Like healthy human relationships, brands’ relationships with their key audiences require meaningful engagement and connection – in good times and challenging times.
That leads us to the current state of the industry, which may sound like a therapy session:
- the serious stuff’s getting even more serious (are we gonna survive this?),
- the sexy stuff’s getting sexier (can we compete with that?), and
- expert counsel is essential to manage both brand fans and fires, while navigating the evolving, interconnected media landscape.
Corporate communications (responsible for reputation and issues management) and brand PR (responsible for creating news) require different expertise, but each impacts the other and an overall brand. Future success depends on respecting and connecting both disciplines now.
The Serious Stuff: Corporate Communications
Maintaining a positive corporate reputation has become challenging. We’re in a digital world where the rise and fall of a brand can happen in hours with the right (or wrong) influencer or depending on the bots in play. According to the 2024 Axios Harris Poll 100 Corporate Reputation survey:
- the average corporate reputation score was at its lowest since the pandemic, and
- nearly two-thirds of companies saw their reputation scores decline.
In the spirit of stories over stats, here are some of 2024’s most memorable issues:
- Tractor Supply Company, John Deere and Harley Davidson: activist Robby Starbuck proved that enough influence and niche pressure in the evolved social sphere can challenge a brand into shifting its corporate practices.
- Boeing: from operational blunders and safety concerns to Starliner stalls and a labor strike, it’s been a hell of a reputational ride.
- Kate Middleton: the Royal Family’s silence (and resulting speculation) after a mysterious surgery, a photoshopped picture, and an eventual cancer confession underscored the importance of transparency and consistency in communications.
Whether it’s an issue with labor, product quality or political brandjacking, brands need agile issues response capabilities, coupled with a deep understanding of the dynamic digital landscape.
For Norfolk Southern’s 2023 train derailment in East Palestine, our social listening, analytics and issues teams collaborated and identified bot traffic driving large amounts of misinformation. To reestablish reality then, and leading up to the one-year anniversary, our multichannel approach of leveraging paid, earned, shared, and owned (PESO) channels proved critical to making it right. Learn more about the role bots can play in public perception in this Axios story.
5 Ways to Thrive in Corporate Communications
- Tell the truth. Always – especially when it’s hard. As a person and as a brand.
- Anticipate what’s on the radar. Identify where your brand is vulnerable and how to build resiliency.
- Identify your crisis go-to. Have issues experts you trust ready to activate.
- Connect issues management and digital analytics workstreams. Seamless integration is key.
- Activate PESO. Online Reputation Management (ORM) and paid media are critical along with earned and social strategies to repair and restore brand reputation.
The Sexy Stuff: Brand PR
Brand eye candy is delicious, and it won’t impact your New Year’s target weight. When you pair consumers’ cravings for connection and purpose with brands’ abilities to leverage new tech and AI-powered personalization, real magic can be made.
Brands often look to place their things in the news. Consumers notice brands that make newsworthy things. This is the more difficult but authentic way to earn attention at scale without hard news. Here’s a sampling of award-winning, “newsworthy things” brands made or did in the last year or so:
- Dramamine’s The Last Barf Bag – Based on the finding that Dramamine and the barf bag were invented in the same year, the brand released an award-winning documentary for its 75th anniversary on YouTube honoring the bag its product claimed to make irrelevant. In addition to the film idea, PROI partner agency 360PR+ extended the campaign with:
- a New York City pop-up exhibit,
- a custom jacket designed from old barf bags, and
- an online store with upcycled barf bags repurposed as vases and popcorn bags.
- Heinz’ Battle Against “Ketchup Fraud” – Inspired by a SnapChat video showing an employee refilling a Heinz ketchup bottle with another generic brand, Heinz confirmed through social listening this was a common trend among restaurants. The brand launched an intervention campaign to support – vs. shame – restaurants committing “ketchup fraud.” In Turkey, the brand even made bottles with a “Label of Truth” (including the exact Pantone color of Heinz ketchup) so consumers could fight fraud directly using the bottle label or a new Instagram filter.
- Chick-fil-A’s “Extra Helpings” Cookbook – Built on the insight that food recovery programs need mass consumer participation to make a dent in food insecurity, Chick-fil-A launched its first digital cookbook to raise awareness of the issue and reduce food waste. The cookbook features recipes with Chick-fil-A items often donated through its Shared Table program, along with impact stories from local nonprofit partners. Headlines confirmed the hook, generating coverage at levels of new menu items and setting a record for CSR coverage.
