Surround Message PR Strategy: Make the Box Smaller To Win

The sur­round mes­sage PR strategy is one of my favour­ite PR strategies.

I was in Italy in the middle of summer.

I was meet­ing up with an Italian fash­ion brand. They had thought adding some “PR and digit­al mar­ket­ing” would be great for their new col­lec­tion launch. 

The prob­lem was that the launch was less than a week away. I wanted to help them get the word out, but how?

Let’s dive right in:

A PR Strategy for When You’re Out of Options

The Italian-fash­ioned brand had brought me on board late in the pro­cess. The cam­paign was less than two weeks away. No PR and no digit­al activ­a­tions were prepared.

The only thing that stuck with me was a single item in the col­lec­tion — an icon­ic hand­bag being re-launched.

Since there was­n’t enough time to cre­ate fancy cam­paigns, I decided to stick with the handbag.

So, I pro­posed anoth­er strategy:

“In all digit­al chan­nels at your dis­pos­al, you won’t talk about any­thing except for your icon­ic hand­bag for four con­sec­ut­ive weeks. No talk­ing about the rest of the col­lec­tion, okay?”

Not a single tweet, not a single post on Instagram, not a single press release, not a single inter­view with the media, not a single blog post, not a single Facebook update, not a single live event, not a single influ­en­cer activ­a­tion, not a single email list send-out, abso­lutely noth­ing went live dur­ing these four weeks unless it was about the product.

The reg­u­lar mar­ket­ing cal­en­dar had to be wiped clean, and for four weeks, the mar­ket­ing team had to come up with whatever — as long as it was only about the product. We even added product mes­saging to every employ­ee’s email signature. 

We put all reg­u­lar brand mes­sages on hold, which took quite some con­vin­cing on my part, until the end of those four weeks.

The strategy worked like a charm. The mes­sage got through to their com­munity without adding any spe­cif­ic online cam­paign activ­it­ies, and people star­ted talk­ing and shar­ing about the brand’s icon­ic product again. 

I’ve since tried this approach many times with much suc­cess, call­ing it the sur­round mes­sage PR strategy.

The Art of Relevant Variation

“But won’t people get sick and tired of repeatedly being exposed to the same mes­sage? And in every chan­nel, no less? I know I would be.”

Yes and no.

Bombarding the email list with the same mes­sage repeatedly (spray-and-pray) would­n’t work.

However, the Italian fash­ion brand was­n’t send­ing out the same tweet five times a day for four weeks; it always had dif­fer­ent types of updates with dif­fer­ent images, copy, and call-to-actions. The only thing these updates had in com­mon was that they all dis­cussed re-launch­ing their icon­ic product.

Putting togeth­er many vari­ations of the Surround PR Message can be a cre­at­ive chal­lenge, espe­cially if the brand has­n’t tried this strategy before. But I’ve also seen how adding these con­straints can spark creativity. 

The Surround Message PR Strategy: A Tight Ship

It’s not as if every per­son in a brand’s online com­munity is exposed to every brand update. Most online cam­paigns end before most of the com­munity has even seen them.

Only a tiny per­cent­age of a brand’s online com­munity is exposed to single updates. 

As it turns out, most online cam­paigns are too short:

Due to algorithms and social graphs, a brand com­munity often has zero chance to keep up before the brand decides to talk about some­thing else — or sev­er­al things at once.

The real chal­lenge, there­fore, was to stop the brand from talk­ing about the things they, accord­ing to the strategy, should­n’t be talk­ing about.

The prob­lem­at­ic aspect of this strategy is being dis­cip­lined enough to go dark on everything but the top­ic you want to push. Communicators like to com­mu­nic­ate, and some­times over-com­mu­nic­a­tion can be a problem.

The Surround Message PR Workshop

I’ve tried the sur­round PR strategy many times for dif­fer­ent brands. To get star­ted, I like to run a sur­round mes­sage PR work­shop. It sounds fancy, but it’s a coördin­ated brain­storm to find some­thing spe­cial with­in a more extens­ive campaign.

It’s not help­ful to think out­side the box in com­mu­nic­a­tion — some­times, you must make that box incred­ibly small instead.

Focusing on one sur­round mes­sage for a set peri­od is closely related to using con­tent themes in your con­tent strategy. Getting every­one onboard with the sur­round mes­sage PR strategy can be chal­len­ging, but the res­ults make it worth it. 

PR Resource: The 1‑Page Strategy

The 1‑Page PR Strategy

My inspir­a­tion for writ­ing “no-bull­shit” strategies comes from the clas­sic “Good Strategy, Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters” by Richard Rumelt. ¹Rumelt, R. P. (2011). Good Strategy, Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters. Crown Business.

