When we were doing our agency research, I was amazed at the work that Mullen Lowe has done. From creating moving campaigns for American Greetings to turning their campaigns into nation-wide activations, this agency is truly doing amazing work. Kayla Gorski, the VP of Mullen Lowe talked to us about the power of PR and the effects on their campaigns. While marketing can be controlled in paid and owned media, earned media differs by allowing the public to control what they say about you. Mullen takes the approach to their campaigns and PR though three questions:
1. How are we provoking point of view?
2. How are we challenging conventions
3. How are we challenging conventions?
So why do PR? PR is such a valuable asset to every company. I think that Kayla showed us a good taste of how they've used various platforms to gain valuable earned media responses. For example, their Zappos Box campaign had a tight budget, yet managed to gain lots of traction and coverage with various media outlets. Furthermore, the Naked Juice Drink Good, Do Good campaign gained a huge number of impressions through their various celebrity endorsements. Through her presentation, I understood more about how valuable and smart campaign strategies can lead into successful outcomes. While PR does not guarantee a positive and controlled message, you can certainly aim to affect many people in a positive way by understanding the platforms, audience, and campaign strategy you choose.
One ad campaign I thought was especially clever was their JetBlue Fly Babies campaign. This was launched on Mothers Day, with the goal of the campaign to celebrate babies rather than hate them on airplane flights. For every baby that cried, the passengers of the flight would receive discounts in the increments of 25% off. Mullen captured this project with a video series which was later talked about through news outlets like USA Today, PopSugar, CNN, Today, etc. It showed how a clever insight was able to flip the convention of being fearful of babies on flights.
Applying this to our M4G projects, I am excited to see how PR will affect our personal campaigns. If we are able to create an effective campaign, we can gain coverage by media outlets that could elevate our projects even further. Over the summer, I worked as a Social Media Intern for a small jewelry company. My internship allowed me to connect with various influencers to gain connections and features on their social media. As a marketing major, I think that it was especially interesting to see how PR affects an agency side. I've never really thought about the power of PR and influencer outreach because I've always assumed campaigns were the main focus of an ad agency. However, after this session, it helped to clarify that doing PR will help to elevate your campaign and helps to potentially increase impression rates.