Article by Pascal Beucler, SVP & Chief Strategy Officer, Global, MSLGROUP

At the ICCO Global Summit which took place in Oxford, UK, earlier this fall, I was invited to discuss why Branded Content and Entertainment are a new boundary, and a sweet spot to hit, for PR (People Relations) professionals. This talk was based on my experience last June, at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, as a juror (and the only PR person!) in the newly created Entertainment Jury.

The basic point is: if it is true that ample narrative formats elevate brand content into the cultural mainstream, therefore becoming the next boundary for storytellers, can PR take advantage of it?

Cutting through and turning consumers into fans.

Entertainment is where branded content, storytelling and events/experiential converge, helping brands to creatively engage with people and communities, cut through and turn consumers into fans.

There’s a clear disenchantment with intrusive advertising formats, particularly among the most influential and sought-after demographic: Millennials.

Engaging content is what’s engaging Millennials: whether a viral video, a television series, or a top experiential event, this is what’s capturing their attention and interest.

The age of convergence is now.

I’d recommend to focus on four dimensions, illustrated – IMHO – by some of the most remarkable projects we’ve reviewed during the Festival.

• Technological Convergence: big data, mobile apps, voice recognition, VR, AR are everywhere, and it changes everything, for it unleashes the power of emotional connections, creating meaningful relationships.
• Mobile Convergence: what was prophesied long ago is a loud reality today, as our ubiquitous and versatile smartphone is our most vital link to our world, and to the world around us.
• Societal Convergence: whether on gender equity, education, family crisis, coming out, racism, poverty, brands do not hesitate to be part of the global conversation, getting rid of taboos. Good content is better content to share, for purpose-driven organizations looking for social impact.
• Collaborative Convergence: empowering people (consumers, but also employees) is what helps generate innovation, through co-creation, crowdsourcing, collaboration. Far more than just a trendy wave, it’s a massive tsunami.

Great content is the currency for Engagement.

Relevance, virality, social amplification, emotional connections and, at the end of the day, sales stimulation come with content, whether branded, native or experiential: this is our priority playfield, as PR professionals.

A content that should never be intrusive, but always be suggestive, contextual and fully relevant to the brand. And thus effective: from Conversation to Reputation and Commerce, results must be visible, tangible, measurable.

Only a good story will create a great relationship.

So what is such a story? In my view, it’s a story which needs to be human but exceptional, fact-based but emotional, unique but universal. Only such a story will have the power to create great relationships between corporations, brands and people.

Let’s keep in mind here what etymology teaches us. “Relatio” in Latin gives two meanings:

• one around narrativity: telling a story, that’s relating something, narrating, giving an account of something – and at the heart of it is the art & science of relating.

• one around relationship: relate to, that’s feeling in sympathy with, identify with, be connected to someone about something.

Only a good story has the power to bring people together – whether physically or virtually – and to create the kind of emotional context and connections which will help creatively engage the audience in a great conversation.

I believe that only the narrative way, through a well-told story, can create fruitful relationships with people and communities, by opposition to the classical, discursive, top down, “vertical” advertising way.

In other words, relating something is foremost relating to someone, and the relationship is what makes the attempt a success, or a failure.

We do live in a People Relations (PR) world… where the story matters, and needs to move people, deeply. The Art & Science of Storyteling is definitely in our DNA, and our core chanllenge in this new age of ample formats.

Being relatable, human, approachable, bold, “real”, giving people a voice: this could very much be where the future of great brands lies.

We – PR people – are here to help them lead the change!

1\You started your career as a journalist from 1981 to 1995 in Bulgaria ,Czech and Poland. How do you think this experience influenced you?

Especially in that time, back more than 20 years ago, this experience was priceless. And the reason is very simple. Traditional media were the only media and also the only “bridge” between our clients and their target audiences. My deep knowledge of media helped me a lot, indeed I started from a intern and grew up to a Managing Editor of the largest private daily newspapers in Bulgaria. This was meaning by default that I knew exactly what is happening in the “head” of each journalist, how to attract the media, how to write news in a way that professional journalists will immediately get them and put in their newspapers or will speak about them in the TV or radio channels. Without this deep knowledge, at least I think now, it would not be possible to make this “frog leap” in business and soon to become the most professional leader in the Bulgarian PR market.

2\In your opinion, with the great changes of technology and media environment, what changes have happened in the PR industry?

Public Relations business is today one of the most dynamic businesses in the world. The reason of the change is very, very simple. For the first time in the history, since this business exists almost 120 years, not only our clients, but also we as PR experts, own media. In the past it has been true true – we were creating our concepts to attract media and to get their interest to our clients and their products or services. But today we already have the media, our clients have them – these are the social media. And from a “bridge”, as I said, between clients and media, now must become managers of social medial we own. From a purely practical perspective this is already a completely different business, which requires different tools, approaches and even professional education and abilities. We should know how to run media, how to write into them responsibly, intelligently and attractively, how to promote them among the readers and – what is most important – how to respond to the online commentary. Because on the top nowadays we do not have a lot of time to react in social media and the faster we are, the more successful the project will be.

3\Could you talk about the key point of doing good PR services?

The three S, formulated by me many years ago are still valid even much stronger now – – Speed, Simplicity, Self confidence. First of all the speed is really crucial and extremely important. Secondly – the world is so sophisticated today, our tasks are so complicated, that we must have very clear priorities and a simple agenda how to achieve them – simplicity. And the third one, which even might be the first one – I do not know a single successful person who achieved anything without self confidence and desire to do the job perfectly and responsibly.

