrated communications isn’t about putting everything under one roof or making channels matchy matchy, I want everyone looking at the same bigger picture together.