This year, we witnessed many brands become a victim of the boycott culture on social media and each of them adopted a different Public Relations and Communications strategy; while some decided to give in to the pressure, pulled off campaigns and maintained a low profile to cushion the blow, a few others stood their ground and fought back. Gone are the days where a brand could hope for social media controversies to die a natural death and wait for consumers to move on. Now, a small tweet can snowball into a boycott trend and a little bad PR move can cause a company’s stocks to plummet drastically or lead to a huge amount of audience permanently boycotting a brand. At the same time, some experts also advise that brands should not feed the trolls. So, in a year that saw numerous controversies, Public Relations and Communications experts proved their prominence yet again. They acted as the brand's anchor when needed and also helped them reach the shore successfully through tumultuous seas.
During the initial stage of the lockdown, PR agencies had to think on their feet, engage with editorial media to help brands share their side of the story with interesting nuggets, offer positive stories, work on personalised pitches, ensure internal and external stakeholders were updated frequently with utmost honesty and transparency. PR experts also pushed brands to connect with their communities on a personal level through truthful, authentic human acts.
The crisis also caused paradigm shifts in the industry and digital PR took the center stage. Experts were required to monitor trends in real-time, find various consumer touchpoints through social listening and offer predictive analysis. As we move forward, PR agencies are working towards expanding their offerings with allied competencies like creative, experiential and social media capabilities. They have also been helping brands to find the right balance between profit, people and the environment. So, the future of PR is in strong storytelling in the digital world.
The future is also unpredictable and PR professionals can’t rely on annual calendars anymore. With the news cycle changing every day, PR experts are required to be more flexible and agile.
We reached out to experts to look back at 2021, discuss a few trends that lie ahead in 2022 and understand what kind of role will PR play next year. Here’s what they had to say.
Archana Jain, Managing Director, PR Pundit
The sway of top celebrities has diminished as was the case back in the days. With the advent of digital and social media, people have begun to trust recommendations from peers far more. Audiences find authentic content or recommendations by actual consumers to be more honest and believable than other forms of promotions and advertising by brands. This is reason enough for brands to actively nurture a community of advocates. PR will be required to work with brands to shape and foster a community of brand advocates. A set of loyal and vocal customers who can help humanise the brand in addition to boosting brand appeal & trust, promoting its products & services to new cohorts, providing invaluable user-generated content (UGC), word-of-mouth recommendations, and social media chatter. Community-led storytelling is more acceptable and authentic rather than a direct brand-led communication. Community advocacy will need to be consciously harnessed and not left to chance. 2022 will see many more brands structure a meaningful brand advocacy strategy.
Ameer Ismail, President, Lintas Live
My biggest takeaway from 2021 is that agency brands and professionals have learned to be resilient and this is based on the multitude of challenges everyone has faced. Smart PR agencies have managed to reinvent themselves with offerings that are built for new realities and collectively have made sure that the relevance of PR is as strong as ever. While a move to everything digital will continue and a lot has been spoken and written about that, I feel that ‘collaboration and consolidation’ will be one the most important trends in that will emerge in 2022. This will be fueled by a few factors, first, resources will be deployed judiciously and talent will continue to be in short supply, the churn agencies have been experiencing at mid and junior levels will continue in 2022. This will lead to a need for agencies to find collaborative ways to deliver on client briefs and they will tap the vast pool of independent talent and specialized agencies and we will see newer collaborative models emerge. Second, clients will be in a hurry to get solutions from agency partners that can get their brands back in the mindspace of consumers and other target audiences. They will want to deal with fewer, better established partners which will lead to a need for consolidation.
While the models of working and mediums will undergo a change, what will remain strong is the need for strong storytelling. What will change however is the degree of authenticity in storytelling. It will take a hard turn towards stark reality …almost raw. Consumers want to know why the brand matters, why they should care about it and what is the brand impact? How are you adding value to the life of the consumer? Authentic storytelling will win over aesthetics.
The role of the founding or leadership team will become even more crucial. One cannot hide behind a faceless brand persona or logo anymore. You will have to put yourself out there to create a strong, credible and believable story about your brand that brings out its authenticity. This also brings in a lot more accountability that brands will have to guard their reputation on. Consumers want to pick up brands that walk the talk. You cannot be a CEO that promotes mental health and fire your agency on twitter. You cannot be talking about environmental sustainability and create a toxic work culture for humans. It just won’t fly anymore.
Community Building will take Center Stage. We saw a strong glimpse of this across 2020 and 2021. This will gain more ground in the coming year where communities around a brand vision will be created and drive conversation around a challenge
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