4\How the PR companies keep and promote key competitive strength in the background of homogenization in PR industry?
There is an obvious merge worldwide among the three main key elements of modern public communications – public relations, advertising and digital. In this merge, which even can happen in full much faster than we can expect. Each of those three businesses now claim they will be the leader of the future merged business. I simply believe that it’ll be public relations, not advertising or digital and have quite strong arguments for that. The main point of those arguments is that we, the public relations experts, are the masters of the real content, of the words, of the sentences and namely content these days is crucially important. And more – clients these days come to our office with two main important problems – reputation problems and crisis management. So, I do not think that advertising or digital can handle this, of course that public relations is the business, which can provide these services to the clients with the important support of the creative design (from the advertising) and proper social media promotion (from the digital).

5\In your opinion, which aspects are important in training PR elites?

Teaching them to manage the social media in the right way and to serve the clients 24 hours, 7 days a week. The rest they will learn by themselves.

6\You were announced “Business leader of the year” in Bulgaria in 2016 , and the Global Award “CEO of the Year in the World” in 2015. What’s feeling about these two award?

Often I say  – when you climb a peak you may see anything else then… the next peak. All those awards, which I have had throughout the years brought me new and higher responsibilities, but also the challenge and desire to achieve more new and interesting things. And to stay on the professional top.

7\What’s your opinion about public relations and media relations in future?

They will be more and more dependable on visions and short movies. And what is important – all public relations projects will be soon implemented only live in real time with the means of video transmission. Which will mean another change of our business – we must be ready to react at any second, personally and professionally. By the way – I really think that the name of our business – “Public Relations” is old fashioned and does not respond to the modern times. When the business was launched more than a century ago some 90 per cent of the relations were non-public, but the rest of 10 per cent were public and then the businessmen and politicians started to hire journalists to advise them how to behave with the media… Today all our life is public and to say “public relations” is very similar to say “transparent window”. Soon the name of the business will be different and the closest I can propose or guess now is “Live Relations”. Everything will be based on live social media and handling this communications will be the most difficult task.

8\What’s your hobby in your spare time? Please make a self introduction.

Golf, playing drums, traveling, fitness, reading, reading, reading… In the modern world if there is a day without at least one new interesting article or book, then it is a wasted day. And if I hate something, then I only hate to waste my time.

 Blog post by Russell Goldsmith, Founder, Audere Communications

 Blog post by Russell Goldsmith, Founder, Audere Communications

In Part 2 of Show 30 of the csuitepodcast (starting at 20:05), recorded at the Global ICCO PR Summit, I had the absolute pleasure of speaking with Pascal Beucler, Senior Vice President & Chief Strategy Officer, Global, MSLGroup (and someone I could have happily chatted to all afternoon), on the topic of ‘Brand culture in the conversation age’, which was the title of the presentation he had given at the conference earlier that day.

Brand Culture in the Conversation Age from MSLGROUP

Pascal said that his talk was based around how PR has evolved from Public Relations to People Relations, creating relationships through content that is full of emotional connections.

He explained this further by talking about how the z-generation, born between the 1990’s and 2010, or those a little older, born between the 1980’s and 2000, have a relationship to brands that is based on mutual respect and parity – that is not top down or intrusive but based on choice, desire, attraction, seduction – and if it is like this it works, otherwise it doesn’t work.

The example of a campaign that MSLGroup had worked on recently that Pascale said was viral video rather than an advert that creates a dialogue between [the brand and] the target they want to address, was the superb Always #LikeAGirl campaign, one that I personally love and continue to feature in my own Using Video in Social Workshop.

Pascale believes the genius behind the campaign is that P&G and Always are saying they deliver much more than protection every month but they deliver a vision of young girls based on the understanding they have a strong desire to be free of the chains that society and men put them in.  This for him, is an example of New Age relationships between brand and people.  It’s not about telling you my product is better than another one, but instead saying there is an issue and so why don’t we discuss it and find a solution. 

Another area Pascale touched on in his talk was that of gamification, which he sees brands using in two ways.  Firstly, gaming is a huge trend for millennials but also for older people, mainly because the smart phone is always in our pocket and so when we have free time, as well as using it to communicate, we use it for gaming and so it provides a perfect compatibility and convergence between the device and the will to be gaming.

The other reason Pascale said gamification is important is due to the power of data created by millions of people on the way they play that you can use to your advantage.  He used the Deutsche Telekom “Sea Hero Quest” as a great example, which, as quoted on their website, was “designed to create the world’s largest crowd sourced data set benchmarking human spatial navigation, helping bring scientists one step closer to developing new diagnostic tests for dementia.”

Pascale believes this kind of activity gives gamification another dimension, something he calls, Brand Utility, where the brand becomes something useful in your life.

There were so many things we spoke about, too much to write about here, and to be honest, it’s much better listening to Pascale explaining it all, but he finished off with what he saw as the main drivers are for brands in the conversation age, which were:

• Start conversations based on creativity of the mind
• There is no conversation unless there is equality, equity and parity between the two sides. It has to be two ways. If it is a dominating conversation, it goes nowhere.
• Conversation is a continuum

#ad – Many thanks to global media intelligence provider CARMA for supporting the series of shows I produced from ICCO.  Please do visit their website to find out more about how they can help you deliver actionable insights through media monitoring and PR measurement.

All previous shows of the csuitepodcast series are available on Soundcloud or itunes and please, if you subscribe, can you give the show a positive rating and review on itunes in particular.  You can also now follow the show on Twitter and Facebook – please get involved!