A Review of PR School Episode 1
William Lessard (Bill), the president and Creative Director of PRwithBrains is a charismatic and insightful leader. I first met Bill on upstream mid December and asked to get his thoughts on my startup plan for Velveteen Bubble. He was patient to hear my story and was able to provide me with thoughtful feedback on ways to reach my future audience when I was ready to pursue a campaign.
When I heard Bill was leading an PR School, an upcoming series of strategy sessions with different founders, I knew I had to check it out. PR School is a gem that will dives into a first hand perspective of what founders are working on. If you are an entrepreneur or have an interest in launching companies, you are going to love this series.
The first episode with Zachary Rozga, CEO and Founder, of THECE is a strong example of a startup pivoting and succeeding in an increasingly remote world. Originally with a plan to attend conventions, and marketing events, Zachary realized a shift in his strategy to working remote with large brands which would reach an untapped market worth billions.
Zachary mentions that in order for a brand to get in front of an audience, it can take as little as 48 hours. What is more challenging is to get the right creative for the right audience. Getting the tone wrong can lead to a failure in a campaign.
As a brand and strategy designer, I can verify that while it may not take long to create a beautiful creative advertisement, spending time on user research, planning and developing a strong message is important. Hiring a designer who works as a teammate to plan your strategy can be the difference in what makes or breaks your campaign rather than a cheaper solution of outsourcing a task on to Fiver or Upstream.
Zachary points out that market tests with a minor brand are expensive and can often be a $50K endeavor, when most only have around $1500 to spend on this.
Luckily launching multiple campaigns and tests are not the only way to reach an audience and measure conversions. Bill notes the importance of utilizing an array of blogs posts, press releases, articles with publications to “fill out media credentials to have different conversations with different audiences”. Getting into different spaces is important. The audience on the Washington Post is going to be different from threads and publications that cover E-sports and gaming.
Additionally, Bill notes that it is important to connect with your audience. People do not want to hear a bullet list of the features a company has to offer, instead how people have been helped and real authentic stories demonstrating that. Brands serve their people and a strong brand makes it easy for their audience to understand the value they recieve.
