Dear reader,

Thanks to a good prompt from Alina in Romania, I decided to shift the subject of this newsletter to the difference between strategic communications, public relations (PR), and editorial content. It seems many of us are struggling to explain not only what we do but also the validity of our roles in this AI-driven future, so I will use the next few paragraphs to describe how I communicate the importance of what I do to my stakeholders, including clients.

I trust it will help you with yours.

What is strategic communications?

Rather than realize that "communicating" is what everyone is always doing on behalf of their brands, business leaders bestow the task of "communications" upon a selection of mini-departments in their organizations. Internal communications is one, and it's treated with way less regard than it warrants. Crisis communications is another, and it's considered so essential that sometimes that's all there is. Executive communications is a common one as well, although I wouldn’t count on them to differentiate your brand given they’re usually so few and high-level.

As a function, communications has either been reduced solely to these cohorts or is completely non-existent in a company. (And I've seen some BIG companies prove the latter to be true.) The rest of what we would consider “brand communications” is given to the marketing team, as if marketing isn’t a form of communications itself.

And here's where the important distinction shines through. Communications stands for absolutely every interaction with a customer; in fact, it IS the customer experience, and the customer experience IS the brand.

Therefore, communications equals brand and vice versa.

Once this is acknowledged, the need for thinking strategically about communications becomes evident. You may have a brand narrative and messaging hierarchy in your guidelines, but...

• Are those few paragraphs really enough for each and every communicator (also known as an employee) to architect all the content, interactions, and experiences they're responsible for?

• If not, then don't you worry that everyone will simply repeat the few lines of messaging you've prepared for them, thereby tiring your audience until your brand becomes redundant?

• And even if you believe in the power of repetition as a form of brand consistency, are you sure your narrative and messaging hierarchy are specific enough to render your brand distinct and noteworthy?

These are the kinds of questions that arise when you begin to think strategically about your communications, and the role of a communications strategist is to assess the approach you currently have—including messaging, workflows, processes, platforms, and even people—to see where more coherence and flexibility can be created.

Why? Because when you think strategically about communications:

• Your brand's narrative strategy dives deeper into its messaging, detailing exactly what it wants to be known for.

• All departments and regions understand how that detailed messaging applies to their context and aligns with their goals.

• Employees feel comfortable flexing their creativity within the parameters you've set, so that nothing outside of those guardrails ends up communicated.

• There's more visibility across departments and regions, so resources are no longer wasted doing what's already been done.

• Flows are established between touchpoints to generate not only a leaner operation internally but also a better experience for stakeholders externally.

Not to mention that the resulting strategy becomes the third voice in a debate, which helps with decision making. Employees are able to reference the strategy—now that they understand its contents and importance—when deciding whether something should or shouldn't be done. It's no longer a disjointed game of brand, communications, marketing, sales, recruiting, etc. doing different things. Everyone is working under the same strategy, towards the same goal: Making the brand known for exactly what it has defined it wants to be known for.

Where does PR fit into all of this?

Your PR team is literally responsible for maintaining your brand's relationship with its public (or publics). This means they produce what spawns and maintains a stakeholder's trust in your brand, thereby contributing to both loyalty and sales. And while many PR professionals believe their strategic process to be solid, I believe there's a leak.

PR should never be about finding and filling a whitespace in the market. It should be about taking the communications strategy that was architected internally—based on what the company truly is and represents—and disseminating it externally through the usual channels of earned, owned, and paid.

That's the only way to ensure the kind of authenticity that builds lasting trust; the strategy itself needs to be authentic.

Given they have the ear of an organization's senior leaders and are rarely taken off the payroll, PR professionals are often in the best position to initiate the more strategic approach to communications we discussed earlier.

Think about it: PR professionals are generally tasked with the communications stemming from a handful of high-level executives. This tends to manifest as some form of "thought leadership", although I don't agree with how self-promotional most of it is (but that's an argument for another time). At the end of the day, they're responsible for some of the only in-depth, human-attributed content coming from a brand. There may also be branded reports, playbooks, and such, but those are never humanized enough to produce the kind of results that justify their creation.

