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Brexit – can we raise the level of debate please?

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It’s quite sad. As we approach the final days of the referendum campaign, I can’t help but feel a little disappointed in how things have turned out.

The debate over the European Union and our place within it is a fascinating one. It allows us to reflect on who we are and what it means to be British (or European) in the 21st Century. And for the politically-minded among us, it’s a great discussion around constitutions, power and how to maintain strong democratic institutions.

Instead the campaign has been dominated by fear, by both sides.

From Leave, it’s been a fear of foreigners. Nigel Farage using a poster of Syrian refugees (which it turns out resembles Nazi propaganda from the 1930s) exploits the suffering of people and the fear that people have towards them.

And from Remain: fear over the economic fallout, while an absolutely legitimate concern, has been amplified to the point that we have now been threatened with a Brexit budget by the Chancellor if we don’t vote in. The fear over the prospect of a recession has actually increased the likelihood of a recession if we leave.

Things could have been much better than this.

It’s easy to stoke fear. Stories about waves of immigrants or mass unemployment are powerful narratives that can root deeply in people’s heads. And let’s be honest: it can be quite an effective tactic at motivating turnout.

What’s hard is having a reasoned, rational discussion about this.

For these last few days, what I hope we can do is turn our attention away from ugly, fear politics and turn our attention towards the positive aspects of the campaign. The conversations on doorsteps, the chats in bars, and the talks we have amongst friends.

Let’s discuss the debate on our own terms, instead of the terms that the media narrative has set out for us.

And let’s be honest about our relationship with the EU. It’s not perfect, it’s not broken either. But however we decide to move forward, whether staying in or going it alone, let’s do so with open eyes and reasoned thought.

Get Curious and Embrace Complexity: How To Solve the PR Measurement Dilemma

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Humans beings are very complicated.

We’ve never made decisions based on a purely rational, objective assessment of what’s in our self-interest, nor do we behave and react in perfectly predictable ways.

Humans are fickle, mysterious and sometimes outright ridiculous. Consider the dozens of cognitive biases (that we know of!) that make our decisions unpredictable. Not to mention the powerful and important role that emotions play in helping us react and respond quickly to events.

But in a world of wonderfully complex humans, understanding people is quite hard. We can never know truly how another person is thinking, let alone how the 70 million people in the UK or the 7 billion people around the world are thinking. There are simply too many variables to know for sure – we can only try.

This has huge implications for PR and our ability to do measurement.

How PR Deals With Measurement

PR is based on a simple yet challenging proposition: that an organisation’s relationships with the millions (or billions) of people who encounter them can be managed and improved in a systematic way. We know that it works – there are countless case studies of PR helping businesses to grow and achieve their goals.

But PR is a very human profession. We help businesses to interact with stakeholders, but we only have imperfect information on how they think or what determines how they behave.

This makes measurement an especially difficult challenge. If it’s impossible to understand every factor that goes into a person’s opinions or decisions, how do we know if our tactics are working? How do we know how much that boost in sales can be attributed to PR? And how do we prove that PR offers good value for money?

Certainly, a lot of work and effort has been put into improving PR measurement across the industry. We are long past the days of measuring PR purely on Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE). Today, PRs demonstrate their value and ability to provide ROI based on building relationships with key stakeholders. The internet and social media have opened up the range of options for measurement and evaluation, providing fast and accessible data not only on what coverage has been secured, but also the level of engagement, the number of shares, and the interests and demographics of their readers. Even doing an automated sentiment analysis of how readers are reacting to a news story is coming within our reach.

The International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC) has been one of the key drivers in establishing industry-wide standards for measurement and evaluation. Through the Barcelona Principles (established 2010 and updated 2015), a number of core expectations have been established – i.e. you can’t just measure AVE and outputs; you need to measure business outcomes, incorporate quantitative and qualitative methods, and be transparent and consistent.

Alongside this, AMEC’s Valid Metrics Framework has helped to structure our thinking. By putting the PR process into a set of matrices and campaign phases, we are guided into thinking about measuring a wider range of factors in the PR process.

And of course a whole host of thought leadership has been put forward on the subject. The website prguidetomeasurement.org is a particularly useful resource on this.

The Crucial Element That PR Measurement Is Missing

These innovations have been hugely important. Going beyond press clippings to analyse engagement, brand awareness, business outcomes, and a host of other factors has done much to enrich PR, prove its value, and enhance evaluation.

But we can go further.

Yes, it is useful to measure the number of likes and comments a LinkedIn post gets as part of measuring engagement. After all, we can compare that data to previous posts and see whether this campaign was more effective at encouraging engagement from more people.

But aren’t you curious about why you got those likes? What part of your PR campaign worked? Why did it work with this stakeholder but not that stakeholder?

Let’s take this curiosity and explore it further. What if instead of focusing our measuring instruments solely on concepts like engagement, we looked behind them? Instead of just measuring engagement, we measure the process that leads a stakeholder towards their decision to engage.

