SHARON WANG

I don’t remember the last time i saw a Gillette advert. That’s probably because not until quite recently, I believed the brand only catered for men’s personal-care products. In fact, as a consequence of their latest, but controversial ad, I have discovered the brand also offers razor blades for women. With their latest commercial, however, they have guaranteed my undivided attention, (me being people who barely give them a thought). Without a doubt, it is a strange ad. As noble as the cause, you wonder why they chose to do it this way. It was meant to support the fight against sexual harassment and sexual assault towards women, but ends up according to several quarters, doing the exact opposite! The ad’s catchphrase, ‘We Believe: The Best Men Can Be’, is open to all sorts of negative interpretations once you start viewing it. But two things stand out for me.  First, the message fighting toxic masculinity, including but not limited to bullying and molesting women. Depen...

Recently, I was going through my twitter feed and something caught my eye. Sarah Sanders, the White House Press Secretary had posted an announcement that President Donald Trump would be holding an open press conference at the White House that day. Within minutes, there was an explosion of online chatter in the form of re-tweets, likes and comments because this was NEWS! President Trump was going to address the media. Being the man that he is and the controversy that surrounds him, this upcoming event quickly took on an added importance far different from other news conferences. I am not sure if the White House Press Office directly contacted media houses to provide background/context just before or after Sanders’ tweet. What is notable is that the Trump era has elevated the tweet to new heights of significance. As the current POTUS (President of the United States), Trump makes announcements or breaks news through twitter and if I am not mistaken, media and those who follow...

On several occasions I have come across people who take the profession of Public Relations (PR) for granted, even to the extent of belittling it. They say ignorance is bliss! There is also this misplaced belief that anybody can do PR. Others assume that the job entails nothing more than just looking pretty and presentable to the public! Luckily, PR professionals do not deal in assumptions. You cannot afford to make assumptions when it comes to delivering client expectations. Similarly, publications sometimes struggle with the relevance of PR agencies. For those I have interacted with, the assumption is we keep taking (demand for coverage) and not giving back anything in return. Yet one of our roles is to create mutual relationships among the media and our clients. In fact, if editors could, they would block our numbers and emails! So how do you keep the media coming back to your door step?  Know your publications  Publications have different angles of interest...

There was a time when Public Relations (PR) operated separately from marcomms. Although the main aim for PR is to drive a positive reputation for an organization, the focus for marcomms was to ramp up revenue. The two could function independently of each other, but today things have changed. PR is increasingly being tagged to value addition as far as generating revenues for businesses is concerned. Current trends in Uganda and around the world, indicate that many organisations have gone as far as drastically cutting their marketing budgets as a basis for the sustainability of businesses. Naturally, this becomes a bit of a task, but understandably means the PR industry has to step up another level. Meaning when you have a PR strategy or idea, it’s got to translate into added sales or make more money for the business. At first this may sound absurd for many PR practitioners. I mean, it was so easy to focus on the business image while marketing and sales did their thing. Our job ...

Thought leadership is possibly one of the most difficult tasks you can undertake and yet it is vital in communicating your message to certain target audiences in different markets across the world. Organizations use this kind of content marketing for attracting new investors and positioning them in a particular line of business. In fact the way I understand it, experts use this tool to display their knowledge or understanding of a particular sector with the aim of pulling in other business partners who then get blown away with the authority of the presentation. However, I have also learned that thought leadership is so much more than just expressing your strong opinions. You are expected to share your expertise and provide solutions that are tangible and informative. Tangible in such a way fellow experts agree with you, but that you are also approachable. Most importantly, tangible enough for investors to recognize an expert and someone they can trust and want to do business with....

Imagine the dilemma of having a bunch of invited journalists in a room, eager to hear what you have to communicate to the public only to later hear some of them say, “There is no story here!” The worst part is the huge effort you made in pitching to the relevant editors to assign a senior journalist to cover your news conference, only to realize you have wasted their time! This is now a common occurrence in our communication industry. But there was a time when calling for a press briefing meant that news to be communicated was ground breaking. Journalists would attend and have the opportunity to interact directly with the stakeholders to get more insight in to what was being reported such that follow-up stories become mandatory. Unfortunately, this seems not to be the case anymore. Organisations have resorted to using media briefings to communicate even when there is nothing really new to communicate! In fact, there is a belief amongst some companies and institutions that the on...

You are at your desk, working away at a ‘to do list’. Suddenly you receive an email alert mentioning one of your clients has just entered a partnership, mind you it is a very significant deal at that. The first things that come to mind are quite simple; how to get visibility for your client but in a tactical way. Tactical because the project entails many partners and as a PR practitioner, this is not just about your client anymore, but building and maintaining relations as well. I have seen PR practitioners in the past get so greedy in the name of exploiting a particular project to ensure their Advertising Value Equivalents (AVEs) are shining very bright and in the end crash the relationships they would have built along the way.  AVE refers to the cost of buying the space taken up by a particular article, had the article been an advertisement.  According to Claire O’Sullivan, AVE figures are popular in the industry as an easy way to show how much value you can get from ...

Depending on how you approach an editor, pitches can be quite a handful. It is not easy especially when looking to have an exclusive published separately to an article on the same topic that has already run in the newspaper. In fact, this is probably one of the activities that cause many editors to associate PR practitioners with being greedy. Over the years, I have learnt that however much you invite the media to a news briefing or an event they will not cover everything you want to communicate. They will select only what they feel makes a good story which may not necessarily help you achieve your intended communication goals. Obviously you would like to get out that missed message, so you are forced to craft ways of getting it published. How do you do this? Pitching to the right editor When making pitches for various articles, know that your material must have a segment in a category of news and features that it falls into. Perhaps business, lifestyle, straight news or...

We all have deliverables that need execution in a timely manner. We make an effort to note down what needs to be done or set in motion those activities necessary for achieving intended goals. Simply put, we plan before hand and take the required steps needed for successful outcomes. To do this, we make a list of items or write down points to be considered. Some refer to it as a checklist and others as a ‘to do’ list. In the PR profession, if you want to execute your work meticulously, you certainly can’t avoid the checklist. This is because we sometimes get too busy while working simultaneously on other projects and find ourselves forgetting to execute certain activities. I have had experience where forgetting to plan for what would seem trivial can easily lead to failure and disruption of the messaging one is trying to put across. I also wrote an article earlier on what entails a good PR plan. For one to be complete, it has got to be accompanied with a checklist of activi...

Quite frequently, when people hear of a PR plan, the assumption for some is, it is a general plan and you only have to fill in the blanks. However, my experience has taught me that for every activity that needs PR support, there has to be a specific PR plan in place and preferably approved by the client. These are the reasons why;  Setting Objectives & how to achieve them Like all good plans in general, a PR plan will help you set your objectives and at the same time clearly define how you intend to achieve those goals. Now as professionals while supporting our clients, we encounter many projects in the pipeline that will need support. Truth be told, the way Project A will be executed is not necessarily the way you will execute Project B. This may probably be because a company is targeting different audiences with different products which bring me to another important aspect.  Identifying your audience When preparing a PR plan, the first thing that comes to...