This week, president and founder of StoriesOut Anne de Forsan wrote for PR Week, top international PR and comms publication, about the importance of the profession in the age of dating apps.
Find the article of PR Week 18/10 here:
Don’t treat PR like a one night stand
By Anne de Forsan
How can you build strong and sustainable visibility for a brand, when in our most intimate lives we swipe to find our soulmate?
Swiping left or right to make a decision as major as choosing your life partner, has transformed our attitudes, not only to decision making, but to how we present ourselves or speak to one another.
These days, time flies faster than ever before. The last decade our concept of time has been rewired. Social media addiction and app reliance have had a huge impact on socialisation in positive and negative ways.
Fads follow and replace one another at the speed of light. Even the social media platforms that push the hype are quickly cannibalizing one another.
In all quadrants of our lives professional or personal, social speed is of the essence. Even on the supposingly most professional of all: LinkedIn. Keeping up is a full-time job. The battle for attention is real, we expect results quicker and as a consequence quality is diluted and the bar is lowered, whether our perception of news or our way of working.
Looking at dating apps and their impact on social etiquette; could we go as far to compare the thrill of a viral social media post to the endorphin rush of a one night stand?
The time and consideration that goes into a year-long PR campaign, can be compared to what happens after that first IRL date. A relationship needs to be built and nurtured, whether it’s romance or in the media.
PR is a craft of endeavor – it takes skills and time and iterations – how can we convince our clients to invest this time and even more importantly, how do we maintain interest in audiences when they are devouring a constant flow of news, hype and fads?
Building a company’s image takes time and patience, getting to know journalists and in turn, for them and their readers to get to know the brand. Revealing all your aces in a series of flashy social content may get people’s attention quickly, but then what? Will they remember you? Will they call again? You need to put the effort in to keep it going.
Swiping has matured and become more than just for fun, it is a way to get something new going to open your life up to a new direction, new possibilities and can lead to love; the Hitched annual wedding survey found that 25% of marriages last year began on a dating app.
Ten years after the launch of Tinder, a flurry of apps have followed in its footsteps becoming more specialised; Farmersonly, Star Trek dating and Allergic Reaction to name a few! The PR industry can learn from this and reinforce one of the most essential skills; to keep messaging and strategy as targeted as possible to the clients’ key audience. By concentrating on one single approach for each campaign PR can strengthen a brand so it can compete with today’s fast flux of information.
