Public Relation is all-encompassing, meaning PR efforts can be integrated irrespective of individuals, businesses, events or else. However, the objective of PR efforts remains different based on requirements. A business may want to drive sales numbers through strategic PR, whereas an influencer may look to establish their identity in the media landscape. While all of these can be viable PR goals, garnering result-driven PR often depends on time and constant efforts — and cannot be achieved overnight.

Measuring ROI of PR based on the number of media stories garnered can be a bit disappointing. Also, PR is not a printing press machinery where publications like Forbes & Fortune are willing to feature PR Clients on a daily basis. It’s rather a sustained effort driven by strategic communication points that entices media to feature brands or individuals. Undertaking PR services does not guarantee a media splash or journalists leading on to covering front page chartbuster storylines, nor does a small-scale PR effort! From a professional standpoint — this is going backwards, as PR should not be perceived as a sales machinery or a tool to make you viral. Wondering why? Let’s discuss the contributing factors here.

Contrast of PR & Sales

Public Relations helps an individual or a brand with strategic communications, media & mass outreach, drive a particular narrative to enhance the brand perception. To achieve this, in short, content remains the king; meaning the quality of information and data shared by the brand or the individual and disseminated by the PR professionals plays a critical role in garnering a favourable resolution. For example, Dove’s recent PR campaign, #StopTheBeautyTest, as part of the Dove Mothermonials campaign, garnered immense popularity. This was because the campaign established a close relationship with its target audience, the majority of whom are women. The underlying message is clear in this, as the campaign celebrated the true beauty of daughters through their mothers’ perspectives, who also vowed to not let their daughters face beauty tests that damage self-esteem.

Intricate research and creativity went into this strategic PR campaign, helping PR professionals to garner optimum brand image for Dove in key regional markets and strengthening the overall perception. This has helped to drive the sales figures, but only because of the superior quality content that has been able to establish a meaningful dialogue with its consumers.

But this is not only about mind-boggling creativity that focuses on societal issues. What makes a brand’s product or service sell? A few aspects come to mind — value for money, cost-effectiveness, efficacy, requirements and ease of usage. All of these aspects are controlled by brands themselves, and if these aspects are not met, it becomes difficult to drive sales. Contrary to sales theories, agenda-setting works little in the digital world where reviews dominate customer behaviour and products or services that are deemed not useful cannot be sold through sheer PR efforts.

Remember the Amazon Fire Smartphone? Right, neither do we. This is primarily because the product failed to establish a rapport for itself for several reasons. In 2014, the smartphone market was booming with conventional manufacturers cost-effectively introducing cutting-edge new technologies. The sheer PR efforts by Amazon to enhance the sales figures did not help, as the project was soon shelved. There are numerous similar incidents, like Apple’s Project Titan (EV car), Coca-Cola's New Coke and others.

This highlights the point that PR is only as effective as the brand. Also, PR is a continuous effort, not a one-off press release or media interaction that may garner some brownie points for website SEO. If the goal is to drive sales, the brand needs to align excellence with its product or service, otherwise, all PR efforts can go for a toss instead.

Can PR make you viral?

Public Relations, at its core, is about establishing a robust and open communication channel to stakeholders, including media and consumers. It is a valuable tool to raise awareness about the favourable aspects of an individual, business or anything else. In the age of social media, becoming viral depends on several factors, with content serving as the critical enabler. Additionally, PR can establish an image of thought leadership in particular genres, however, it is a gradual process that cannot be achieved overnight. PR efforts focus on building a strong, stable and reliable brand reputation — the foundation of which remains the good work done by individuals or brands. If you are looking to garner femdom for yourself, you need to enable PR professionals by sharing the most impactful aspects of your story, which can be nurtured carefully by PR professionals to achieve an optimum media positioning, or make you ‘viral’ per se.

The keyword in this effort is long-term. PR is not done overnight, and it is not a rapid start-stop process. PR enables individuals or brands to garner a robust media placement by highlighting daily functioning efficiently. It emphasises lesser covered aspects that have the potential to become highlights through defined structures. Short-term media placement gains are neither sustainable nor reliable  On the contrary, long-term PR campaigns help brands to create a viably strong media presence. This may lead to future PR campaigns performing above expectations, and may potentially reach a wide audience and become a popular sensation.