Bebble - A 2.0 Approach to PR

The following case study is with Ilse Lambrechts, a Belgian Communication & PR consultant working for consumer brands like Tropicana, Smiths, Pepsi, Axe and veritas. Recently her company Bebble PR won the key PR award for their work for the popular crisps brand Lay’s.

Nowadays PR is more than just sending a press release out or calling a journalist. It’s about managing relations, messages and other tactics to create endorsement via press, bloggers and influencers important for your brand or business. What’s initiated offline, can keep on spreading online generating even more opportunities and new insights.

"Prezly offers outreach, CRM and measurement of the impact created in your network as a strategic PR solution on a 24/24 basis wherever, whenever."

PR has therefore obtained a firm place within the 360° communication tactics and is often seen as initiator or driver of this process. As a consequence more analysis and measurement of the PR impact (qualitative as quantitatively) is requested by clients.

It is exactly there where Prezly is situated and helps PR professionals keeping track in the 2.0. PR evolution.

Back in 2010 I jumped immediately to Prezly because of the extra value it delivers as tool to your client projects. Leaving behind dull BCC, too heavy MB emails and never up to date excel lists, embracing a standardised and easy to use mailing-tool combined with social media press releases.

When working on branding projects, you stay inline and offer the same approach as other 360° tactics. When working more corporate, you offer the information tailored to your press stakeholders as well.

PR professionals manage – on a daily basis – their press and stakeholder relations. Going from the 1.0. personal to this also more 2.0. digital & social approach has created a refreshing evolution in the PR way of works. When a consultant left an agency in the past, all the personal knowledge on contacts was gone.

Prezly stores a lot of the information on contacts automatically offering PR agencies insights on what tick’s and turn’s journalists on. Prezly is therefore not a CRM but a PRM system: managing your press contacts and keeping track of what they do with your information.

One topic where the PR world still debates on is the value/ROI of PR as corporate or 360° tactic. Sure, PR is about relations, messaging and endorsement but no standards or comparable measurement techniques are globally accepted compared to other marketing or communication disciplines.

Fortunately Prezly can help convince clients on how tangible and measurable PR is. With a transparent and standardised campaign management system, I immediately see the effect of my press mailings and messaging. The analysis and graphs I can transparently show to my clients. These are valuable insights for PR professionals that immediately show where follow-up is needed and where reach is created.

"Prezly can help convince clients on how tangible and measurable PR is. With a transparent and standardised campaign management system, I immediately see the effect of my press mailings and messaging."

As a consequence, the dreaded telephonic follow-up process of press (e)mailings is almost eliminated. What’s more Prezly keeps track itself of the digital, CMS & email trends updating it’s service for all users all the time... for free!

I can give various examples but managing the Brand PR for the co-creation campaign ‘Do Us A Flavour’ of the crisps brand Lay’s for the second time by now, Prezly has been my PR partner in crime since the start in 2010.

With 16 campaigns worldwide, more than 20 million votes and 11.6 million flavour ideas from consumers, Lay’s has created not only in Belgium but on a worldwide level the prime example of how to engage consumers with brands through co-creation.

For the 2011–12 campaign the strategic use of PR was key to introduce all the messaging to press and stakeholders at the right moments within the 360° campaign.

"Engaging with press and co-create stories together via a lifestyle, brand, regional and consumer context by using Prezly has proven to be more efficient and generating more response and insights for Lay’s than for any other crisps brand or FMCG product in ages."

For the second round of ‘Do Us A Flavour-The Battle’, PR also worked the story and created awareness strategically amongst key target audiences in partnership with Prezly. With again great and tangible results for Lay’s up till now. The campaign has been worldwide awarded and has received in Belgium up to 8 awards with PR always credited as catalyst for the never seen impact and 360° results.

Next to the Golden Effie 2012, Lay’s ‘Do Us A Flavour’ was awarded amongst others with the Ibis PR Award 2012 for Best Brand Communications. The Ibis PR awards are the only prices PR campaigns can specifically be awarded with in Belgium.

"Winning this award was also thanks to the use of Prezly where I could innovate, co-create and create high-quality results that were up to 800% towards the set objectives."