TRADITIONAL PR, ESPECIALLY FOR EARLIER STAGE BRANDS CAN YEILD  CRITICAL LEAPS IN CREDIBILITY, TRUST AND QUALIFIED ATTENTION.

As Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft was once quoted: “If I was down to my last dollar, I would spend it on public relations.” It’s free and can generate major breakthroughs. 

Not all attention is created equal. While digital advertising is measurable and clearly effective at driving traffic, the results coming from these efforts often yield ‘dumb traffic’ (people who have a quick look and move on cause they do not know, understand or trust the brand enough to buy). By contrast, PR, is hard to measure but has the potential to generate significant brand equity.

As a general rule, the younger the brand, the more important PR can be in making big gains. PR can have an outsized impact for smaller (growth) brands. Conversely, the larger the brand, the more important experimental channels are likely to be. Big gains from PR become harder to achieve for larger brands, unless they are able to imbue releases with growth-brand excitement (eg. Tesla).