Piaras Kelly PR - Public Relations in Ireland

We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results. - Herman Melville

Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of Trevor Deeley’s last sighting and an RTE special aired about his disappearance in a bid to hopefully solve the mystery of what happened to him. It was also special for another reason because it also highlighted to me the strength of word-of-mouth and its impact on PR.

I have to say that I’ve been amazed by Trevor’s story because of the dedication of his family and friends in trying to find out what happened to him. Yesterday really exemplified that because although all his posters may be a thing of the past, I received at least two group emails about the RTE special.

When the first email appeared I thought nothing of it, but then I heard my colleagues chatting about it, saying that they had received it from multiple sources also. When the programme aired that evening both my flatmates told me a similar story.

So let’s reexamine the day - traditional PR was effectively replaced by word-of-mouth. I don’t remember seeing any articles or hearing anything on the radio about the programme. But more importantly, the immediacy of having multiple friends tell me about this TV programme drove home the point that word-of-mouth can be far more effective than PR because of the emotional impact.

Categories: PR, Word-of-mouth, Ireland, Missing Persons