This means asking questions like:

  • What leads a member of my target audience to like a LinkedIn post?
  • What variables are involved in that decision, and which of those variables can a PR campaign influence?
  • How successful has my PR campaign been in getting people to travel that pathway? What other pathways exist, and how can we find them?

This is much more difficult to do, but so much more rewarding. If we can track the processes behind factors like awareness, decisions to engage, decisions to buy, etc., we get a much more complete picture of what PR is doing.

By embracing complexity, we can see the world in more detail and evaluate our actions and approaches accordingly. We can get closer to the people we are seeking to relate to, and closer to the core of what PR is all about.

Of course we don’t know all the variables that go into human decision making and opinion forming in the areas that PR is interested in. We may never know. But the more we explore and we seek to expand our knowledge, the more we will be able to measure and understand.

5 reasons why hiring a PR agency may be the boost your business needs

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As we approach the end of the year, it’s a great time to reflect. To ask ourselves where we have come from and where we are going, so that we can use that clarity to reach further and achieve more.

On New Year’s Day, millions of people across the world will be thinking about what 2016 will mean to them. Yet the biggest and most challenging question we all must answer is also the simplest: what do we do and why do we do it?

As a PR agency, we find ourselves in a profession where 57% of UK parents aren’t entirely sure what a “PR manager” does. What PR agencies do, and indeed the whole point of the £7.5 billion PR industry, can sometimes be left quite vague – or worse, explained using frustrating and incoherent buzzwords.

But PR does matter and it does make a valuable and positive difference, as our clients will attest. Here are five ways in which PR can help you:

1. Build awareness, credibility, and attract new business

This is the bread and butter of PR – establishing your company as authoritative, credible and familiar.

We do this primarily through securing media coverage for our clients, which can range from a quick comment in a trade magazine to an in-depth feature in a national newspaper. The goal is to ensure that positive third-party perspectives of your company are seen by your target audience. As consumers and potential clients increasingly rely on reviews and name recognition when deciding what to buy or who to hire, this can be the difference between a lost opportunity and a valuable sale.

A PR agency will analyse how your competitors are doing media-wise, identify coverage opportunities and offer a strategy so that your business competes in this space.

2. Create valuable content

Ever since Bill Gates declared “content is king” back in 1996, “content” for marketers has been the buzzword of a generation. The power of content, and of a regular content calendar, to help businesses stay relevant and keep ahead of the competition is increasingly being valued and recognised by the wider business community. Given content is of the moment, it’s easy to forget that PR professionals have been content experts for decades. After all, using the right words to convey the right idea to the right people is a fundamental part of what they do. Their expertise can help your company produce the best and most relevant content for your industry.

Ultimately, creating good content relies on a mixture of instinct and planning. It means telling a consistent story that is tailored to every platform, channel, and output, whether earned, paid or owned. Your message needs to reach people and matter to people, whether you encounter it through social media, a guest feature in a magazine, an email newsletter, a blog, an app, or a news story. PR agencies can help from Word doc to the weeks after publication, making the most of opportunities at each stage.

3. Develop your social media presence

Social media is a strange and wild beast. Each platform has its own rules and conventions, different tactics for building up followings, and often fundamentally different audiences.

Social media can also be somewhat unpredictable. Your cleverly crafted hashtag campaign may not get the reaction you were expecting, as the Victorian Taxi Association found out to its detriment with its #YourTaxis campaign.

Yet for most companies, social media is unavoidable. If people are talking about you or your competitors on Twitter or on LinkedIn, having a presence there is critical. What PR agencies can do is provide support on this front, helping you to develop a strategy for meeting your goals, prepare content, and keep track of what people are saying.

4. Recruit new talent and keep your staff happy

Recruitment isn’t the first thing people think of when considering the benefits of PR. But third-party reviews, awareness of the company, and authority within the industry are important factors in getting the most talented people to get in touch. The days of posting a job ad in the newspaper and hoping for the best have long passed. Nowadays, getting potential employees to come to you can be a more fruitful way of sourcing the best candidates. Media coverage within industry publications can not only get you new clients, it can get you new employees.

PR can also play a role in keeping your existing employees happy and well-informed. Getting information on employee concerns, reassuring them about changes that your company may be undergoing, and motivating everyone to achieve their best – all of this relies on the effective communications strategies that PR agencies are so good at.

5. Get support during mergers and acquisitions (M&A)

One of the biggest challenges that a company can go through is a merger or an acquisition. It’s easy to imagine why – emotions can run high, structures that have existed for decades can be completely transformed or dismantled, and rumours can spiral out of control very quickly. Making sure that all relevant stakeholders hear accurate information is essential for a smooth transition.

An external PR agency, separate from the M&A process, can offer the guidance and expertise to communicate this process effectively. And if a crisis emerges, it is very useful to have experienced people on hand who can react quickly and effectively.

