What it was:
I read the book ‘Campaigns that shook the world: The evolution of public relations’ by Danny Rogers as part of my Continuous Professional Development during February 2016.
What I learned:
Key points of learning for me from the campaigns covered in this book:
Thatcher election campaign
- First modern political campaign in UK; visual, impactful
- identifed potential swing groups of voters e.g. women labour voters
- Event advertising – creating news spike from small number of ad sites
- close alignment with newspaper editors
- avoided battles they can’t win
New Labour, New Britain
- Rolling news; rebuttal; The Grid
- Blair and his advisers were a client/agency relationship, much like Thatcher
- Aspiration was key to campaign
Royal renaissance
- long term campaign
- use of exclusive photographs
- relationship with media changed; robust and uneven campaign
Rolling stones
- wide and comprehensive campaign, lots of tie-ups, sponsorship
- top team were engaged and flexible, did media that was tailored and adapted
- pioneering of big stadium gigs
David Beckham
- managing the narrative
- lots of tie-ins and comms
- spanning into new sectors; novelty
London 2012
- clarity and consistency of the vision; did not deviate
- team discovered that there is a growing chasm between media coverage and actual perception
- used consistent opinion tracking throughout
RED
- use of co-branding and partnering
- some valid criticism of campaign which is a middle-man for fundraising, lack of transparency?
Obama for America
- Clear phases to the campaign
- aspirational
- ground campaign: use of data to maximise and maintain subscriber lists etc.
Dove
- Authenticity of message carried through the campaign
- Issue marketing and thought-provoking content
Summary – some common attributes of successful campaigns:
- Integrated campaigns
- Clear vision, unified team, authenticity
- PR-led strategy, consistent narrative
- Collaborative approach to media
- Forging partnerships
- Embracing evolving concept of celebrity
- Integrity, purpose
- Optimising digital tools
- Building genuine movements
It’s worth being aware that this book necessarily looks retrospectively at successful campaigns and is therefore potentially post-hoc rationalisation of why they were successful – potentially, many unsuccessful campaigns would exhibit the same attributes.
What I will aim to do differently as a result:
- Have a clear vision and position, don’t deviate from it, keep all activity consistent and within that framework
- Movements can be created and harnessed but think about authenticity
- Think about celebrity, what this could mean in my work context, and how to embrace it
- Think big, wide and long term when it comes to major campaigns
- Don’t be afraid to think about affecting or re-baselining the fundamental relationships between players (e.g. between your organisation and the media, or by partnering) – truly successful campaigns are sometimes those that completely re-engineer the comms landscape. Don’t accept that landscape ‘as is’.