ByDesign Communications recently turned six, and it got me thinking. What’s changed since we launched? What works, and what doesn’t? How should we evolve to keep up?
To understand just how far we’ve come, we must look at the journey. Back in September 2016, Vanessa Baard (the best PR person in the country, in my humble opinion) and I launched ByDesign to help big companies tell their stories in the media. That’s the simplest and most accurate telling of our big goal. And it worked. We launched, we grew, we hired. Tick. We gained clients, we built our content generation capabilities. Tick. We won awards and formed great partnerships. Double tick.
Then, over time, as the world grew ever-more digital – spurred in no small measure by Covid – we built our digital capabilities to the point where we launched our bespoke digital agency, ByDesign Digital. We added Google Ads, social media, paid media, lead generation, LinkedIn training, SEO and web development to our offering. Did it work? Yes. Two years on, another tick.
At the same time, we built our strategy capabilities to incorporate all aspects of communications in the marketing mix, aligning to business needs, and looking at all audiences and all channels.
And here’s the kicker: None of this in isolation, or collectively, seems evolutionary. But it is.
What started out as doing simple PR has evolved into what I believe is a multidisciplinary approach that weaves together traditional PR with business strategy, strong content, paid ad and social strategies.
It’s an entirely new PR ecosystem – and it makes three fundamental demands:
- Align the comms strategy to the business more effectively. To do this, you need to understand the business, and the effect that external comms, internal comms, media comms, social media, paid media and lead generation have on driving the business towards its goals. More importantly, you need to understand that the real benefits that accrue when all these channels work together.
- Create content beyond the news release. The old-style press release is just the first step. That story must be amplified. Whether that’s repurposing the content into new, owned content, sharing it via social, or using it in an influencer campaign, amplification is a critical element of any modern PR strategy.
- Demonstrate your impact. Align your metrics to business imperatives. What is your client measured on, and can you show the impact you had? Did your action spark a reaction? If so, how, and how big? Going forward, do you ‘rinse and repeat’ or shake it up a bit?
As I looked back at our journey, I realised that we’ve become a central part of the communications process for many of our clients. We have an infinitely better understanding of our clients’ businesses and their success metrics, and deliver more sustained value.
Many communications leaders, both in agencies and in house, still see themselves as islands, responsible for one aspect of the value chain. They know what they’re good at, and they do a lot of it. And that’s fine. But more and more, they’re being challenged to become more central to the ecosystem. We’re seeing more communications execs sitting on boards, and having an influence on the business. And that’s perhaps the biggest change we’ve seen.
To sum up six years in 600 words, the simple PR agency that Vanessa and I launched has evolved into something much bigger. We’re no longer a stand-alone media relations agency. We’ve become an integral part of our clients’ communications strategies and functions. And, as the ecosystem matures, we’re probably going to have to align even more closely. What a time to be in PR.