The opportunities that PR provides are potentially life changing. By getting news coverage, thought leadership pieces, positive social media sentiment, new staff, and new sales, PR can be a valuable and inexpensive way of getting ahead of your competitors. What PR agencies do is provide expertise and experience to help their clients be successful. Here at Velvet, we take that and go that extra mile, providing more than PR.

Ultimately, that is what PR is and that is why we do it.

Sean on #whenxmasbegins for him

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It sneaks up on you like a bad migraine.

At first, you begin to notice it in the TV ads, then on the supermarket shelves and fronts of people’s houses. Something just seems a little strange about everything in the world, like some secret, sinister force is slowly taking over. Before you know it, it’s infected everything and everyone like a weirdly joyous plague.

I am, of course, talking about Christmas. That compulsory celebration of which we are all painfully familiar. The time of uncomfortable family reunions and frenzied shopping. When the hordes of Christmas-obsessed happiness warriors descend and declare that a merry Christmas shall be foisted on us all. And with strained faces we all pretend to be inhabited by this Christmas spirit, dutifully wearing our flimsy party hats while “I wish it could be Christmas every day” blasts out of loudspeakers like wartime propaganda.

But there is one thing that is magical about Christmas – something that almost makes the endurance worthwhile. And that is the customary and delightful EastEnders Christmas special. Yes I know, soap operas may have the entertainment value of a washing machine, and plots that appear to have been drawn out using crayons. But one has to admire the bravery and mercy of a programme that emerges onto our screens on the evening of the 25th and brings the Christmas spirit down with a thud. When some character we’re supposed to sympathise with dies, or some happy marriage we’re supposed to care about is broken up by an affair, it’s a delight to see the tense air of manufactured happiness being punctured and demolished. I wouldn’t exchange this small pleasure for anything, except perhaps for avoiding the whole Christmas ordeal in the first place.

So for me, Christmas starts when that awful red, green and snowy fog descends on the world. But it ends triumphantly with a moment of deeply satisfying schadenfreude sat watching BBC One.

Why a Bond tie-up can be the kiss of death for brands

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In the world of product placement and brand sponsorship, James Bond gets away with murder. It’s hard to imagine any film or franchise that could have so many sponsors, yet somehow manages to avoid a backlash from viewers who see it as undermining the integrity of the story.

But Bond is different. Unlike most films, Bond seems to have a “licence to brand.” When brands show up, most viewers hardly bat an eyelid. Some even embrace the concept, with dedicated fans going through each frame of the film to find every single product so they can go and buy them.

Given the recent valuation of the Bond franchise now at £13 billion, it’s no surprise that brands want their very own slice of the pie. But it’s arguable whether this particular pie really provides the sustenance for which these brands are looking.

While much has been said of the potential for success that comes with a Bond partnership, a fair few of these partnerships haven’t worked out quite so successfully.

Remember Sony Vaio? In the 2012 film Skyfall, this PC brand was featured prominently and effectively presented as “the laptop that MI6 uses.” A huge coup for Sony, one would think: in one of the biggest films of the year, the Vaio became associated with the exciting, high-tech and luxury world of Bond.

How did this work out for Sony? Last year, Sony ended up selling off its PC division and making 5,000 staff redundant. Turns out that for all of the expense that came with sponsoring Bond, the brand awareness it created could not stem declining PC sales and a shrinking market share. And Sony Mobile hasn’t fared much better, still struggling to stay ahead despite shrinking sales.

Of course there’s Heineken International, a company one could hardly label as in decline, with an astonishing 81% increase in profits at the start of this year. But what has Heineken’s £28 million Bond partnership really done for the brand? Certainly it has created more exposure for the product, but a lot of this was the product of a backlash from fans unhappy that Bond’s martini – “shaken not stirred” – had been displaced by the sponsorship deal. Worse still, the Heineken beer featured in only one scene – for the rest of the film, the characters drank Macallan whisky, a brand that had paid absolutely nothing for the product placement. Suddenly, the £28 million fee doesn’t seem like such a good deal.

And for Aston Martin, it’s more “die another day.” For the car maker struggling to stay profitable, the temporary boost in sales from each Bond movie is said to give Aston an extra two years of life. An unusual survival strategy certainly, but not the sustainable solution that Aston really needs.

It’s easy to buy into the cult of Bond, believing that it is an easy way of achieving huge increases brand awareness while positively associating your products with luxury and excitement. But for a brand placement to be successful, it needs to be carefully targeted, appropriately contextualised, and properly evaluated.

The Bond brand is not a panacea, it’s merely another pie. In the right context, it can provide a boost to awareness and sales; but it cannot sustain and develop your brand in the long-term. If you place too much faith in the power of Bond, you may forget one fundamental truth: here is one movie brand that is stronger than any product placement; the action, the breath-taking stunts – and yes, even the basic plotline of good overcoming evil – means that we suspend disbelief for the pure pleasure of Mr Bond. And that means we pretty much ignoring anything that gets in the way, sponsor brands included.