Reacting To A Recession? Stop Before You Cut PR Budgets

Posted on May 25, 2008
Leave a Comment

A recession to me is if my direct competitor goes out of business, a depression of course would be if I was to go out of business before my direct competitor. Often companies make the mistake of cutting cost during economic downtimes and the PR budget is usually the first to go. Some companies should stop to ask themselves does it really make sense to stop communications when times are growing hard! Wow, so many companies elect to go down this road, seemingly thinking they can just pick right back up when things turn around.

Public relations are just that, a relationship that you developed with your public audience. Usually, you have the luxury of targeting specific target audiences through strategic planning and approach from media relationships. However, all of these relationships are built overtime, nurtured, and developed ongoing. In short, you do not stop communicating and talking one day and come back some time later expecting to pick right back up. After all when you leave (stop communicating) the media is always looking for someone to take your spot, the next Big (hot) New (young) company, celebrity, author, or cause to take your place. You can’t think that you are that special, right? Fans, customers, supporters, clients, remain loyal only when they are in a relationship.

In business you often find yourself in three stages of life, you are in a recession or depression, going into a recession or depression, or coming out of a recession or depression. The key is learning how to weather the storm from, of, and during a recession or depression. The most important thing to remember is that attitude often controls the mood to be successful or not. The theory “keep your head up” holds true. Continue to communicate with your target audience, find out what they need and want. Show that you do care by offering solutions that will help the Read more

Independent Film Advertising, Low Cost Public Relations Methods

Posted on May 24, 2008
Leave a Comment

The film industry is a greatly romanticized and fun industry, and this can be used to an indie filmmaker’s advantage when marketing their films. By working with schools, groups like the Purple Hat Society and more filmmakers can reach people directly and through the news. This method is best used in smaller towns of 50,000 to 300,000 people. Towns which are large enough to provide an audience but small enough so that the people living in them will not have many opportunities to interact with independent filmmakers.

One valuable tool would be to hold workshops on filmmaking, using the digital cameras people already have the filmmakers to teach them the basics of script writing, cinematography, editing, and more. Like small watercolor classes the point is not always to make the people of the community into greats, but rather to help them build new talents that could be fun and interesting.

By holding such workshop events you would have the opportunity to not only increase those interested in watching your film when it comes to the theater by directly interacting with them, but you will also likely get mentioned in the local newspapers for free. What’s more you will have a great story to submit as part of web PR. This is important because more people are now reading stories on the internet then in newspapers. Having your stories online then will greatly increase those people who see and hear of your movie and your company beyond the town where you held the workshop.

While workshops can and will likely many independent movies a great method of marketing they need to be planned with care. Those marketing the film need to insure that the theater in the town where the workshop is being held will show the independent film before the workshop takes place, if it won’t then holding a workshop in the town will hold little value.

Further a Read more

Public Relations Strategy - What You Need To Know

Posted on May 22, 2008
Leave a Comment

Maintaining public relations and therefore having a sound public relations strategy is important for any company be it an extremely small one or a large MNC with thousands of employees. This article gives you a nine step process that will help you plan your public relations strategy perfectly and most productively. The steps are as follows:

Identify your target audience- You must realize that you will never be able to sell your product to everyone. Therefore however strong a business you have, you must still identify, select a target audience and direct your communicative messages only towards them.

Survey their present Knowledge levels- Either take a survey or use the internet to find out the present knowledge base and beliefs of your target audience. Google and online forums would be of great help to gauge their pulse.

Observe how they are reacting- Keenly observe what opinions your target audience forms using their present knowledge base. How they are thinking and reacting is therefore important.

Set specific goals for the campaign- Like with everything else in life, set achievable goals like increased web hits or changing governmental regulations etc for your public relations campaign as well.

Select your public relations strategy- Devise your strategy keeping your goals in mind and work accordingly to use the strategy to fulfil the goals.

How persuasive will the communication be- Formulate what thing or things you would like to communicate persuasively to the target audience. These should be things that they need to know and would want to know, in the process helping your business thrive and your goals fulfilled.

Tactics and tools to be used- Zero in on executable forms for your public relations strategy. Decide whether you want a blog or take out a press release or join a forum as tactics to succ Read more

— keep looking »