This PR content stands in stark contrast to a company's large brand campaigns and smaller product and service ones in that they begin to give a sense of how the people behind the brand think—the values they have and approaches they take. And if PR leaders were to run with that thread, they'd be able to drive the editorial shift required to make their brand evermore useful, lovable, and memorable. They would be the ones vouching for—and even leading, should they wish to expand their influence—the need for an in-depth communications strategy.

And why?

Because the specificity in messaging that it establishes allows brand communicators like themselves to better control the brand narrative. This means fewer public misperceptions caused by internal misalignment, less public invention caused by a lack of details, and no public distrust caused by shallow statements.

With such potential in the role, you're probably beginning to wonder why PR is considered the department for beginners or a place where everyone in the industry starts their careers. And why it's not taken more seriously as a long-term development play. I question the same thing...

What about the misconception around editorial content?

Most people equate PR with op-eds, meaning long-form thought leadership-like articles that are meant to both showcase an executive's point of view and the benefits of buying from or working with their brands. The "ed" in "op-ed" stands for "editorial", which is why editorial content is often said to refer only to longer articles.

Another miss.

Content is not editorial because of its quantity (e.g., long content = editorial content), but rather because of its quality. When I think of something editorial, I think of something thoughtful and put together. Something that's made to last, to leave a mark. Something that follows principles such as:

• Human-driven, meaning that it stems from and associates itself with humans in some way.

• Audience-first, meaning not that you give the audience what they think they want but rather that you give them the best you have to offer in abundance.

• Educational, meaning its intention is one of being as practical and useful for the audience as possible (there's a strong element of selflessness here).

• Evergreen, meaning that it strives to be something referenced in the long run rather than timely in the short run.

• Profound, meaning not that everything must become philosophical but that it's clear you've thought the piece through.

This is what Brandingmag has given me all these years: A crystal clear case study for the power these principles possess and how to apply them while building the editorial strategy of any brand. They're editorial principles of long-form writing that can and should be brought into all content creation.

(It's at this point that many people jump at me to say, "But what about timely press releases about products, partnerships, awards, etc.? What about social media posts about events?" My answer is simple: Even those can have all the elements mentioned above if you overcome the temptation of sensationalist campaigning—which is less effective anyways.)

Remember that your brand isn't a media platform like everyone makes you feel it is. You don't have to produce endless amounts of content the way Netflix does, but you do have to produce the right content. It’s infinitely better to have fewer good ones than an editorial calendar filled with efforts that don't directly build upon your strategic communications plan.

How does this relate to the prompting of people rather than machines?

All of the above scales very well when thought of as tools, training, and guidance that can be offered to your people internally. It's not your team or even your tech that needs to scale; it's employees' ability to think editorial that needs to scale. Because everyone is always communicating in the name of your brand, and they won't be able to do that properly and effortlessly if they lean on a robot to speak for them.

Too often, we get caught up in our task lists and forget to step off the wheels we're spinning in order to get a better look at what confines us. It doesn't matter if you're a well-positioned PR leader or any other type of communicator, you have the ability (and, therefore, the responsibility) to question whether there isn't a better approach.

What I've found is that by choosing to think editorial and teaching other employees to do the same, you and your teams can stop thinking of yourselves as executors and really become the strategists your company needs. The ones that empower everyone else to empower the brand.

So, rather than making processes run faster or smoother just so everyone can create more content, think about the values of the system that's supporting them. Is it making your people smarter? Is it making your brand clearer? Is it making your audience better?

If you don't answer yes to all three questions, then you know what to do.

Stay human,

Flavia Barbat

P.S. I’m thrilled to announce that I’ve now launched a podcast—and you’re the first to know about it 🙂 As always, it’s completely about the content; no music, no fireworks, just great conversations about the editorial topics we all care about.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the first episode, featuring William Rauscher, verbal director at Wolff Olins. The Spotify link is at the button below, or you can search for “Think Editorial with Flavia Barbat” on all other platforms (e.g., Apple, Amazon, Deezer).

And be sure to hit “Follow” because the second episode is dropping very soon!