Head to Head: Should PR be directly tied to brand performance and sales?
In this series, Mumbrella invites the most senior PR professionals to share their opposing views on the industry’s biggest issues. This week, Red Agency’s Grant Richmond-Coggan goes head to head with WE Buchan’s general manager Gemma Hudson.
This week’s debate asks: should PR be directly tied to brand performance and sales? Red Agency’s Richmond-Coggan argues yes, stating that although measurement of PR impact is difficult, it must be able to prove its worth beyond the headlines.
On the contrary, WE Buchan’s Hudson says public relations does much more than drive sales, including issue management, crisis communication and building relationships with stakeholders.
Who do you agree with?
Should PR be directly tied to brand performance and sales?
What utter self serving crap from the second person. “.. to ignore the heart of public relations ” is not an argument. Companies are in business and unless you are a NFP, you exist to provide a product or service and deliver returns to your shareholders. Marketing and PR is not the end goal, it is a means to achieve the outcome desired which is growing brand market share and sales and profits. I’m surprised heads of PR agencies still haven’t grasped this.
I get that PR involves other things like crisis management etc but taking those out, the day to day PR bread and butter campaigns are all designed to drive interest , awareness and ultimately increased take up / sales of brands. Most work done is on brand campaigns.
Is the 2nd person seriously walking into client CMO offices saying “let me spend a few hundred thousand of dollars on PR for your brand and it won’t have any impact on your sales but you should do it anyway”??
You lost me at ‘second person’. Seriously? The woman has a name!!! Gemma Hudson. Jesus…
Well said Gemma. Today, brands demand sales from PR and too many are using it as their only or largest ‘sales’ channel. PR can support sales but its ROI shouldn’t be evaluated completely on sales. How are sales going to go if a brand does not have a good reputation, or much awareness?
Reputation and awareness have to monetize, and they do — you just made the case yourself! Awareness is highly correlated to deal generation. Reputation is highly correlated to deal size and how long it takes most deals to close. Reputation and awareness and other similar factors are not ends unto themselves — they exist for a higher business purpose, and that is sales impact and financial return.
Just wondering if you read her entire article or just picked the parts you disliked?
Encouraging brands to position PR (and PR campaigns) to aspire to MORE than just sales, could achieve multiple outcomes. From her article I think her sales pitch would be “let me spend a few hundred thousand dollars on PR for your brand and not only will it generate awareness/sales, but have a resounding impact on the perception of your brand as MORE than you realised it could be”.
#cheaptakedown.
Personally I think Richard is correct and I align myself with his thinking. We need to justify genuine performance and demonstrate impact on sales, as this how our industry resonates with CMO’s.
But Gemma presents an interesting idea. In ignoring the chance for brands, and PR professionals, to be more and continue to evolve with society, we allow brands to stagnate and suffer. Therefore, its only our industry that will suffer.
So use the numbers to resonate and sell your services to the CMO’s, but bring ideas that do more for the brand then they realised was possible.
Great thoughts from both, look forward to more from both
Let’s get one thing straight — PR and marketing are not creative altruisms but necessary business activities. They are funded by the business because they help the business sell more product to more people, more profitably and faster, than they would be able to without marketing and PR. For example, PR’s ability to influence and motivate a company’s audience translates to highly correlated impact on profitability and cash flow from revenue because PR boosts customer confidence and trust, which make customer buy more and buy faster than they otherwise might. This same dynamic is evident in not-for-profit, where the goal is to encourage an audience to “buy in, buy in more deeply, and buy in faster” to the organization’s mission.
I know it’s strong language to say this, but the idea that PR and marketing exist to produce some sort of ethereal result is intellectually and ethically bankrupt. If that’s true, then no business should spend another dollar or pound or euro on these professions because the opportunity cost is unsupportable. Thankfully, that’s not the case — PR and marketing drive provably huge incremental business value and are well worth the expense. A Fortune 500 CEO recently published this article about marketing and PR transformation — it is well worth the time to read. https://www.holmesreport.com/latest/article/why-the-'proof-gap'-is-an-existential-threat-to-cmos-ccos
Found it difficult to read this article simply because I don’t buy into the question. What exactly is ‘brand performance’? Could be interpreted in any manner of ways.