Managing your message through means other than paid ads.

You’ll often hear the term ‘spin’ used in politics, “How do we spin this to our advantage?” … this common practice is often confused with a service known as ‘public relations’ or ‘PR’ for short.

Unless you’re a politician, ‘spin’ has no room in your message war chest. Consumers become skeptical of a company that always point their finger elsewhere when there are problems… Not addressing problems head-on just to avoid negative customer feed back, will only come back to bite back!

With this said, companies and brands should take proper aim and time to manage their ‘public’ image. PR doesn’t have to be whiz-bang stuff, and they are not always to mitigate negative occurrences. Quite the contrary. PR should be focused, consistent, informative and reliable. Avoid using PR as a means to ‘hype’, ‘spin’ or ‘leak’ brand or product attributes. That being said, if you have some positive news — don’t be shy to share it!

Public relations should be viewed as a fifth ‘P’ in an otherwise four ‘P’ business marketing ecosystem. If the four ‘P’s stand for Product, Price, Promotion and distribution of Product, then perhaps the fifth P should stand forPromise. Being honest with your customers and promising them ‘truth’ over spin or hype will lead to better brand appeal, preference and trust.

PR brings balance to the temptation of advertising ‘hype’. The rule of thumb? “If it’s going to become a PR nightmare, keep it out of your ads, products and most importantly — out of your customers hands.”

Contact us for more information on how to converge and include PR into your adverting and marketing mix.