If the PR team in your business still spends the majority of its time chatting up hacks and burying bad news, then we’ve got news for you. It’s time for a change!

While traditional media relations still plays an important role in the day-to-day activities of many PR agencies and departments, the speed and nature of modern communications means that your PR team needs to be better skilled, quicker to respond, more creative, tech savvy and commercially aware than ever before. Simply churning out press releases, arranging a few interviews and schmoozing journalists at industry events just won’t cut the mustard.

As the lines between PR and marketing become increasingly blurred, modern PR teams should be fighting to control all elements of your communications. If they’re not, the chances are that they’re not doing their job right.

For example, social media has become an integrated element of most communications programmes. PR practitioners would be mad to consider a campaign these days which focuses solely on earned print or broadcast media and didn’t take account of social media and other digital media.

As well as being digitally savvy and understanding key modern metrics used to evaluate PR, communications success and ROI, your PR team should be becoming increasingly influential in helping define, develop and deliver your organisation’s brand and business strategy.

PR can no longer survive in isolation pushing messages out to audiences. Done correctly, it’s a powerful strategic function which understands in meticulous detail the market, competitors activity, buyers’ opinions and motives, meaning the team is ideally equipped to help the business anticipate and satisfy the market.

So, if either your in-house PR team or external agency is just coming to you to report on the results of their latest campaign, then it’s time to consider if they’re adding the true value they should be.

Of course, if you’re not sure how to go about this, why not give us a call and we’d be happy to talk to you about how we’re helping transform and grow a number of new and established businesses in the automotive market and beyond.