Beyond PR: How modern agencies drive success for brands

Klara Banaszewska, general manager of Grayling Poland, answers questions about the social shifts brought on by technology, and how businesses must respond in their dialogue with clients and other stakeholders.

How has communication changed over the past ten years and how does it affect PR agencies and their cooperation with clients?

The world of PR agencies has changed significantly in recent years, much like the world itself. Technological advances, new digital channels, social media, and the growing influence of influencers have impacted us as audiences. Communication has become faster; the abundance of content has shortened our attention spans.

Digital channels offer new communication opportunities and more precise ways to reach audiences. They also allow us to continuously analyse behaviours and needs of target groups, observe their engagement, and reach them more effectively than ever before. Thanks to data, we can derive insights more easily, build more accurate strategies, and optimise them.

The digitisation of media has also brought a shift towards two-way communication. Digital technologies and the swift movement of information enable audiences to express their opinions. Information spreads quickly, requiring immediate response and feedback.

What does this mean for companies and brands?

The time to react and correct mistakes before they turn into crises is now much shorter. Agencies must manage reputations in real-time, leaving less room for reflection and decision-making.

There is also an ongoing battle between brands, companies and institutions for our attention, which has become the most valuable currency. How do you win this battle? By doing something unusual. Audiences pay attention to things that break the mould and evoke emotions. Our brains, especially the amygdala, respond to emotional associations, making us remember what moves us.

People are overloaded with information – they’ve seen everything. That’s why PR agencies invest in creativity. Creative specialists in this sector have emerged relatively recently, and their ingenuity is now at a higher level than before. To gain free media exposure, you need to stand out, so without out-of-the box thinking, there is no effective communication today. Importantly, creativity is no longer just the domain of consumer PR; it’s also valuable in communication with political stakeholders and business audiences.

Creative campaigns were typically created by advertising agencies, while PR focused on media relations. Has this changed?

The boundaries between disciplines in communication have long since blurred – advertising agencies engage in PR activities, and PR agencies create ads and digital campaigns. Today, you have to think interdisciplinarily and use multiple tools, including text, image and sound. PR agencies are developing their creative competencies, but advertising agencies also create excellent campaigns, achieving media results and significant social media responses without additional costs.

Communication is an interconnected system, which is why we have been advocating for a holistic approach for years – without dividing marketing, PR, and social media within companies. When we start working with a client, we identify their most important issues and aim to solve them with the best possible tools, often going beyond the realm of traditional PR. Unfortunately, some clients still mainly expect media coverage, such as clippings in prestigious titles, because that’s how they are evaluated in their companies. There are times when we present innovative ideas, only to hear that they are great but fall into the marketing department’s scope, so we can’t implement them, even when they address the problem we were tasked to resolve.

However, that doesn’t stop us from taking a business-minded and broad view, aiming to reach brand goals regardless of the tools used, because PR and media relations are not always the only or best solutions for all challenges.

How else has the scope of PR professionals’ activities changed?

PR is consulting and business advisory, so new areas constantly emerge, such as ESG, AI, or change management in organisations. Sometimes there’s a greater focus on internal communication, like during the pandemic, and other times on social responsibility, such as during the outbreak of the war in Ukraine.

Increasingly, public relations and public affairs functions are combined into ‘corporate affairs.’ When dealing with the public sector, PR approaches and multi-channel activities are employed, because both public relations and public affairs involve building reputation and credibility.

There is also a growing demand for the development of interdisciplinary skills in PR agencies. This has always been a strength of PR professionals, as we have to think multi-channel, not limiting ourselves to one tool. We first consider the client’s business goal, then the audience, and only then do we plan the content and choose the channels. And there are more and more channels available: in addition to editorial collaboration, there are podcasts, social media, influencers, PR stunts, events, and many others. Creativity is key in all of this, as I mentioned before.

The media market is also changing. How does this affect the communication of companies and brands?

The media market is changing very dynamically. Recently, there has been a lot of talk about group layoffs in several media groups, which means many newsrooms are shrinking. On the other hand, the number of people engaging in citizen journalism is growing, and journalists themselves often become influencers.

When planning communication, we also need to keep in mind that in online media, journalists are paid based on the number of views their articles receive. As a result, they are keen to attract attention and will not just publish anything we send them.

News aggregators like Google News are also becoming increasingly important. Moreover, more people consume content mainly through social media and podcasts, rather than directly from news websites. Algorithms that drive hyper-personalised content aggregation require a rethink of strategies for breaking through with messages to different information bubbles. For example, regarding vaccines: how do you reach young people who are mainly interested in entertainment or sports content, not health? They will simply not see health topics in their information feeds. It’s a challenge because you need to be able to create content that shows up in their stream and attracts their attention.

The environment in which brands operate and communicate is changing dynamically, as we can see. What, then, remains unchanged?

Our approach to tasks remains unchanged: we listen to the client to advise and propose the best solutions. What also doesn’t change is the fact that communication is primarily about building relationships between people. Although AI helps us in our work, ChatGPT will not meet a journalist for coffee or build a rapport with a politician or stakeholder. At Grayling, we use the time saved thanks to AI to build these kinds of relationships.

The way we care for the client’s reputation also remains unchanged. We focus on long-term credibility and image-building for the company, not quick sales goals. Sometimes a client chooses a cheaper, small boutique agency to handle social media, but we are responsible for strategic messaging, working closely with the management. Our support is also essential during reputation crises, for example.

Grayling’s goal is to protect the image and build the reputation of brands. While we can support quick sales actions with PR tools, we always look at communication more broadly and long-term.