So, What Exactly is PR?

Literally anyone I’ve ever spoken to: “What do you do?”

Me: “PR”

Anyone: “Ah so what does that involve?”

Me: “So you know when you read about a bar to visit in a magazine? Or see a bartender’s recipe on TV, or see a drinks brand you should buy in the paper?  Well I do that for my clients”

Anyone: “Oh cool!  So do you write the articles?”

Me: “Well no…”

Anyone: “So what do you do exactly”

Me: “Uhh…”

I’ve had this conversation countless times. With friends, family, uber drivers and sometimes even clients. More often than not, people tend to think PR just involves going to fun events, drinking champagne, making jazz hands and generally being very excited about everything.  I’d be lying if I said I never did that (I am Queen Jazz Hands after all and have never said no to a glass or three of champagne). But scratch the surface and you’ll see we do quite a bit more than that. We’re the secret squirrels that are quietly making things look ever so effortless for our clients whilst gently coercing you into choosing a specific brand or bar over another. Sounds a bit creepy and manipulative when I put it like that so let’s try someone with a bit more kudos:

According to the PRCA (Public Relations & Communications Association), “Public relations is all about the way organisations communicate with the public, promote themselves and build a positive public image”.

Basically it’s reputation management. Making brands, people or venues stand out and remain in the target audience’s mindset for the right reasons. Who’s the audience? Well it can be anyone… fellow industry peers, Linda shopping in Waitrose, or the uber cool hipster buying bread in Broadway Market. It could even be your internal staff members or investors and stakeholders. If you want people to believe in your brand, buy it more frequently or visit your bar then they need to know you exist. They need to read about you in the right magazines or see you online.

Why does it matter? To be honest I ask myself that many a time - particularly when I’m trying to smash out a document at 1am because I’ve spent the day answering emails. Really, in the grand scheme of things (highlighted ever so well over the last eight months) we most certainly aren’t “essential workers”. But a strong communications plan can, and does, make an enormous difference to businesses when used in conjunction with other elements. At the end of the day no matter how great your product or bar is, nobody is going to know about it if you don’t shout about it.  

Now that’s not saying that you require a spangly PR or social media agency; with your very own team of enthusiastic media types that - more often than not - look ever so similar to each other and tap away on their MacBooks (mine is pink obvs) over their matcha lattes at Soho House. Particularly in the current climate when budgets are beyond tight and futures uncertain, lots can be done inhouse or by appointing someone on your team to manage marketing and communications. Strong brand positioning, regular posting with correct “hashtag-ing” and engagement on social media can all make a huge difference to your visibility. If you are doing it yourself, don’t be shy about outreaching to some key titles or journalists directly – they’re not that scary (I promise) and above all have strong imagery! Media need it and it’ll make your social media accounts look better too.

But what if you do have a spangly media team? What do they actually dooo?? Because when they’re not on their MacBooks with their health drinks aren’t they just propping up your bar with a privileged journalist having a free drink? Or sending yet ANOTHER journalist in for ANOTHER drink? I mean yeah… we probably are, but I promise we would prefer to be at home in our PJs on the sofa drinking squash and actually eating a healthy dinner for once. Making small talk with someone you barely know whilst trying to subtly weave in the ins and outs of our clients’ menu / production process / or glittering career whilst staying focused even though we’re on our second martini and eating nuts for dinner isn’t top of the fun list. Even if we are drinking your delicious drinks and eating your lovely bar snacks. And that doesn’t even cover us having to ask the journalist out for drinks in the first place. As one of my team members so eloquently put it recently “This is worse than dating. I’m asking people out and trying not to take it personally when they ignore my invitation”. 

So why do we do it? For you… our clients, whom we love and (again, if not a little bit creepily) probably talk about on a daily basis more than your parents or partner do.  Getting our clients into the press is more complex than it may seem.  Journalists are busy getting harassed from A LOT of other PRs, inhouse PRs, and brand or bar owners so we have to work hard to get our voice heard over everyone else. We need to give them that reason why OUR client is oh so much better than everything else out there. To do this, we generally start by developing the wider strategy and campaign which is informed by the overall brand positioning. We then will employ a variety of tactics that will likely involve us showing them your bar, gifting your product, hosting an event or coming up with weird and wonderful feature angles. Or the ultimate one… the press trip - which tbh could warrant its own article entitled “herding kittens”.

