There's always the possibility that a pitch can go terribly bad or impressively well. Pitching is not an easy effort as at times, companies find themselves pitching to an audience that does not understand what Public Relations is. We were recently invited to a pitch and while this company is concerned about its relationship with its stakeholders, there were challenges in driving home our point about the importance of Public Relations. In truth, most organizations are not willing to take risk for new ways of approaching their relationship with their stakeholders.
Our proposal was prepared with a focus on giving the company various platforms to communicate about their products and services as well as their operations. What we proposed was a series of stakeholder engagement activities using tools such as newspapers, radio, television, luncheons, conferences and social media (Facebook, Twitter and blogs).
Although we were confident that ours was a winning approach, our audience appeared to have no clue what we were talking about. There was more of a focus on sales rather than building relationships. And its when you build relationships that you can translate this connection into increased sales as well as brand visibility.
Securing the trust of your stakeholders - both for your brand and product/services - allows you to manage your business targets and objectives more effectively. So in truth, you can have the most wide-ranging PR proposal but if your audience does not appreciate, much less understand the role and importance of PR, chances are yours will be a an unsuccessful PR pitch.
Companies need to understand their audiences before they pitch, this way, it saves both a lot of time in what is a very fast-paced industry.
1 comment:
Wonderful Thato,
It seems that for most organizations 'demography' is simply, a very strange word. They spend lots of time in what to communicate rather focusing on to whom they want to talk, And that I believe, is a recipe of failure.
Now moving one step further, they don't either consider 'when' should they establish a link. For example the non-profit organization I am working with, asked me to do a charity event at LKW university, without even considering that the majority of Int'l students as well as some staff are either in holidays or are out of the country. So speaking plainly the event would go completely futile or with minimum exposure.
Unfortunately when I explained to them, they thought that I was just throwing stone. I simply have not understood the logic of professionalism in Malaysia and I am still looking into it to find some leads, if there are any.
Ali.
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