PRPOI Webinar : The Scoop Behind Entertainment PR

The entertainment PR industry has come a long way in the last decade.  With the entry of national and international renowned corporate names entering the industry, the family owned production houses have also had to add a fair degree of professionalism to its workings.

The entire dynamic of putting a film together has changed. So has PR.

PR teams are now a part of the script phase as compared to earlier being used as an amplification or last mile marketing tool.  With the process getting more organized, PR teams work with production houses, corporate and the talent in-between helping create enviable reputations.

What has not changed is the speed at which the industry adapts and the swiftness with which things can pivot. This has been put into a perpetual high gear since the advent of social media. The insatiable appetite for news from this segment has more stories being churned out than the industry can supply. This also means that the successes and the flaws of the industry are magnified multifold which translates into a job that is 25 X 7 (yes! you heard that right) for the PR professionals managing that brand.  But rest assured there is never a dull day. It will take up all the seconds of the 24 hours of your day and you will love every second of it.

The panel on Entertainment PR with Kajal Gadhia and Radhika Nihalani on PRPOI threw up some valuable nuggets that we have encapsulated for you in the article below:

Embrace it: The entertainment industry can be intimating. If you want to work in it. Get over it. Embrace the rush, the adrenaline and the 24 X 7 job.

Love the genre: Don’t just be good at what you do, love the work and the genre that you represent. If you don’t like the family soaps, how pray tell are you going to identify a news angle in the script? If you don’t love theatre, how are you going to find social relevance in their narrative to pitch for a cover story? Immerse yourself in the field completely to understand how it works and then add your PR lens to identify news stories.

Work for the story: Good storytelling wins over celebrity heavy weights anytime. Content is everything and how you narrate it as crucial. Celebrities can help you increase salability of the story or the movie you are pitching but it needs to be communicated with equal savoir faire. Create opportunities on a continuous basis because media often wants to speak to a category of actors or films or series and dedicate all space to them. Creative pitches and hard sell is as essential in entertainment as in a startup.

The PR teams have to innovate to come up with creative story ideas that will help them continue and retain momentum in communication is crucial during and in between a series or movie.

Know Your Audience: The media landscape is changing rapidly. Your ability to match the right story with the right media channels so that it reaches the relevant target audience required for that product is going to be key in determining its success. Know your end consumer, their media consumption habits and your media through and through. Your finger on the pulse of this intersecting vein and looping this in with your client requirements is a trifecta masterpiece that you will need to perform for every single story. And you can’t rest on past laurels. You will be expected to raise the bar with every single story.

Educate on PR: This is continuous effort. The trifecta point will keep changing and as you play catch up you will need to educate your client along with it. Keep in mind that for the cast and crew who would have done 100s of stories in an year…some in a month, media fatigue sets in quickly. Journalists will ask them the same Qs about their background. A fair amount of education is done there as well helping them prep for interviews.  A lot of them might not think that it is necessary for them to do press before the launch. Your pitch needs to be effective to the client as well as the media.

What is the end goal: Go backstage. Align yourself with your clients end objectives and business plan. Your PR campaigns will have more impact when you align them accordingly and will have more meaning for the client.

PR Success : The PR industry as a whole lacks metrics, but it is very subjective to a particular vertical.

When you are dealing with a piece of content it is relatively easier to quantify. If you can excite your audience to watch the content, then your PR campaign is a success. Once they log in… the content takes over. For an individual if one is able to build a persona beyond a series, movie or play then it is a success.

Skill Set For Success:

• It is an all-consuming industry. You have to love it to be in it. Your ability to adapt, change and quickly modify your services accordingly will decide your success.
• It’s a high stress job. If you embrace it, it doesn’t get to you. You need to be a much deeper oasis of calm as compared to everyone else around you.
• Realism is important skill to have. The industry lives in a bubble and can have unrealistic demands. You have to be the voice of reason.
• Patience is a key skill that you cannot do without.
• Being a self-motivator is essential. It is easy to get complacent when you work with a celebrity individual or piece of content. To ensure you don’t loose your edge you need to set your own benchmarks and challenge yourself.

Crisis Communication: Risk assessment is a crucial skill to have in the industry that lives in a bubble and can often perceive a situation to be a crisis when no one else would have heard about it. As a PR professional you need to step out of this bubble and provide a dose of realism and help the client understand whether it is a crisis and warrants a reaction.

The regular rules that apply to handling any crisis in any other vertical of PR also apply here.

The above is by special arrangement via a collaboration with PRPOI.