“The most basic idea of strategy is the applic­a­tion of strength against weak­ness. Or, if you prefer, strength applied to the most prom­ising oppor­tun­ity.”
Source: Good Strategy, Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters ²Rumelt, R. P. (2011). Good Strategy, Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters. Crown Business.

By apply­ing strength against weak­ness, the 1‑page PR strategy focuses on how to win.

The magic­al PR ques­tion: Do we know how to win and defeat our competitors?

It’s asym­met­ric warfare.

Asymmetric war­fare (men­tal mod­el). This refers to con­flict between parties of unequal strength, where the weak­er party uses uncon­ven­tion­al tac­tics to exploit the vul­ner­ab­il­it­ies of the stronger oppon­ent. It’s often dis­cussed in mil­it­ary and busi­ness contexts.

How To Write a 1‑Page PR Strategy

Here’s how you can write a 1‑page PR strategy that fits one page — using the myth­ic­al battle between David and Goliath as an analogy:

1. Diagnosis

2. Guiding Policy

3. Coherent Actions

If you write 1 – 2 clear sen­tences per bul­let, your strategy should fit nicely on one page.

Learn more: The 1‑Page PR Strategy

PR Resource: How To Identify a Good PR Strategy

The Magical PR Question

Your PR strategy should answer one simple question:

The magic­al PR ques­tion: Do we know how to win and defeat our competitors?

If your PR strategy fails to answer this ques­tion in the affirm­at­ive, it also fails to provide a roadmap to suc­cess. Winning is a cul­ture and a struc­tur­al asset.

“Competitiveness is derived from per­man­ent infra­struc­tur­al char­ac­ter­ist­ics of organ­iz­a­tion­al design, rather than just rely­ing on tem­por­ary stra­tegic assets.”
Source: Strategic Change ³Connor, T. (2007). A con­sid­er­a­tion of stra­tegic assets and the organ­iz­a­tion­al sources of com­pet­it­ive­ness. Strategic Change, 16, 127 – 136. https://​doi​.org/​1​0​.​1​0​0​2​/​J​S​C​.​789

Is win­ning that important? 

Yes, in com­pet­it­ive envir­on­ments and chan­ging soci­et­ies, win­ning is some­times the only way to keep up.

The Red Queen effect (men­tal mod­el). This meta­phor ori­gin­ates from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass. It describes a situ­ation in which one must con­tinu­ously adapt, evolve, and work to main­tain one’s pos­i­tion. In the story, the Red Queen is a char­ac­ter who explains to Alice that in their world, run­ning as fast as one can is neces­sary just to stay in the same place. The meta­phor is often used in the con­text of busi­nesses that need to innov­ate con­stantly to stay com­pet­it­ive, high­light­ing the relent­less pres­sure to adapt in dynam­ic envir­on­ments where stag­na­tion can mean fall­ing behind. ⁴Red Queen hypo­thes­is. (2023, November 27). In Wikipedia. https://​en​.wiki​pe​dia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​R​e​d​_​Q​u​e​e​n​_​h​y​p​o​t​h​e​sis ⁵Carroll, L. (2006). Through the look­ing-glass, and what Alice found there (R. D. Martin, Ed.). Penguin Classics. (Original work pub­lished 1871.)

Learn more: The Magical PR Question

PR Resource: More PR Strategies

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Public Relations Strategy 101

• The Bad PR Strategy
• The Magical PR Question
• The 1‑Page PR Strategy
• How to Create a PR Strategy That Actually Works

Public Relations Strategies

• Thought Leadership PR Strategy: Rule Your Domain
• Extra Mile PR Strategy: Wow Your Customers
• Hidden Arena PR Strategy: Mobilising Change Agents
• Superhero Solution PR Strategy: Be the Obvious Answer
• The Easy Street PR Strategy
• Surround Message PR Strategy: Make the Box Smaller
• Stupid Majority PR Strategy: How Underdogs Dominate
• Rebel Yell PR Strategy: Picking a Fight To Get Recognised
• Wisdom Whisperer PR Strategy: Educate Your Industry
• Deep Content PR Strategy: Win By Going Deeper
• Evergreen Content PR Strategy: Forever Is a Long Time
• Content Themes PR Strategy: Focused Birds Gets Worms
• Honeymoon Outreach PR Strategy: Influencer Relations 2.0
• Inbound Shift PR Strategy: Beauty From Within

Learn more: All Free PR Courses

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