Last month public relations specialist Julija Jegorova visited Faculty of Communication and met with students to talk about public relations.
Julija Jegorova is the Founder and CEO of London-based public relations agency Black Unicorn PR, a new breed of comms agency specialising in (technology) startups and scaleups. Black Unicorn PR also has an office in Vilnius. Julija is a trained journalist from the University of the West of England and spent the past decade working in PR and communications across the world, including ASUS in the UK, TomTom in Amsterdam and with VISA during the Sochi Olympic Games. In 2015 she shifted her focus towards the world of startups, heading PR for London startup Pavegen, and established Black Unicorn in 2018. She’s secured media placements for her clients in publications such as Forbes, BBC, CNN, Bloomberg, Business Insider, Entrepreneur, The Guardian and Huffington Post among others. She is a regular speaker on PR and its importance for businesses in Lithuania, having spoken at events such as LOGIN, and for groups such as Global Lithuanian Leaders, Rise Vilnius as well as London & Partners and Goldsmiths, University of London in the UK. Julija is keen to connect with ambitious students who are seeking to work in international PR or are looking to start their own venture and have international goals.
- How different works public relations for big brands and for newly created startups?
- Big brands have the name and long-lasting reputation behind them. They also have more budget. Similarly, they tend to partner with bigger and more known creative agencies with the capacity to help them with exciting, innovative campaigns that make sure they stand out from the competition.
Another big difference is that, holding the weight of a big brand will, with time, make PR less about trying to create awareness, but more about steering it in the right direction. In fact, many companies actually seek to even limit public exposure in certain areas.
When it comes to startups and scaleups that want to test international waters, creative stunts have less impact and it is the image, identity and trust that you are after. Especially in the UK and the US, where investments are abundant and new startups are founded every day, startups need to solidify their reputation as a trustworthy and innovative player.
- People often confuse public relations and advertising. What is the difference?
- With PR, the main aim is to promote the business by building and protecting a positive image. Media relations, news placements, press releases and press conferences are just some of the tools used by PRs to interact and undertake storytelling. PR deals with reputation. And, like in life, as a company, a reputation cannot be bought. It is earned. PR means a company opens itself up to the world of the media. It is the job of the PR person to do this in the most advantageous way for the company.
Advertising, on the other hand, literally consists of buying space or time. Space within a magazine, newspaper, in social media, or time in the radio, TV, YouTube. Nowadays, space can be bought intelligently on the internet thanks to Google, which will trigger the right ads at the right time and for the right audiences. Although it doesn’t build a reputation, it creates awareness. Modern advertising is measurable in a way that PR isn’t. Impressions, clicks and conversions can all be tracked and give ROI metrics that are especially useful for startups. With advertising, a company can choose to do with the space what it wants, and this tends to include strong calls to action to be able to get audiences interested in their products. But with PR, journalists portray their own original take on the company, thereby acting as a third party validation.
Within marketing, or if we view marketing as the company’s customer journey, advertising and PR play two different roles. While advertising is meant to add prospects to the ‘sales funnel’, PR is meant to create trust in the company or brand, making the customer journey a much easier and seamless one.
- What objectives can and can‘t public relations help to achieve when it comes to startups?
- Like mentioned earlier, PR is about building and maintaining a reputation. However, PR alone cannot catapult a startup into success. The basis of any successful startup will be its product, and how well it is marketed. Before thinking about PR, it is fundamental to have an overall business and marketing strategy. In many cases, sales and inside sales strategies may be more important and, with PR coming only after a startup has something ‘newsworthy’ to share.
What PR can achieve, is tell the story of a startup in a certain way as to build a positive reputation, and therefore, trust, validated by a third party (credible media and journalists). Not only the way the story is told, but how a startup can become associated with certain brands of media outlets and insert itself in the media world can have a great impact on the perception of a startup.
- What is important when creating a public relations campaign?
- The most important thing is to focus on providing an effective and powerful message/story that will resonate with those media outlets you are targeting. Unlike email marketing, for example, PR has to be more tailored to individual outlets or journalists.
