PR Needs To Shift From Reactive To Proactive
March 31, 2011
Author 
In I’m convinced that public relations practitioners need to flip their thinking. Simply: from reactive to proactive. In a world where every company is a media company, PR should lead. But only if they can become truly proactive in their approach to the practice.
Media companies are far more proactive than reactive. They plan their content through editorial calendars. Their leadership teams have the executive perspective on content and have a long-term vision with the goal of influencing an industry. They react to news and happenings, but they plan for it. And the reactions happen through the lens of the publication.
Most PR professionals flirt from opportunity to opportunity. It’s tactical and not sustainable. It leads to results here and there but not necessarily in a way that steadily contributes to a larger marketing funnel for a brand.
From watching what other PR firms do as a marketing consultant, my perspective was probably 70% or more was reactive. Reactive to company news, industry trends or reporter queries. It’s the bread and butter for many in the practice. But in a world where it’s possible to go direct to consumer and create true leverage in the marketplace by building a community you need to flip this.
And the 30% of proactive PR most companies and agencies spend in proactive mode? It’s probably wasted. It involves planning events or big ideas to catch media attention. Gambling to get attention from others through a one time splash. If this was in unison with a solid publishing venture (and there was some thought behind how the buzz would contribute – i.e., net links or subscribers as part of the plan) this would be fine. But this isn’t generally thought through.
My sense is that PR needs to be 80 – 90 % proactive. And this involves restructuring your PR to be pull, not push. And that 10 or 20% left over to be reactive? Use it to strategically to feed your critical KPIs that boost inbound. Structure everything around a hub and you’ll grow.
Some additional thoughts on this…
Become less reliant on pushing messages to media and you’ll get more media
By being mostly reactive and always pitching media to tell your story you’re not in a real position of strength. That’s because if you’re always relying on externalities to tell your story, you have no power of your own to disseminate messages to market. But when individuals have more of an audience than entire companies, no company can say it’s too difficult to become a publisher. And a funny thing happens when your brand of media breaks through a threshold of popularity. They actually get more media. And it’s organic.
Being proactive lets you take an iterative approach to content
It’s now possible to get feedback from your communications. In near real-time. For free (or cheap). If you organize your PR around execution and test out lots of ideas and stories direct to an audience (every day, bit by bit) you’ll get really good at pushing your industry’s hot buttons. Especially since it’s no longer about your news, product or announcement: it’s about the stuff in between. What you have to say on the day you have no news is what speaks loudest about your company. It shows you have real passion.
Strategic vs. tactical
A reactive approach to PR is inertially tactical. That’s because you are sitting there waiting for opportunity or having to seek it out vs. planning your attack and executing on it. Pursuing outbound as a small percentage of time makes sense, but in a world where all people and companies have power of distribution you should be doing this surgically. Your new bread and butter is building an owned asset for a brand as a hub for the industry.
Laser-focus on specific digital KPIs
I’ve had clients before where they knew the specific KPIs they wanted us to focus on. Some were so specific and nuanced, it almost seemed myopic. There was a clear halo affect of results beyond those specific metrics. But in retrospect there is an unstated elegance of focusing on (and being held accountable to) specific metrics that are definitively and predictably known to impact a company. You have to take a proactive approach to achieve this and win.
I’m not saying throw out the reactive PR entirely. Just make it a secondary focus and supportive of proactive.
Tom Gable replied | Mar 31, 2011 (3 comments)
Wholeheartedly agree. The top PR firms I’ve had the pleasure to know through the PRSA Counselors Academy (senior counselors, owners, from agencies) are focused on long-term strategic results. They are looking six months to a year or more ahead to help build client reputations and support business and marketing plans. The top firms manage for results using a mix of creative, strategic and tactical tools. The tool kits change, but the core tenets of reputation management remain the same. I’ve tracked the evolution since 1993 when I published the first edition of The PR Client Service Manual (Managing for Results). I’m now working on the fifth edition and the biggest changes are in the tools and how to integrate implementation strategically on the run at Twitter speed. The pro-active ethic is embraced by many firms but probably not enough to help raise the collective image of the PR profession to where it should be. Everyone can benefit from the ideas you’ve provided here. Thanks for sharing.
Tom Gable
APR, PRSA Fellow
John Barlowe replied | Apr 4, 2011 (2 comments)
You’ve just blown the minds–and caused a huge, collective gulp–of the entire, old guard of PR. Well done as usual, Adam. Excellent points.
Jayme Soulati replied | Apr 4, 2011 (2 comments)
Hi, Adam. This post took me by surprise, and I decided to comment via a post today instead: http://soulati.com/blog/debating-pr-reactive-or-proactive . I’ve been facilitating discussion on my blog for over a month now to earn consensus on how we define PR and at the same time try to uphold the image and professionalism of our vocation.
I can agree there are many people who need to learn how to be more strategic in our line of work; however, rather than judging all of us as poor visionaries, perhaps there’s a better way to do that than from within our very own ranks?
Adam Singer replied | Apr 4, 2011 (563 comments)
Cheers for the comment Jayme, good food for thought. This post wasn’t meant to be negative — so I’m sorry you took it that way. More of a call to action to think about PR differently. Thanks for reading (and responding!).
Sara replied | Apr 21, 2011 (1 comment)
I definitely agree with being more proactive than reactive. How do you distinguish yourself from others in the PR industry if you are always planning on reacting to certain events rather than being proactive? So much new social media is out there now that I find it almost impossible for people not to be proactive in public relations, yet they are not taking advantage of those tools. For those who take advantage of websites, such as Zoomerang, Google Analytics, etc., can research how to reach the media the best for their client and will be more successful. It’s all about knowing how to find that special strategy.
PR agency replied | May 17, 2011 (1 comment)
Fascinating post on the reactive tendencies of some PR agencies. I wonder how many agencies are 80%-90% proactive in their approaches?