5 Ways to Thrive in Brand PR
- Find the insight. “Enviable campaigns don’t magically appear; they’re born out of insightful observations of culture and humanity,” says Corey Green, JS Brand Strategy lead and former TRG strategist. “Find thinkers obsessed with what could be and gifted at knowing which threads to explore in a sea of loose ends.”
- Earn attention with newsworthy things. Good creative is what JS managing partner and former producer Trudy Kremer calls, “Bold. Brainy. Badass.” You know it when you feel it, when it connects (back to insights). The best creative now earns attention and drives business results.
- Use AI and tech to push what’s possible. “Bold ideas that could make headlines once felt weighed down by budget and time,” says Alex Loomis, JS Creative lead and head of the agency’s AI Council. “The new constraint is the audacity of your imagination.”
- Channels have converged. Have your teams? Multi-channel activation is table-stakes for engagement. JS Paid Media lead Rachel Weber says today’s experts waste nothing – not time nor killer content. “If we can earn it, we can amplify it. If it’s worth pitching, it’s worth promoting on other channels,” says Weber. “Brands that efficiently expand reach while strategically surrounding their audience are winning the PESO PR game,” says JS Public Relations lead Monica Corbett, reflecting on campaigns she recently judged for the 2024 PRWeek awards.
- Short-form video content is the new black. Creative-as-hell, authentic, relatable and co-created content won the day in 2024 and will again in 2025. Better, faster, cheaper at scale; yet still bold, brainy and badass. We like creative constraints, right? Buckle up.
Content for the Fans & the Fires: The Media Landscape is Not the Same
YouTube, TikTok and certain podcasts have the critical audiences and reach brands want, but many still obsess over prestige placements in legacy outlets or approach earned media in a silo. There’s an unwritten “evolve or die” mandate, and slow adoption is increasingly risky. Consider the facts:
- More media outlets are putting greater resources into video, newsletters and audio than written articles according to a Reuter’s 2024 survey.
- More people get their news from social media than ever before. About a third of U.S. adults turn to Facebook and YouTube according to the Pew Research Center’s September 2024 report.
- Niche audience reach is the win. The Poynter Institute’s summer 2024 report suggests, “It’s more effective to serve several smaller loyal audiences than trying to win over a general public…”
- Brands are content creators. Chick-fil-A’s new app, Play, offers family-friendly games, activities and entertainment, laying the groundwork for what Fast Company says could become “a family-focused entertainment empire” rivaling Hallmark, Apple or Disney.
- Edutainment is in demand. 66% of social users – including those on LinkedIn – claim edutainment is the most engaging brand content (even more than memes) according to Sprout Social’s 2024 Social Media Content Strategy Report.
Shout-out to California Pizza Kitchen (CPK) who connected the dots and leveraged the landscape to turn a potential fire into an opportunity to engage fans.
4 Ways to Thrive in Today’s Media Landscape
- Get a free media landscape shift wakeup call with Ted Metzger, former CNN producer and JS Media Relations practice lead. It’s education and inspiration in one.
- Meet your critical audiences where they are – in the right channels with the right content. Be willing to diversify your strategy to explore channels and avoid oversaturation.
- Position your execs and SMEs as thought leaders on LinkedIn. Media increasingly source experts from LinkedIn. If they’re worth a pitch, they’re worth a profile.
- Amplify your coverage. Max out visibility of your earned coverage with paid amplification.
4 Overall Tips to Thrive in ‘25
In an increasingly complex, impatient world with content created at the speed of AI and the desire to connect stronger than ever, brands should:
- Anticipate what’s on the radar and how to manage corporate reputation across channels.
- Creatively connect – Engage those who matter most with key insights, bold creative, and deep expertise across channels.
- Learn the landscape – The media landscape has forever changed. Start activating PESO based on that reality. Brands incapable of integration could soon face extinction.
- Adapt to relate – The industry will continue to evolve. Adapting is relating, and it should be for that purpose: to maintain our humanity and the relationship-building core to our industry.
Have big plans for your brand? We’d love to connect and help you thrive in ’25.