If you think about every single bar in your major city - or every single vodka / gin / whisky /  tequila / rum brand - and then think that between 50 - 75% of them probably have some form of PR. Now imagine you’re Alice Lascelles (drinks writer extraordinaire in the UK) hearing from just 50% of the sheer volume of gin brands on a daily basis – imagine how exhausting that is for her! But also, imagine being the PR… trying to make sure YOUR gin client stands out over all the other gins out there so when she is writing that elusive gin feature for the year, she picks your brand over all of the others. Likewise, when Laura Richards (the fabulous Drinks and Online Editor for Time Out London) is compiling a list of the best margaritas in the capital… think about HOW many great margaritas there are out there. Why is she going to pick your drink? Most likely because she heard about it from you or your PR and tried it on one of her visits. 

PRs and journalists have a particular symbiotic relationship. We need and use each other for information and coverage. PRs provide journalists with information that they can potentially use for their columns or features and we (trying to strike that delicate balance of getting our point across whilst not being annoying or like a needy partner) then follow up to see if it’s of interest. Surely they must be super excited about this new menu or limited-edition release as much as our client is right? Wrong. Likelihood is, they couldn’t give a shit, but they’ll write about it anyway if the pitch is strong or it works for their readers. And you have strong imagery – ALWAYS strong imagery. 

When a journalist does need something however, as they often work to super tight deadlines, they generally don’t give us long to get everything over to them. If we take too long, they will simply go with someone that got their information over faster. So when we’re asking for a recipe using blueberries with a 30min turnaround time, PLEASE DON’T HATE US. We’re doing this so you can be in the Guardian over another bartender or brand. Trust us, it is also just as annoying for us. We don’t want to drop whatever it was we were doing to start madly harassing you via email / WhatsApp / FB messenger / phone for a sodding blueberry cocktail either. But we also want to get you that coverage and we’re sure as hell going to try and beat everyone else to get it*.

(As you can see, we basically spend our lives feeling like a needy girlfriend in some form or another - sigh).  

*To avoid this scenario, it’s best to work with your PR to create a bank of imagery and recipes that they can fire out immediately for whatever random request they get. I’m sure we’ll still find a reason to chase you for something, but it will definitely help alleviate things.

So what happens when it all goes wrong? When you either fuck up royally or something catastrophic happens that is outside of your control but could affect your brand? Well, your PRs will be there. Quietly cleaning up the mess as best they can; crafting a positioning statement and doing as much damage limitation as possible to minimise and control the flow of communication. We can also be used – as seen recently – to help drive the news agenda and influence public awareness by submitting quotes, case studies or news angles when something as idiotic as a 10pm curfew is introduced.

A friend who had worked in the agency that handled British Airway’s PR once said, “the BA comms team are incredibly good at spinning a negative story into a positive one”. After she said that, and I thought back about some of the BA stories that had been published I realised she was right. When that BA flight from Beijing landed without its engines running in 2008, nobody was heard in the news saying “WTAF, A BA PLANE’S ENGINES STOPPED WORKING MIDFLIGHT OVER CENTRAL LONDON!” Everyone was just full of praise for how amazingly talented and skilled the BA pilots are. Now that’s (worryingly) good PR.

Anyway we digress, back to drinks… so the big question - how does this influence awards and IF you have a PR team or do your own PR push, will you win an award or feature in ‘that’ list. Whilst the Emperor’s New Clothes had a point, and yes, if we tell people something is fabulous even if it isn’t they may believe us to an extent, we also can’t perform miracles and magic up an award or place in a list. Bars have to actually be good to achieve that and no amount of PR is going to do that for you. But going back to the point of “if you have an amazing bar and nobody knows about it…” of course some promotion - in whatever guise that may be - will assist in people being aware of your product and output. 

So there we have it. PR in a not so short nutshell. It’s not exactly rocket science and if we didn’t have our talented clients to talk about we most certainly wouldn’t be here… but when done correctly it can be a pretty important tool within your business model. So next time you see a group tapping on their MacBooks sipping on oat flat whites or propping up your bar with someone they’ve just met, or they’re chasing you over text - don’t hate us! We’re just doing our job - doing our best to shape the news agenda and making sure our clients are seen as the best possible versions they can be.