Crystal PR Team Reflects on World PR Day 2022

With World PR Day taking place this weekend (16th July), the team at Crystal PR reflect on how to get the most out of your PR agency, how to embark on a career in PR and why PR matters…

Managing Director Mike Sunier suggests his ‘top tips’ for working with a PR agency…

Selection

“Choose an agency that works closely with your target market and if it’s a specialist area make sure they know the landscape, including the specialist media.”

Working together

“Keep the agency informed. Even if you don’t want them to act immediately on a matter, it helps for the agency team to know the firm’s thinking or progress on key developments which enable them to better advise on potential communication issues.”

Expertise

“Tap into the agency’s knowledge. You may be surprised how much experienced people at an agency know not only about the media landscape but about the issues that affect the industry in which you work. Make use of that expertise.”

Account Executive Katie Bastiman looks at why a career move into PR might be an attractive prospect…

Using Creative Skills

“If you like to write, this could be a good route for you. A career in PR can allow you opportunities to write a wide range of documents, including press releases, blogs, articles and more. Depending on whether you work in-house or in an agency like Crystal, you may work on a number of different clients – if so, you can find yourself writing about a number of different topics too, which keeps things varied.”

Building Relationships

“Whether you’re catching up with a client, liaising with a journalist, or pitching an article to an editor, it’s really important to build relationships with your contacts. If you consider yourself a ‘people person’ and enjoy working alongside others, you may enjoy this element of a PR role.”

Learning along the way.

“There are plenty of opportunities for learning, development and progression at all stages of a PR career. With plenty of courses available through organisations like the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, there are always new skills to be learned and new avenues to pursue to strengthen your work and help you to progress your career.”

Director Adam Riddell makes some suggestions as to why it’s important firms invest in their public relations function…

Reputation and corporate value.

“You’d be hard pushed to find anyone who says reputation isn’t important to their business – and research indicates that up to 75% of corporate value can be attributed to intangible assets, including reputation. Public relations is the function that can enhance and sustain reputation, making a strong case for investing in it sufficiently. Who owns reputational responsibility in your organization?”

Internal and external

“Increasingly employees are seen as just as important a stakeholder group for an organization as external stakeholders, such as politicians, regulators, customers and media. Internal comms and external comms are not separate disciplines; employees can be amazing advocates and support employer brand; or they can equally reflect poor organizational culture. Investing in public relations to help span that divide can maximise employee engagement and deliver significant reputational benefits.

Strategic value

“Public relations is still too often seen as a proxy for comms or media relations. But public relations offers enormous strategic value, if an organization is prepared to invest in it, that can support organizational goals from all corners, whether HR, product development, legal, customer service, business development and marketing.”

World PR Day is held every year on 16th July to recognise and celebrate public relations and communications, and build a unified global agenda towards making the world understand and use PR better. More can be found here.

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