There’s perceived wisdom that for a company to be seen as professional, respectable, reliable and trustworthy, it needs to be straight-laced, formal and always sensible.
Sometimes, that is the right approach, but it doesn’t help to make a company approachable or attractive for their customers and clients, even if they are other businesses and business leaders.
Getting the right balance is a key part of corporate PR, which is all about helping a business to grow its reputation and renown through effective communication and marketing.
So how can you make a company fun, and why should you?
Read on for our top tips….
What is corporate PR?
Corporate PR is a type of B2B (business to business) marketing that can help to maintain a company’s image, promote its services and gain the attention of stakeholders and investors.
Although corporate PR and consumer PR use some of the same tactics, they’re used in different ways because of the differences in the target audience: Instead of speaking to consumers or the general public, you’re typically communicating with other businesses.
That means you’re likely to target publications and media channels where your audience is likely to see you, such as trade magazines, business blogs, broadsheet newspapers and LinkedIn.
It also means you’ll typically use a more professional, formal tone of voice that might appeal to other businesses, rather than the more informal, conversational tone you might use for consumer PR.
You might also change the way you write – industry jargon and acronyms are welcome if your audience will know exactly what you’re talking about, so there’s no need to explain or use layman’s terms. And you can also use longer form content, whether it’s articles or social media posts and videos, because your audience might be detail-driven, with a good attention span.
But corporate PR doesn’t always have to be what is typically considered ‘corporate’. You can still be creative and capture the attention of business leaders in a fun and quirky way.
After all, businesses are made up of people who get bored, excited, inspired or distracted – just the same as anyone else, so the difference between consumer and corporate PR isn’t as pronounced as you might think. It all boils down to the difference in the audience, their expectations, and what works with them.
And, yes, this does mean you can be fun.
Examples of fun corporate PR
A great example of corporate PR is Squarespace’s #5to9 campaign back in 2021. The website creation and hosting platform company created a lively video that turned Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5 on its head – even getting Dolly Parton herself involved to create a new version of the song.
Targeting entrepreneurs and start-up founders, the catchy song and relatable video was promotional without being too pushy. Targeting small business owners, particularly high-energy disruptors, the campaign hit all the right notes:
Throwing it back to 2014, Slack created a video campaign that is a great example of how to make corporate PR engaging and relatable. Called ‘So Yeah, We Tried Slack…’ the video took inspiration from famous sitcoms like The Office, no doubt chosen for its appeal to target audiences, and turned real customer case studies into a mockumentary-style advert.
The company in the video, Sandwich Video, is a real Slack customer and the advert was filmed at their office, showing how adding a little humour to your corporate PR campaign can go a long way when winning potential business.
What if ‘fun’ doesn’t fit?
Sometimes ‘fun’ is a bit of a challenge for corporate PR – it’s not always right for your audience or what they expect from your brand, but that doesn’t mean the alternative is to be white papers, formal statements and smart suits. Instead, corporate campaigns can be inspiring, motivating, helpful and downright interesting.
Corporate PR is at its best when campaigns go beyond advertising into action. For example, JCB has donated 70 of its generators to support the humanitarian efforts in Ukraine.
Moves like this are a great way to demonstrate your commitment to the values that are shared by your stakeholders and customers. People at all levels appreciate it when a company does good, but donating products like this also demonstrates the value and practical uses of those products, so it’s also clever marketing.
Being genuinely helpful has its merits too: in 2020, Lloyd’s Bank ran a programme of virtual events and roundtables with more than 900 participants designed to share useful insight and guidance during the pandemic.
The ‘Big Conversation’ focused on subjects including supporting SMEs, improving digital skills, the future of agriculture and food production, and how to achieve a sustainable and inclusive recovery, producing a report based on the discussions.
By keeping the focus on supporting others and creating a community of like-minded businesses, they aimed to inspire and support, making their PR campaign far more interesting and therefore more effective.
How can businesses benefit from corporate PR?
Any business that wants to raise awareness of its products or services and drive sales should invest in its corporate PR. And choosing to use a corporate PR strategy can actually be much more effective than traditional advertising. Why, I hear you ask?
Once again, it comes down to understanding that businesses are composed of people, and people don’t like adverts in general. One of the biggest issues with traditional advertising (billboards, printed adverts, etc.) is that people are wary of adverts, because they’re basically just businesses shouting about how great they are so they are often ignored. Because of this, lots of people don’t trust adverts and they aren’t always effective in dictating buying decisions.
Corporate PR, on the other hand, is a much more gentle way of driving sales because it either gets other people to do the marketing for you, or it gets the marketing messages across in a form that people are happy to consume because they feel they’re getting something in return.
For example, people are more likely to trust reputable newspapers, magazines and broadcast channels that are shouting about how great you are – and these are the kind of channels that are targeted through corporate PR.
Likewise, people are more likely to do business with you if they’ve appreciated some useful advice, guidance or even entertainment that you’ve given them already.
So if you’re looking for help with your corporate PR, why not get in touch with our team? We offer a wide range of services including traditional and digital PR campaign strategies, media training, copywriting, crisis communications and much more.
If you’re looking for a corporate PR team that can get your business noticed by the audiences that matter to you, look no further!
