The Power of the Press Office

Is a press office still needed, is it not all about the brand? Well, yes it is all about the brand…. the brand sells your products but an effective press office is the gateway for consumers to access your brand, product and service. 

Pre-pandemic, trust in news media was at an all-time low - a result of fake news, misinformation, disinformation, political bias, clickbait and sometimes just badly researched journalism. The impact of Covid-19 hitting saw people turning to traditional news sources as they looked for ‘the facts’ and sought help in understanding complex issues. (Digital News Report 2020, The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, 2020). 

The supports The Cision Clear Comms Report, December 2020, which looked at the biggest influencers impacting consumer behavior: mainstream journalists ranked higher than every-day consumer reviews, influencers and employees.  

The halo effect of this is that people are turning to ‘traditional’ news sources for all of their information needs, which is forcing publishers to adapt their editorial to reinstall consumer trust.

According to Nielson, 33.6% of consumers report checking reviews of businesses and services more frequently than they did before lockdown. This means your product, brand or service has to written about in the right way by the news sources to get cut-through. 

Strong media relationships are now even more critical. The focus on long lasting relationships enables us to be trusted and understand the context in which journalists are working (before we’ve even started about the practicalities of lockdown) and know what they need to write authentically and informatively about a given subject.

In the last 10 months, media relations has come under the spotlight and the comms teams doing well are those that already had fantastic media contacts, because journalists are at home and generally responding to who they know. The opportunities to develop new relationships with journalists in the current climate are few and far between.

Not only that, if you want to cut through the noise, the press office content being produced really needs to nail the message and be more relevant than it has ever been. It has to be completely targeted so it is as engaging as possible, to deliver longer dwell times and make an impact. 

So how should a powerful press office work in these current times? It needs to: 

1. Clearly showcase your products and services - providing media and influencers the opportunity to see it for what it really is – this will help to convey objectivity, leading to a better sense of trustworthiness
2. Align with your brand purpose and vision and this should be pushed throughout all messaging
3. Be proactive with a clear content plan to manage news flow, while also being agile and flexible to respond to what is happening in the media
4. Be creative – how can relevant news be brought to life?
5. Work alongside the media agenda, adapting and revising
6. Use real time monitoring to understand media and customer sentiment, to align the tone
7. Set clear KPIs, reviewed against the objectives on a quarterly basis
8. Be organised and structured in processes but it shouldn't follow a rigid approach with the media

We can see the landscape has changed dramatically, and a high performing press office will drive brand awareness, build trust, showcase brand purpose and sell product. The press office is now even more important to continue the dialogue within the media. At Kazoo, we’ve seen clients’ share price rise by 18%, brand awareness double, sales increase by 200% - all through high performing press offices. 

If you would like to see how a powerful press office can drive real business change, please do get in touch jess@kazoo.co.uk.