Head to Head: Should PR invest more in media amplification?
In this series, Mumbrella invites the industry’s senior PR professionals to share their opposing views on the industry’s biggest issues. This week, Hannah Heather, consumer lead at WE Buchan, goes head to head with Communications Collective’s managing director, Genevieve Brannigan, on whether PR should invest more in media amplification.
As the remit of public relations evolves, agencies and clients often debate whether or not PR agencies should invest more in media amplification and small media buying capabilities.
WE Buchan’s Hannah Heather argues that media amplification is a strong addition to PR’s toolbox and PR practitioners must adjust to make sure each piece of earned media achieves maximum impact.
Meanwhile, Genevieve Brannigan disagrees, arguing that media amplification and PR should remain separate because earned placements are more effective than payed placements anyway.
Yes argues, Hannah Heather, consumer lead at WE Buchan:
Should WE use Plista? That’s just giving money to GroupM.
“Integrating PR and advertising is therefore unnecessary.” Wow Communications Collective. There isn’t a celebrated successful brand campaign in the last 5years that didn’t have had some paid media support to get traction on content or to leverage media relationships. There’s no reason that this shouldn’t be done by the PR agency if the PR idea was baked into the creative process and that it’s being done by a modern PR team that has experts across paid, SEO and content production (like most of the best these days). If you’re focused on state-level media relations and old-school PR then you’re not seeing the bigger picture, aren’t part of the new conversation and therefore shouldn’t be making such a ridiculous statement on behalf of the whole PR industry.
Media relations manages narrative (as best as it can) where the audiences are suspected to be. Amplification extends the output of media relations to a broader audience. Targeting is where it gets interesting – placing the ‘credible’ content to actual audiences that matter.
Ruling out paid amp as part of a broader PR campaign is disingenuous and shows both a lack of experience and understanding of how to run a campaign in the 21 century. I now know what agency to NOT go to for PR