Another thing to remember is timing, planning and strategy! A good PR campaign has to be thoroughly planned in advance (average of around 6-8 weeks, depending on how big the scope is) as no success happens overnight.
- How to measure public relations campaign efficiency?
- First off, it must be clarified that PR is hard(er) to measure. This is because campaigns and other PR activities serve rather long-term purposes. Unlike advertising, which is gone once it is turned off, the results of PR live on forever.
There are different ways to look at metrics for PR (there is different software, like Mention or Meltwater, which might be relevant), apart from counting placements some look at advertising value equivalent (AVE). For Business Insider alone, an advertorial can range from $5k-$25k depending on the options to push the article. In the NY Times, a page ad is estimated at $150,000 (PR agencies will then estimate AVE based on space taken by story of client). There are other things such as share of voice and sentiment versus competitors, combined circulation of outlets with mentions, etc.
However, these don't always consider the objective of PR - moulding a long-term positive image for the company or brand.
It also depends on the objectives of the individual campaign. Sometimes an article in a small outlet in front of a relevant audience gives more value in terms of a click through than a mention in a big national. In the short term PR can actually help with an awareness boost, but over time, you want customers entering your customer funnel to come across you within high quality media brands.
- What are the most common mistakes in public relations?
- The most common mistakes that businesses (especially startups) make are:
- Underestimating the power of traditional media: print media (such as Financial Times, The Telegraph) are still widely read by C-level executives that hold decisive power. It is much harder to land those pieces than niche/trade media, but it is definitely worth the effort!
- Poor timing and “expecting miracles”: as mentioned above, PR needs to be not only meticulously planned, but you also need to have a “mind map” of what will happen when and what outcomes are possible.
- Neglecting research: Always do your thorough research about a journalist/media publication you are approaching (what they are writing about, what their core interest and how your story fits into it)
- Overpromising and lying to the audience: it is great to have a grand vision (and it is a part of a business!) and work towards it, but always make sure that whatever you say on record has some sort of validity and that you’ll be able to deliver. Think about “Fyre Fest” and “Theranos” case studies; lying helped them reach to the top, but it was a very nasty fall in the end!
- Not having essential PR tools: The role of PR is becoming increasingly more important: the time pressures that journalists face, means that they have limited time and resources to fact-check everything or get background information that they need. Having essentials, such as a press kit (biography + founders’ biographies), high res imagery (of your team and a product) is a great starting point!
- Social media plays an important role. Maybe it is enough to communicate just there and not to focus on other media channels?
- Social media is, of course, an important channel, but for a company it is not enough to use as a sole means of communication. At a certain point in time, companies grow in size or in importance enough that they start to have new touchpoints with the societies they are in. Without even being proactive, journalists and other actors will also begin communicating about the company. Startups of a certain size need to have spokespeople to speak with the media and be an official voice in front of important third party media outlets.
We are still shaped by the news and information from “traditional media”, both in print and online. We seek a reference point, something written by expert, professional journalists who journal what happens in the world. That which we read, in turn, shapes the way we understand the world and it also affects our decision making (both conscious and unconscious). That is why trust and credibility and professional journalism will always be sought out for.
- Public relations – art or science?
- Edward Bernays - also known as the “father of modern PR” - said that PR is an “applied social science” and should be treated as other applied sciences.
I think that it is a blend of both! Art comes in from creative writing and ideas that you brainstorm, whilst science is all about making strategic decisions plans and figuring out how to measure valuable outcomes for a business.
- What personal qualities are the most important in your line of work?
- It is important to understand the role that PR professional is playing: it is our job to be “invisible” and make sure that whatever happens to a business in the public eye - happened organically and naturally (when in reality it was a mix of blood, sweat and tears)!
You also need to be able to be stress resistant and flourish under pressure. Neither you can take things personally, so over time you’ll grow thick skin to deal with difficult situations and people!
And, of course, a good understanding of how to combine messaging and timing. Also, lots of patience to deal with the difficult way in which journalists, due to the nature of their profession, sometimes have to work.