As a homegrown Saudi PR and marketing communications agency, W7Worldwide recognised that the public relations industry in the country and wider MENA region needs to engage in public relations about its own profession. Not many can explain what people in public relations actually do. As active participants in the profession, we decided that we want to educate the market to help bring about a shift in perception of our industry in the region and globally.
Public relations people constantly need to explain that we don’t do advertising, we don’t pay journalists to write stories for our clients, and PR does not stand for ‘promotion’. Our agency as a team has produced a number of campaigns to dispel the most common myths about PR with informative blog articles and explainer videos.
In a nutshell, yes, we promote our clients, but unlike advertisers we persuade external or internal audiences via unpaid or earned methods. Whether it’s traditional media, social media or speaking engagements, industry awards, or other channels, we communicate with relevant and well researched target audiences through trusted, not paid, media coverage.
PR is all about persuasion and convincing the target audience to promote a concept, purchase a product, support a good cause or recognise accomplishments and industry leadership. Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organisations and their publics. The PR practitioner will analyse the organisation, identify the positive messages, build a key message plan, and then translate those messages into stories around the business. When there is bad news, they will produce an effective, robust response and mitigate potential reputational damage.
Public relations vs advertising
Advertising is paid media; public relations is earned media. As Helen Woodward, the first female advertising executive in the US, famously said as early as 1938: “Advertising is what you pay for, publicity is what you pray for.”
This means PR practitioners convince journalists or editors to write a positive story about a client, brand, or issue. It appears in the editorial section of a magazine, newspaper, TV, or website, rather than the paid media sections where advertising messages appear. Therefore, the story has more credibility because it was independently verified by a trusted third party. Advertising is always a company paying to endorse itself, and consequently has less credibility than PR.
Creating media coverage
It is important to understand how the media operates and how to gain their attention with an original news story or on the back of the external news agenda. There are two forms of PR: proactive and reactive
Proactive PR, creating your own news story, is the most common form of public relations. It involves storytelling and most of the time comes in the form of press releases to announce something new, such as a new product or service, a new appointment, a new market, a new business plan, merger, annual report, award win, or something of this nature. Other methods of making news include by-lined articles written for an industry publication, opinion-editorials, social media (blog posts, Tweets, photos, videos, etc.), content marketing and more.
The other method of generating media coverage is to pick up on a story in the news and respond. This form of reactive PR is an effective tool to establish authority and an industry voice. The PR practitioner monitors the external news agenda to identify opportunities, such as a significant move in the stock market, the introduction of new laws or policies, the economic effects of an event like the current pandemic, industry sector issues, etc. For breaking news, journalists often need an expert to comment as the event occurs, via a phone interview, video-conference, live video interview or e-mail. Journalists usually contact their established list of experts who they know and trust. A good PR professional will know when and how to reach out to offer meaningful expert insight that will gain their clients valuable media attention. They will also understand how to insert a business into a trend, usually leading to feature stories about the client.
Effective media relations is the most important tool in the PR practitioner’s arsenal, as this supports both proactive and reactive PR efforts. Powerful media relationships mean a news announcement is more likely to gain coverage and the journalist will come to the client for comment on external events.
Strategic communications is gaining ground and importance among organisations and companies in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East to engage with today’s digitally empowered stakeholders. As an independent, multi-award-winning local agency, W7Worldwide proactively engages in elevating the PR and communications profession in the kingdom, the GCC and MENA region and internationally. We are the first agency to have created an educational PR campaign in both Arabic and English to build a better understanding of our profession and dispel the most common myths, and you can find more on our website at w7worldwide.com.
