How not to court negative publicity!

Public relations, popularly referred to as PR is a key aspect of marketing; and it is integral to how the target audience and stakeholders perceive a brand. Perception may seem to be reality if the right things are not established early enough. In brand building, if you don’t make the effort to tell your story, someone else will tell it for you and you may not have a chance to recover from it. A recent occurrence highlights a typical scenario how an otherwise simple situation ended up being badly managed by the those who should have known better.

In brand management, it is imperative to ensure that nothing is left to chance as something you felt was inconsequential may turn out to be disastrous to the brand. I will give an example to buttress this point. A brand recently changed the label of its packaging, which on its own is a good way to refresh the look and feel of the brand. What this brand failed to do however is to ensure that adequate word is placed in the relevant media about this change and how this may or may not impact their consumers. The label change didn’t go unnoticed as expected; but rather than the expected appreciation from the consumers, what this triggered was the perception that the products with the new label was adulterated and as such not fit for consumption. With the growth in the social media penetration, it didn’t take time before the story was everywhere and pictures were circulating online necessitating the need for the brand owners to place communication materials online debunking the claims. The question that needs to be asked is this – why would a brand allow this to occur before communicating an important change that affects their brand’s visibility on the shelf?

The implications on a brand of this apparent lapse could have far reaching implications which could affect the brand’s perceived quality, the level of trust that the consumers place on the brand and most importantly an impact on sales. Consumers nowadays are more discerning and are taking brands to task more than ever before, with the social media aiding in the propagation of news. Nothing is too small to be shared with your target audience if it is related to your brand, of which they are stakeholders. It is better to pay some attention to those little things than spend huge time and resources trying to quench a fire! Every brand courts publicity – what you want to be associated with is good publicity and not a bad one.

The media space is always looking for stories to tell; as such a brand needs to bring the story to them in the way they want their stories to be told and not to leave its brand to chance! You may ask, what if a brand has taken the necessary steps by having a well-orchestrated PR campaign on its brand and there is still an adverse reaction? In that case, what do you do? Every brand should have an incidence/crisis management plan for any exigencies, which may be kick-started immediately as required.

It is important to ensure that when a backlash occurs due to a lapse from the brand; a brand need to be real and true to themselves. There is no point trying to be defensive, consumers can spot it when you are trying to be smart; most times you are outnumbered by the army of consumers (especially if they are online). Lastly see this from the brighter side, you can improve on the customer relationships by listening and solving problems.

Bolajoko Bayo-Ajayi