How To Use Personas in PR

We can use per­so­nas in PR, too.

In mar­ket­ing, the use of “mar­ket­ing per­so­nas” is com­mon­place. As in most mar­ket­ing-related things, these per­so­nas are mostly derived from demo­graph­ic generalisations.

In PR, it makes more sense to group per­so­nas based on pre-exist­ing com­mu­nic­a­tion beha­viours — related to spe­cif­ic issues.

Here we go:

The Marketing Persona: “Anna”

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Example of a “Marketing Persona”

• Persona Name: “Anna”
• Age: 28 years old
• Gender: Female
• Occupation: Marketing Manager
• Education: Master’s degree in Marketing
• Income Level: $60,000 per year
• Location: Urban area, liv­ing in a met­ro­pol­it­an city
• Marital Status: Single
• Interests: Digital mar­ket­ing, social media trends, yoga, travel, and culin­ary arts.
• Behavioural Traits: Tech-savvy, val­ues work-life bal­ance, act­ively engages on social media plat­forms, par­tic­u­larly Instagram and LinkedIn.
• Media Consumption: Regularly con­sumes con­tent on digit­al mar­ket­ing blogs, listens to pod­casts related to career growth and per­son­al devel­op­ment, and fol­lows influ­en­cers in the mar­ket­ing and life­style sectors.
• Shopping Preferences: Prefers online shop­ping, val­ues qual­ity over quant­ity, seeks out eco-friendly and sus­tain­able brands.
• Goals and Challenges: Aim to climb the cor­por­ate lad­der and become a mar­ket­ing dir­ect­or, face chal­lenges in keep­ing up with the fast-paced changes in digit­al mar­ket­ing, and seek to bal­ance a demand­ing career with per­son­al interests and well-being.
• Values: Professional growth, sus­tain­ab­il­ity, social respons­ib­il­ity, per­son­al health and wellness.

Learn more: How To Use Personas in PR

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The PR Persona: “Dave”

Publics: Example of a “PR Persona”

Fundamentals

Psychographics

Communication Style

Media Habits

Influences

Goals

Challenges

Learn more: How To Use Personas in PR

Which Persona Type Is Best?

Personas are used to make it easi­er to visu­al­ise, under­stand, and influ­ence dif­fer­ent types of people. However, a per­sona is a tool.

Which tool is the best? Well, it depends on the job.

Marketing per­so­nas are argu­ably bet­ter for tail­or­ing mar­ket­ing mes­sages. The demo­graph­ic approach is espe­cially use­ful for pro­mot­ing brands, products, and ser­vices via paid media (one-way) channels.

PR per­so­nas are argu­ably bet­ter for tail­or­ing two-way inter­ac­tion with stake­hold­ers, pub­lics, and influ­en­cers in a spe­cif­ic situation.

It’s also com­mon for mar­ket­ing- and PR per­so­nas to over­lap. Both will typ­ic­ally focus on chan­nel choices, media con­sump­tion habits, and goals. 

Personas in mar­ket­ing (demo­graph­ics) will typ­ic­ally be more stable over time. Personas in PR (psy­cho­graph­ics) are typ­ic­ally more pre­cisely con­nec­ted to a situ­ation import­ant to the brand. 

The main weak­ness of mar­ket­ing per­so­nas is that demo­graph­ic group­ing is weakly cor­rel­ated to shared com­mu­nic­a­tion beha­viours. The main weak­ness of PR per­so­nas is that they only apply to a spe­cif­ic situation.

Read also: The Publics in Public Relations

Why Use Personas in PR?

A PR per­sona can out­line psy­cho­graph­ic char­ac­ter­ist­ics, styles of com­mu­nic­a­tion, and media pref­er­ences. A PR per­sona can help PR pro­fes­sion­als tail­or com­mu­nic­a­tion strategies to effect­ively engage with indi­vidu­als who share sim­il­ar com­mu­nic­a­tion behaviours.

The idea is to engage in two-way com­mu­nic­a­tion (dia­logue) with a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the oth­er end of the conversation.

