Back to Basics: Should PR Be as Easy as (Pizza) Pie? | Crawford

For many a business technology PR agency, the job of continuously developing cutting edge ways to promote clients can make a body jaded. Established social media venues like Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin seem run-of-the-mill. Now no PR plan looks complete unless it includes Pinterest, Google+, Tumblr, or depending on the industry, any among hundreds of other sites. While no one doubts the value of social media as a sales-driving branch of PR, the greater issue is whether clients have reached overload.

I got wind of this lately in a discussion with a Fortune 500 client in the CRM business. Long heavy on technology, they were prepping to launch a new program touting their stellar service representatives. One of our suggestions: If you?re looking to add a human touch, why not promote photos of these individuals on Pinterest so customers can get a real look at the people behind the product? Great idea, they said. The only problem: The company is already involved in more social media outlets and campaigns than they can manage and simply can?t absorb another new one at the moment. Nix on that idea.

Even more telling was a chat with a new client in the telecom back office space. We charged into our first meeting fired up about social media, SEO, site traffic, etc. Client reaction: Been there, done that. All they really wanted was classic PR and analyst relations.

That made me think twice. The common wisdom is that new technologies and media vehicles have made PR more layered, complex and most importantly, rewarding for the client. That doesn?t mean that every client necessarily wants all the bells and whistles. Some prefer just the basics.

This thought was driven home to me the other night in, of all places, a pizza parlor. You start out by deciding what size pizza you want: personal, small, medium or large. You choose between thin or inch-thick crust. You can tailor your order with any number of toppings, and order anchovies or extra sauce on the side. The choice is entirely your own. Nobody?s ramming a one-size-fits-all ?dining solution? down your throat.

That lesson in mind, I sometimes wonder if agencies intent on selling a packages of services have strayed from the fundamental principle of letting the customer choose what she or he wants. Too often we see agencies acting by rote: creating strategy, PR plans, messaging, branding, social media campaigns, etc., like automatons. Clients, too, if they have experience working with PR firms, come to expect all the above, requesting elaborate PR plans for every initiative. Planning is a fine thing when it?s used. But I can tell you flat out that the biggest data hog on our cloud server is the folder labeled ?Client PR Plans,? graveyard to scores of road maps for client-proposed announcements and events that went nowhere. What I suspect to be the leading factor behind this ghostly array of that never took wing: too many moving parts that added complexity and cost.

A counter reaction to PR proposals and plans that offer ?everything? may hint at what?s to come. Lately we?ve tested a new concept called PR as a Service (PRaaS), inspired by the IT industry?s highly successful Software as a Service (SaaS), which frees customers of costly licensing, installation and maintenance fees. Instead, clients simply go to ?the cloud? for the app they need, and pay only for what they use. A little over a month old, PRaaS is already attracting interest among those that need flexibility because their needs may vary month-to-month. For them, the idea of a PR program that lets them start with the basics, build from there and pay by the bite is as easy as pie.

About James Crawford

Jim Crawford is the president and founder of Crawford PR. In Crawford blogs, he offers hard-earned perspective on public relations for the tech and broadband industries.

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Source: http://crawfordpr.com/2012/10/24/back-to-basics-should-pr-be-as-easy-as-pizza-pie/

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