The age of mass marketing is ending, and the circumstances that enabled it to peak in the 1960s and dominate the last century have been replaced with new conditions that demand a new approach. Mass marketing communication lorded it over the landscape because of limited product choice clustered consumers, broad media availability but limited choice, and low consumer resistance to advertising.
But, in recent times, it has been overturned by glacial opposites like word of mouth, brand activation, consumer evangelism, cable television, the Internet, digital public relations (PR) and other platform options. New communication practices and channel opportunities are exploding, consumer habits and values are fast changing, and markets are fragmenting.
For most communicators, the pressing issue is how to get the product, service or corporate messages sell across ever changing and proliferating and quickly morphing media landscape and efficiently reach, and get four generations working together—Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, millennials and Gen Ys or Gen Edge.”
This phenomenon can be paralleled to author Greg Stielstra’s dissertation on Pyro Marketing. He posits that we live in an age of highly sectionalized markets, where mass consumerism is either dead or dying, and where shoppers are increasingly knowledgeable about brands and cannot be tricked. This environment makes creating successful communications programs a big challenge since the game is no longer confined to creating brand awareness, and projecting a unique selling proposition or a key message through traditional media. Oftentimes you’ll hear someone make a comment about needing more “fire in the belly.” And we all understand what it means.
Pyro comes from the Greek word “pyr,” meaning fire. It means bringing more passion, more fight and more emotional investment on what you do. It’s about an extra inner drive, a burning to achieve success at any cost. It is constantly being hungry, putting in every ounce of extra effort you have, and making a big difference.
Stielstra uses the fire analogy to push the concept. It is somewhat succinct, but is an appropriate metaphor that opens with a kindling of wood to ignite, the lighting of the match that provides the initial flame, and the pumping of the oxygen to sustain the fire. It is a correlation that is hugely applicable in delivering successful PR programs.
The author makes you imagine that you are lost in the freezing wilderness (the marketplace) and, therefore, must start a fire to survive (actual sales for your product or service). In that instance, you have only one match (the finite nature of your marketing and communication resources), and you only have one shot at building your fire. Thus, the challenge is to make it count. For PR to be of the pyro kind, it must cover a four-step process to build a successful campaign on a limited budget.
Gather the driest firewood
The job is to focus your PR on those people most likely to buy, benefit from, and then enthusiastically endorse your product or service to others. They are the influencers, the ones whose ignition temperature is within reach of your communication. They light easily and burn hot. The driest tinder is where word-of-mouth wildfires begin. In “communicating and selling SUVs,” for example, Stielstra suggests not to think about a prospect’s income or age. Instead, try contacting people whose cars, perhaps, got drowned in flash floods. These targeted publics are the ones who most need your product now.
Touch it with the match
To the extent you can, give people an experience with your product or service. If you want people to laugh, “don’t tell them you’re funny, tell them a joke.” Work up a stimulus that can generate your desired response. If you want people to know how good you are, deliver extraordinary customer service. Experience is the shortcut to product understanding and appreciation, and eventual loyalty. It touches people deeply and generates more heat, igniting even the mildly interested, especially if the experience is fulfilling and unforgettable.
Stielstra cited a wacky but spot-on example: In 2002 Procter & Gamble promoted its Charmin toilet paper by supplying high-end toilets called “Potty Palooza” at events, such as Cincinnati’s Oktoberfest and at the Super Bowl. As Advertising Age wrote: “On one side, a row of typically wretched public toilets at last year’s Oktoberfest in Cincinnati. On the other, squeaky-clean, tractor-trailer-mounted ‘Potty Palooza’ bathrooms complete with running water, wallpaper, faux-wood floors and plenty of Charmin toilet paper. The feedback was instant.”
In one year Charmin touched 2 million people in Potty Paloozas and Charmin sales went up 14 percent among those who used the facilities, and indisputably generated a lot of goodwill and positive reputation for both brand and company.
Fan the flames
This means giving consumers the right implements to help them spread your message throughout their social network. People spread messages more effectively than paid communication. The fire is hotter than the match. Thus, the process that spreads your key message must be different from the one by which it began. Leveraging the power of personal influence is the only way to expand your PR communication fire beyond its point of origin (the driest tinder and mildly interested) to the masses. By understanding the process, you can equip people with tools to exponentially increase their reach and influence.
You must turn your first customers into rabid evangelists. Take the case of Minister Rick Warren, who sold the first 400,000 copies of his book The Purpose-Driven Life for $7 each to ministers and other churchgoers. Study groups were formed to discuss the book, words got around, people became curious and sales boomed. The Purpose-Driven Life has become hugely popular, and sold over 26 million copies to date, and is the best-selling hardcover book in history.
Save the coals
This is all about keeping a database of customers you meet through your PR implementations so you can quickly and easily reach them to fan the flames or to tell them about new products that match their interests. This allows your program to build equity and keep pace with the needs of your growing business. The process ensures that you won’t have to start the next PR campaign from scratch.
As Stielstra puts it, “Imagine your tightfisted CFO allowing you only one match. Picturing a single match is a reminder of the finite nature of your resources, and no matter what they are: money, people or time, you only have so much. Opportunity costs are critical. How will you use your match? What will you touch it to? What tactics will deliver results? Use it wisely by building your fire according to proven principles. You may only get one chance.”
The metaphors and principles about fire, tinder and flame-fanning are apt. They bring to the fore the values of honesty and integrity in PR. They are provocative and useful. They change your modus operandi on how to share relevant product messages to a well-defined customer cluster as you encourage the members of the group to promote their passion and spread the word to other people.
You can apply the processes of Pyro PR to your own need. It can stimulate and jump-start your own PR plans. Whether you are in a PR agency business, corporate-communications work or any other creative-communications endeavor, the concepts can surely tighten, hone and perk up your own plans.
PR Matters is a roundtable column by members of the local chapter of the United Kingdom-based International Public Relations Association (Ipra), the world’s premier organization for PR professionals around the world. Bong R. Osorio is a communications consultant of ABS-CBN Corp., SkyCable, Dentsu-Aegis Network and government projects, among others, after retiring as vice president and head of the Corporate Communications Division of ABS-CBN.
We are devoting a special column each month to answer our readers’ questions about public relations. Please send your questions or comments to askipraphil@gmail.com