The basic premise is simple:

Self-image is a power­ful motiv­at­or; people are more likely to respond pos­it­ively to mes­sages that res­on­ate with their per­cep­tion of them­selves. This align­ment is cru­cial in PR — when the sug­ges­ted action or mes­sage aligns with an indi­vidu­al’s self-image, com­pli­ance and engage­ment are sig­ni­fic­antly more likely. 

The Concept of Seriality

Seriality: Context Matters

“Seriality” is a concept that emerges from iden­tity- and social the­ory, par­tic­u­larly in the works of philo­soph­ers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Iris Marion Young. It refers to how indi­vidu­als are grouped based on shared char­ac­ter­ist­ics — without a strong sense of belong­ing or identity.

“Seriality is a key concept in under­stand­ing the con­stancy and trans­form­a­tion of iden­tity, par­tic­u­larly in pub­lic present­a­tions of the self and its online mani­fest­a­tions.”
Source: M/​C Journal ¹Marshall, P. (2014). Seriality and Persona. M/​C Journal, 17, 1 – 10. https://​doi​.org/​1​0​.​5​2​0​4​/​m​c​j​.​802

In Sartre’s exist­en­tial­ist frame­work, seri­al­ity describes a form of social col­lectiv­ity. According to him, people can be part of a series without neces­sar­ily shar­ing a uni­fied group iden­tity. For example, people wait­ing at a bus stop are con­nec­ted by their shared situ­ation (wait­ing for the bus) but do not neces­sar­ily form a cohes­ive group with a shared iden­tity. They are sep­ar­ate indi­vidu­als linked by a com­mon object­ive or condition.

Therefore, seri­al­ity is a way of under­stand­ing how indi­vidu­als can belong to col­lect­ive cat­egor­ies without neces­sar­ily hav­ing a shared demo­graph­ic identity.

Learn more: The Publics in Public Relations

Beware of Hasty Generalisations

The idea behind cre­at­ing a per­sona in PR- or mar­ket­ing is to estab­lish a use­ful gen­er­al­isa­tion. However, a gen­er­al­isa­tion will always be a gen­er­al­isa­tion, so we must always remind ourselves that such assump­tions can cause harm.

This is where per­so­nas in PR typ­ic­ally out­shine per­so­nas in marketing:

Should we really be tail­or­ing any mar­ket­ing- or com­mu­nic­a­tion activ­it­ies based on people’s eth­ni­cit­ies, sexu­al pref­er­ences, or income classes?

While it cer­tainly can be done with the best of inten­tions, the ques­tion still lingers:

Should we?

Adapting your com­mu­nic­a­tion to people’s shared choices (of why, where, and how) in a spe­cif­ic con­text is a more agnost­ic approach to mar­ket­ing- and cor­por­ate com­mu­nic­a­tion segmenting.

PR Resource: The Publics

The Publics in Public Relations

Publics are a cent­ral com­pon­ent of pub­lic rela­tions — in fact, the ‘P’ in PR. However, they are often mis­un­der­stood or con­flated with mar­ket­ing’s ‘tar­get groups’.

Here’s how to define pub­lics in pub­lic relations:

Publics = psy­cho­graph­ic seg­ments (who) with sim­il­ar com­mu­nic­a­tion beha­viours (how) formed around spe­cif­ic issues (why) impact­ing a brand (to whom). ²Silfwer, J. (2015, June 11). The Publics in Public Relations. Doctor Spin | The PR Blog. https://​doc​tor​spin​.net/​p​u​b​l​i​c​s​-​i​n​-​p​u​b​l​i​c​-​r​e​l​a​t​i​o​ns/

Please note:

Psychographic seg­ment = sim­il­ar­it­ies in cog­nit­ive driv­ing factors such as reas­on­ing, motiv­a­tions, atti­tudes, etc.

Communication beha­viours = how the pub­lic’s opin­ion is expressed (choice of mes­sage, rhet­or­ic­al fram­ing, and medi­um type).

Specific issue = determ­ined situ­ation­ally by a spe­cif­ic social object, often high on the agenda in news media or social media.

Learn more: The Publics in Public Relations