Sustainable Public Relations: What is an Always-On Strategy and Why it Delivers for Brands
By David Barkoe and Mariela Azcuy
Refreshed August 2023
The word "sustainable" or "sustainability" means a lot of things to a lot of different people. Most notably, people use the term in relation to our environment and keeping it healthy.
At Carve, we use the word “sustainable” daily not because we focus on "green" clients but because we believe in keeping up a healthy amount of media coverage in the absence of news.
Typically, PR strategies focus on product launches or other company news or events. These announcements are essential to any PR program.
However, a launch or an announcement is a moment in time, a singular point on a calendar or roadmap that lends itself well to an immediate increase in awareness, traffic, sales, leads, followers, or whatever the objective is. These peaks are great and get everyone high-fiving – especially the PR team – but then what?
Sustainable PR is an always-on strategy that focuses on the times between the "tentpoles" – the announcements, the events, the activations, the product launches.
Focusing only on the tentpoles leaves a huge hole in any PR strategy. It results in fits and starts of awareness. PR cannot be shut off like a light switch and turned back on. Awareness is earned over time and must be nurtured.
It also leaves brands wondering what the PR firm is doing, what they're paying for, and how the firm will meet their objectives.
Our prospects often tell us: "our firm wasn't being proactive" or "our firm was just waiting around for us to tell them what to do." Companies feel this way because most PR firms do not practice a sustainable PR model.
And the reality is many companies – especially startup and growth-stage companies – don't have a lot of news. They don't have new clients or hire announcements every week or month.
Thus, the agency has to get clued in, be proactive, and creative.
So, what are the key elements of a sustainable PR model? Let’s start with a few.
Getting the Brand Narrative Right
Before a firm can be effective in a sustainable way, they need to understand the brand narrative. And, yes, a lot of this involves reading brand materials and getting smart on the industry at large. But the best of it is done collaboratively at the beginning of a client/agency partnership, or when something significant has changed at the brand that requires a new narrative.
For example, one of our first activities with a new client is hosting a messaging session with them to ensure that everyone internally and externally is aligned on the brand’s unique value proposition. The end result is a messaging matrix that represents the baseline for our media relations and an elevator pitch to share across their organization.
Moving Beyond the Brand to Industry Topics
Part two of getting started with a new client’s Sustainable PR strategy is an Executive Interview meant to extract expertise and learnings from a brand spokesperson.
While the Messaging Matrix focuses on the who, what, how, and why of the product or service the agency is charged with promoting, the Executive Interview zooms out and touches on the hot-button issues in the industry in which the brand and their customers sit.
We come in with a reporter’s mindset asking questions that will help attach their expertise to the news of the day and answer their customers' needs in salient ways. We walk away with a core set of anchor topics, subtopics, and a content mission statement that help us move quickly when news breaks. The interview also allows us to pitch relevant bylines to trade publications and activate always-on, owned content strategies.
Jumping on News
When the two elements above are nailed upfront, newsjacking becomes turnkey. If news breaks, we usually have enough to draft a pitch or a quote based on what we’ve already learned from working with the client. Newsjacking is how we got our:
Streaming media platform client quoted in a Forbes piece about ESPN potentially going DTC and what that would mean for cable companies.
Air conditioning client on national Fox News about how to properly clean an air filter tied to the wildfires.
Supply chain client on CNBC addressing the I-95 collapse in Philadelphia
The key is making discovery ongoing. You can’t stop with just one executive interview and think that’ll be enough; Change is constant. Also, the agency should have a system for scanning headlines for opportunities and the brand should move quickly to accommodate requests for more information and interviews.
Creating the News
It can sometimes be a barren road ahead when you look at a brand’s three-to-six-month marketing and product roadmap. This is usually when the fun begins. A good PR agency should be able to create news in the absence of it.
They can:
Take advantage of seasonality. Maybe a consumer survey tied to August’s National Make-A-Will Month or announcing a partnership with a female founder organization tied to November’s National Entrepreneurship month?
Add media relations “wheels” to an existing initiative. Customer-focused marketing programs usually have the origins of an idea that can get media coverage. Sometimes it stops there; other times all an idea needs is some PR minds behind it to make it reporter-friendly. Culture and CSR-related internal initiatives are also great avenues to mine for external stories to tell. For example, we’ve secured coverage tied to a client’s LGBTQ+ networking event at CES last year.
Create the “moment.” An experienced team knows how to seize an opportunity. For us, it’s been activations like a roving Michael Jordan memorabilia store tied to new, authenticated and signed MJ products from our client Upper Deck. Or a MiamiTech event and corresponding comic book in collaboration with our client Florida Funders.
Pro tip: Before you begin brainstorming big PR ideas, have a list of criteria ideas must meet in order to be considered. This keeps you honest as you evaluate your ideas. Make one of them: “Can we get media coverage?” You’re going to want to be able to clearly articulate why your idea is valuable for your brand – and worth the time and money that will go into it.
Data-Driven Storytelling
Data is a powerful storytelling tool. Look within and outside of your brand to catch a reporter’s attention.
Proprietary data. Mine your day-to-day client conversations and the usage of your product. If you’re a CMS, and you notice that clients spend 80% of their time using one new feature, share that story and your thinking behind what you’re seeing. In this case, you essentially become a trendspotter for a journalist.
You could also commission a study to help create some media noise. During the height of COVID, Carve worked with one of our educational toy clients to survey parents on how they were integrating play into learning and what role toys played in at-home learning. Results from the survey along with the analysis of the data was featured on Moms.com, and Thrive Global among other outlets.
Mining your data helps you — and your clients, potentially – get smarter about the ways you do business.
External data. Take advantage of the wealth of publicly available data. Find the nuggets that will catch a reporter’s attention and help make a case for the solution you offer. However, be careful with credibility. Don’t just find a stat and run with it.
I recommend finding the original source and making sure that it’s coming from a credible organization and it was well-run research. Also, double-check that it’s not from a competitor (it can get sneaky out there). Finding the right sources is probably a whole blog in itself, and AI is making us smarter on that every day.
The results of a sustainable PR model are pretty clear for brands. Awareness doesn't just increase; it's sustained over time. Brands also see more traffic to their website, more engagement within social communities, a greater share of voice, more authority within their industry, and more media coverage.
We’ve seen the results firsthand. Our emerging smart lock client is now one of the leading companies in the industry, securing retail distribution deals with the two largest hardware retailers. Sustainable PR tactics were the leading driver of awareness and traffic. For an enterprise/B2B brand, sustainable PR – including an owned content strategy – also gives sales and marketing teams more materials to support their efforts.
Most clients won’t have an endless amount of news to fuel ongoing PR. That shouldn’t matter. Use narrative building, industry POVs, trend-riding, and data-driven storytelling to stay in the news.
