In this time when we can reach millions of people, it's achieved with just a YouTube video. It's easy to omit that within a thousand of impressions, likes, and statistics, there are actually people with names, faces, and personalities. The goal for most major brands is to impact mass audiences. It's important to remember that the most effective type of communication is interpersonal, where two interlocutors speak directly to each other.
At the center of this statement is where we find one of the most important PR trends we will see this 2018: customization.
What does it consist of? This trend addresses to always seek human and close treatment of all tactics. The time of sending information to mass and impersonal media has ended. Instead, we will seek to create more close relationships between the PR team of each brand and its media counterparts.
Tactics such as sending personalized invitations, non-mass emails, WhatsApp groups, and one-to-one follow-ups will take more value in a world where automation seems to invade everything, even if they seem simple and even basic.
Some good examples of this trend, we can find them in the world of beauty, where the PR packagings between more customized, the more massive outcomes and cause huge investment returns. A proof of this is a simple video search titled and labeled as "PR UNBOXING" that yields more than 1.8 million results.
Another great example of customization in PR is a tactic executed by eos. A customized frame was sent to different magazines, where the products were shown and the logo of each magazine was included. These types of details help build stronger relationships and achieve more memorable actions.
2. Real time: expertise and immediacy
Time is a luxury and PR has less opportunity to get that opportunity. Recently, agencies, brands, and executives had days and even weeks to plan a strategy and to react to any situation, this is no longer the case and the ability to be able to join relevant conversations in real time is extremely important.
Your PR agency schedule should change. Both your strategy and your team must understand that communication never stops and must be monitored, evaluated and finally exploited.
3. Visual Storytelling
The use of video content has never been so crucial for brands. It's no longer a luxury to create it but a basic need for communication. Take as a reference the following statistics, in any month, in this January 2017 case, the 90% of all Mexican Internet users watched online videos.
Taking this into consideration it is clear that any communication strategy that a brand carries out should have contemplated the use of this format. Again, the times of sending a word document and expecting good outcomes are already far behind.