The PR Game

Some people say that advertising is dead and that the only way to popularize your product, service, event or cause is through word of mouth or personal endorsment. This is why PR has taken precedence over traditional forms of advertising such as TV commercials or billboard ads.

The role of a PR person/company is to try to get magazines, websites and publications to pick up their stories and press releases and give them press coverage. This publicizes the product, service, event or cause and gives word of mouth credibility.

Alot of buzz is created on blogs, youtube and social networking medias as person to person- the news spreads like wildfire. The most desired effect is when your marketing campaign goes 'viral'- meaning it infects the audience and the word spreads faster than a bad case of swine flu.

The previous entry I wrote about the Jimmy Choo collection for H&M is a good example of viral marketing. It was such an interesting phenomenon, I was compelled to write about it. I embedded the Jimmy Choo youtube videos (as did millions of other bloggers) thus giving H&M free coverage about their product. Thousands of bloggers, like myself, helped to fuel the hype about the Jimmy Choo collection in this manner. It doesn't really matter what anyone said about the products, the fact is, the buzz has been generated and perpetuated- for free!

Recently, I was asked by Marketing Magazine for some PR tips for businesses who want to get written up about on hiphongkong. Firstly, I'd like to say- a product or service MUST be good. If it's something unique, useful, relevant, quality or cool then people will naturally be intruigued by it and gravitate towards it. Secondly, a PR person must work ALL their connections in a pleasant yet assertive manner. They need to let everyone they know that might be interested in publicizing, participating in or attending their cause.Taking the time to call someone often lends a persuasive touch as it creates a personal bond.

Sending a press release with all the relevant photos and information in a timely manner helps. If you are publicizing an event, it helps to send the info as far ahead in advance as you can to the relevant parties. Include basic information like when, where, how much, why did you create this and why should we care?-and make the information clear and easy to find. Post event coverage is very important so if you have photos from an event or a press release that says what happened at the event- you may want to send that to your media friends as well.

In all honesty, PR is a very personal job and PR representatives MUST be likeable or at least not unlikable. PR involves alot of lunches, networking, meeting the right people, and tapping into those connections. Very often, a good PR person is also good at connecting others. The reality is- people are not going to do anything for a person they don't like. It's basic human nature. Therefore it behooves a savvy PR person to invest some time building good relationships with people in the media.

Here's a scanned copy of the short hiphongkong blurb that appeared in this month's Marketing Magazine.

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