Piaras Kelly PR - Public Relations in Ireland

There are plenty of ways to communicate with an audience. For example:

• You could issue a press release in order to get information published in a newspaper that the audience might read.
• You could start a blog in order to interact directly with a particular segment of society.
• You could give a speech to local residents in the local town hall

My point is there are numerous ways to communicate with a group of people. The role of a PR practitioner is to decide what’s the best way of trying to reach that audience. Their are a variety of tools to choose from and some tools are weighted more heavily than others when targeting a particular audience.

For example, an online initiative might work best when targeting a niche audience like the running community. Nike’s Run London is an excellent example of this. However if you’re trying to target property developers than you have to be in the property pages of a newspaper. It’s different horses for different courses.

In much the same way Coca-Cola have a variety of beverages for different audiences. According to the Coca-Cola website, they have over 400 brands to meet the tastes and cultures of 200 countries. Now while they claim that Diet Coke has the same great taste and less calories, I don’t see many guys drinking the stuff. If I was going to drink the stuff, then I’d grab a can of regular Coke.

Coca-Cola are constantly analysing their audience and segmenting it in order to come up with the best mix of products to cater for their tastes…and make the maximum amount of cash in the process.

In much the same way, PR practitioners should be doing this. When Coke launch a new brand like Cherry Coke, they don’t dump all the promotion behind their other beverages and focus on the one product. Instead, the new brand fits into their overall mix. In much the same way, just because blogging is heralded as the greatest thing since sliced bread, PR consultancies don’t suddenly stop offering media relations and focus on the new medium of communication, they try to incorporate it into their offering.

More importantly, it’s worth remembering that for every new product that Coca-Cola introduce, plain old regular Coke is still their most popular beverage. In much the same way, for every new communications tool that emerges, media relations is going to form the core of a PR consultancy’s offering.

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