Reputation, relationships, and the responsibility of PR.

Reputation and relationships are at the heart of PR, and without them there isn’t much substance to what is being said. But responsibility is another pillar that often gets overlooked, and that needs to change. Responsible PR is about knowing what is good for the brand is not always best for the audience, and that a true story is always better than one that has been stretched. 

The responsibility of PR 

There’s something about the chase that feels so satisfying: Finding a fit, perfecting the pitch, and securing the coverage, they’re all parts of the process that lead us closer to the goal, and there’s nothing quite like seeing a feature live or printed that you secured. 

In the midst of this, it’s easy to forget that PR comes with a moral obligation, a responsibility to tell the truth (the whole truth, and nothing but the truth) with the messaging, positioning, and storytelling around a product or offering. Pitching can sometimes mean squeezing into a box that isn’t the right shape for the brand and twisting to suit guidelines and angles with the promise of a feature. PR doesn’t have to be this way, and if you pass up one opportunity because it’s stretching too much, another one will come along.

There’s also a duty of care to current customers, and the readers of the publication, to make sure that the story is rooted in truth and fact, free of any unsubstantiated claims, ambiguous origins, and content that could confuse, mislead, or mis-sell.

The key is to keep both feet firmly planted on the ground, and to remember the responsibility that comes with every feature, byline, and opportunity. 

The risk of romanticising 

Where do we draw the line between fact and fancy? In an age of influencers and unboxing, likes and follower counts, it’s easy for things to be romanticised or for the truth to get stretched. While it might look good on the page or sound slick in an article, there is such a risk to blurring the lines where fiction and fact meet. 

Building trust is a huge part of PR; both with the journalist and the audience. Your product or offering has to live up to the hype, else it’s just words on a page or screen that will do more harm than good.

AI is a tool that we shout about a lot, it can be life-changing, time-saving, and a real asset to the creative process. But, when it is used without an ethical code or a moral standpoint, it can be difficult to see what is real and what is completely fabricated. Shouldn’t we, as consumers, customers, and humans, be entitled to know whether what we’re looking at is real or fake?

Tales like the Wonka Experience - which made headlines this month for its outrageously different experience in contrast to its alluring AI-generated online presence, and Fyre Festival - which used the draw of social media and the power of PR to sell an A-Lister festival that didn’t really exist as it was told it would, show us that it’s easy to deceive and it’s easy to win coverage - but at what cost? 

The Wonka Experience is a recent example of how easy it is to bend and stretch the truth, and the impact that has not just on a brand’s reputation but on consumer’s lives, too. Money lost, time wasted, and a bitter taste for something that should have been more than sweet enough.

Fyre Festival had notes similar to the WeWork culture and scandal, where big promises and under-delivering offerings create a huge jump between what is expected and what is received, and just how easy it is to get it so horribly wrong. 

Both of these cases are tales of caution, of what goes wrong when it goes really wrong. But, neither of these brands set out to tear them down to the ground - they set out to be seen.

The gap between reality and expectation shouldn’t be this great, and what is the point of PR if it is not to promote something that can genuinely be purchased or experienced? Not only this, but once the damage is done, it is so difficult to rebuild that trust and reputation. Hard work and graft that has gone into making a brand known, featured, chosen, and shared, is destroyed by campaigns that leave people deflated, disappointed, and disillusioned. 

You can’t PR a bad product or offering, that’s fact. Whether they get found out before or after the feature is a different matter, but pushing a product or offering that isn’t up to scratch is a one way ticket to destroying the thing that has been built - whether intentional or not. 

The role of ethical PR 

Ethical PR is a sense check. It’s knowing that what you’re promoting is at the top of its game and that it is worth being featured and talked about. Confidence in the product or offering is one thing, but you also need to be confident in the story that is being told around it. The narrative around it is a huge part of the PR puzzle, and romanticising or sensationalising the story will pull you back not push you forward.

It is about honesty, transparency, and knowing the strengths of the product or offering, as well as knowing which areas aren’t the strongest for the brand. 

The roots of PR are in recommendations. Trusted publications giving advice and guidance on what they love, use, and would recommend. It’s word of mouth on a larger scale, and that is what makes it so powerful. Deciding what the brand wants to be known for is a core part of this, and that will inform the positioning of your PR pitches and the stories that the brand will tell.

We’re the biggest advocates for PR, but it has to be done with consideration and good-natured creativity; Without compromise or cutting corners, and standing in the corner or a product or offering that you know is worth the airtime. Whether your brand is new to the PR-game or has been around the block, hopefully this will serve as a timely reminder to check in on the reputation that your brand is cultivating through PR.