Why Raising Awareness Is Poor PR

Recently I came across a very good blog post about raising awareness and why it is a poor goal for a PR or marketing campaign.

Often people talk loosely about the need to raise awareness of their issue, product or service.  Even when people know you exist that alone will not move the needle to make your organisation more successful.  

After all what do you do with awareness once you have raised it? 

Awareness alone does not translate into more income, volunteers, program take-up or involvement.  I may be aware of Ford Motor Company but I may choose to drive a General Motors car.  I know about Coke but may prefer to drink Pepsi.  I know about Telstra services but give my business to Optus (true).

The true goal is for the people you need to engage (audiences), to change either their attitude so they eventually support what you are trying to achieve.  Or to change a specific behaviour such as adopting a healthier lifestyle, buying something, registering to vote or using your services etc.

Achieving this often means:

• Continuous communications  and keeping in mind the PR maxim: just when you are sick of saying something, people are probably just starting to listen.
• Compelling content (centred on personal stories) that motivates people to change what they are currently doing.  
• An approach that grabs attention and propels your message through the communications clutter engulfing the average person.
• A repetitious mix of communications tactics so if one approach fails one time, another may succeed later.
  
  
  

The Business Reason To Tell Stories

Story telling is the universal language of the human camp.  We have been telling each other stories for 40 000 years.  We use them to motivate, amuse, warn and share information.

Stories are powerful.  Yet are you using them to communicate the good things your organisation does? If not why not?  A story is more powerful than a mission statement, annual report or policy document. 

I recently came across great advice from Alison Esse of the storytellers.com about how  companies can use stories and I thought it is worth sharing with you.  Thanks Alison.

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 The best way to pitch storytelling to your organisation is to position the argument as a 'winning  hearts and minds' one - creating an emotional connection to the  organisation, its objectives, goals, strategy and vision rather than  simply a rational one.

 Assuming that no business leader would argue that they didn't want to  create this level of connection, it would be fair then to suggest that  a storytelling approach is really one of the most effective ways of  achieving this.  Since mankind began we have used stories as a  powerful way to transfer knowledge and information, engage and inspire  people and to spark the emotions, stimulate actions or change  attitudes and behaviours. 

It's a necessary and vital part of human  bonding.  

We all tell and hear stories every day of our lives, in and outside the workplace, and harnessed to specific business messages you  can effect the most remarkable changes very swiftly.  The corporate  'story' or journey can be structured and told as a narrative which  makes it easy to understand and believe in (and corporate narratives  should be constructed in the same way as any story narrative), and  validated and nurtured with great stories about employees and  customers to keep it alive and to sustain interest.  Unless leaders  believe that 80-deck Powerpoint presentations can achieve the same  effect, it's a no-brainer!

 It may be a good idea to pitch the idea starting with a great story  about an employee who, faced with a particular dilemma (eg customer- related), took a particular course of action to win the day and make  something happen that has been truly inspiring or beneficial in some way to the business.

Branding for Not For Profits

Check out this SlideShare Presentation. It has some good insights into branding in the digital age.

Branding 2.0 für NGOs

View more presentations from Torsten Henning Hensel.

Free PR Workshops in 2010

This year we are running six free PR workshops for not for profit organisations.

They will be jointly run with Volunteering ACT and the Lions Club of Canberra Lake Burley Griffin and go from February to September 2010.

The workshops are open to any registered not for profit body. They are held in Canberra and last between two to four hours each.

• Workshop #1: Communicating to Community. Develop a 12-month PR plan that costs under $500 to carry out.

• Workshop #2: Social media for charities and other not for profits. How not for profit groups can use social media to reach the community.

• Workshop #3: Get Yourself PR Ready. Go behind the scenes to work out PR responsibilities, budgets and time-lines.

• Workshop #4: Sponsorship and fundraising. Get sponsorships and manage sponsors so they return next year and beyond.

• Workshop #5: Writing for the media. Learn to write media releases, media alerts and media backgrounders for mainstream and on-line media.

• Workshop #6: Event planning. Seven steps to holding great events.

We are settling the dates for these sessions with Volunteering ACT and will post dates and other details shortly.

This series follows our previous volunteer PR efforts. Since 2003 over 200 not for profits throughout Australia have attended similar free workshops.

Meanwhile what do you think we should cover in each session?

What information would be the most helpful?

And what other types of workshops would you like to see after this series?

Australia's Best Storyteller

On Australia Day I spent three hours with Australia's best storyteller.  I learned tales of struggle and war, romance and misfortune, separation and reunion and looked into the love affairs of millions.

I was visiting the Love and War exhibition at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra where plain words, imagery and everyday objects tell the wartime stories of Australian men and women.

Since 1922 the Memorial has become Australia's best storyteller.  It preserves the memory of 102 000 Australians who died in conflict through the tales of individual servicemen and women, their families, neighbours, workmates and friends. 

The Memorial is among Australia’s most loved institutions and it is simply impossible to just spend a single hour there because its content is so compelling and absorbs both time and total attention.   

The Memorial is unique for a government agency.  While most departments of state communicate through the formal language of bureaucracy, the Memorial let’s the "average bloke" or as Americans say the "ordinary Joe" become the storyteller.   Their letters, souvenirs, keepsakes and imagery provide personal testimony to past battles.  Today we live in an age of celebrity.  But the Memorial has no celebrities.  The most prized of its spaces is the tomb of a single Unknown Soldier rather than monument to any general or world leader and its most popular sculpture is a man and a donkey.


The Memorial holds a lesson for all communicators. Even the most complex communal stories are best told through the words, experiences and emotions of the individual.

(Disclaimer: I sometimes work on PR programs at the Memorial)