By Adam Wakefield
Piehl’s presentation focused on FleishmanHillard’s Pan African Campaign of the Year – PRISM Gold winner, ‘The TLC Next Great Presenter’.
At the beginning of her talk, Piehl alluded to what is critical when undertaking a campaign such as the TLC Next Great Presenter.
“What is very important for us at FleishmanHillard is not necessarily communication goals or communication metrics. What is very important to us is business metrics,” Piehl told the room.
“How do we make an impact at the point it actually impacts the bottom line for a client? It’s not just about communications and AVEs and how much coverage we got, but are we fundamentally making a difference to the business?”
Ultimately, the campaign made an impact on who TLC’s viewers are and how many people watched the channel. Piehl went through the campaign in detail and then broadened her scope to PR’s changing role and how FleishmanHillard have adapted to this change, reflected in how they executed the TLC campaign.
“I made a statement that we should stop talking about public relations, and we’re at the PRISA Conference. It’s still a practice and I think what we got to look at is how our landscape is changing,” Piehl said.
“If we look at what we did for TLC, they didn’t ask us to ‘Please get us into the next publication’. They asked us to get them more viewers. They asked us to drive the business imperative. More and more, we are being called to have conversations at the C-suite.”
Fleishman Hillard’s role is to assist the CEO in navigating the business environment or challenges they are facing, or whatever the scenario may be. The industry’s future lies in the transformation of the communications function. FleishmanHillard are doing so by shifting their investment in step with this transformation.
“We certainly aren’t doing business like we did five years ago,” Piehl said.
There is an increased focus on integration and 360 campaigns. With regards to The TLC Next Great Presenter campaign, FleishmanHillard were never asked to write a press release and issue it out to the media space. Rather, 360 integrated campaigns meant the creation of new jobs and roles.
“We’ve hired a content specialist, we’ve hired an analytics specialist, we’ve hired creative directors,” Piehl said. “We’re classified as a PR agency. We’re changing our roles, we’re changing the people that we work with.”
According to Piehl, FleishmanHillard are now a content-led agency, telling stories on any channel at any time, which also means designing their own stories.
“We shot a commercial. We are doing things that we would never have spoken about,” she said.
“It’s about who’s got the best story, not necessarily where it goes. How do you tell a story and where do you put that story to reach your audience?”
Quoting an article written by colleague Francois Rank, Piehl said: “We will always remember a good story, you may not remember which platform you saw it on.”
Analytics and insight is another vital layer of the industry’s transformation in a data-driven world. Piehl pointed out that we consume more data in one day than our forefathers did in their entire lives, but having all the data in the world does not come to much unless you figure out how to analyse and find insights from that data.
Wrapping up, Piehl said; “We go in and we say, ‘Don’t tell me what your communications objectives are. Tell me what your business objectives are’. We will look at how corporate-type comms, reputation management, and social and digital integration can potentially drive that business imperative.”
“Step out of the marketing space and let’s actually sit with the CEO and make a difference from a business point of view.”