Vancouver PR Agency

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There is a great deal of energy at AHA today – right across the country – from our offices in Gibsons and Vancouver to our long-term contractors in Calgary, Toronto and Halifax. Today, we officially launch our Brand Journalism services. You can check out some information on these new services here.



The fact is – Brand Journalism has been around for several years; McDonald’s CMO Larry Light coined the phrase in the early 2000s. There are many definitions out there. Some we agree with; some have a different approach than we do. Our definition can be found here.



At the heart of what we bring to clients with our new AHA Brand Journalism services is the opportunity for you to tell your story to your stakeholders in a credible, engaging and interesting way, using the right medium for the right audience. That also means getting it out to your audience through the right distribution channel – whether that’s a social media network, your website, YouTube or other avenues. (There is also a crucial measurement component and the expectation that content created through the Brand Journalism approach will support the organization’s business objectives, but that’s for another blog post.)



At AHA, we’ve always had a focus on creating credible, relevant content for clients – whether it was for a news release, a targeted pitch, a video interview, video news release or other communication vehicle. It had to be newsworthy, it had to meet news values and whatever the topic, it had to be a compelling story. Identifying and packaging great stories has always been at the heart of great public relations and what we do here at our agency. But now, we’ve put together a world-class team of print and broadcast journalists and strategic communicators. You can see the team and our bios here. I will be blogging shortly about the Brand Journalism Team. The skill sets, expertise and experience on this team are exceptional and we’re incredibly excited about each person and the combined talents.



Back to the topic at hand. We all know that the world has changed drastically when it comes to communication. A decade ago, the most strategic way for an organization to get its story told was to generate media attention. While media relations is still an important component of what we do, there are additional opportunities to tell your story – directly to your stakeholders. This is where Brand Journalism comes in. We work with you to define goals and objectives and identify great stories about your organization, your brand and the people – employees, your senior executive, customers or clients – who bring your brand to life. We also help you to develop a clear understanding of your stakeholders – from staff to potential and current clients or customers, to industry influencers and thought leaders, to your board of directors, to media, and to government. This includes reaching out in the way that specific stakeholder groups expect or need to be communicated with – and when. We don’t just create great content and walk away. We help you to reach out to your target audience and engage. We measure your success and challenges every step of the way so that we can refine or evolve the program. We also look at how we can effectively maximize and repurpose the use of the content – making the most of your human resources and budget. It’s all about providing great content, great value and telling a great story.



This is the first blog post outlining the value of Brand Journalism and showcasing the new AHA Brand Journalism services. Over the next few weeks, we’ll blog about how Brand Journalism can augment, support or extend your media relations campaign, how much we respect and admire journalists and bloggers (Brand Journalism isn’t about replacing the media), and about our Brand Journalism Team and what the benefits might be to your organization.



There is a great deal of passion behind our new Brand Journalism services. We strongly believe in the value of these services. We are confident in our ability to deliver exceptional, professionally produced stories in a range of mediums that will engage and interest your stakeholder group(s) – not to mention the positive impact it will have on your overall brand’s reputation.


We’d love to hear what you think about Brand Journalism.



If you think your organization would benefit from our services, please send me an email or give us a call at 604.303.1052.

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At AHA, we have spent a great deal of time focusing on what makes a great pitch – to media, to bloggers and, depending on the objective of what we’re working on, to other external and internal stakeholder groups. A good pitch tells a story. It should be a short story, but it is a story – one that piques curiosity and provides relevant information through stats, facts, details and writing that paints a picture. More and more often these days, you can also use video or audio in a pitch. We often create video news releases or pitches for clients and have experienced strong success in this area.

There is a great piece on Ragan.com on how to create a great pitch. It’s worth a read.

Before you head over there, I want to focus on additional opportunities that can come from developing a good pitch. Over the past year, AHA has done quite a bit of research on the art of the pitch and how pitches to a range of stakeholders, including media and bloggers, have evolved. It has been an interesting process and, in part, our discoveries here have led us to develop a new area at our PR agency. We’ll be “soft” launching this tomorrow, so I won’t say any more about this yet. I hope you will check us out on Wednesday to learn more about this great, new opportunity we are offering clients.

The world communicates differently these days – the majority of your stakeholders have online access and use it regularly. This is a given and it’s time to embrace the fact that online communication is at the core of how the world communicates.

When you develop a good pitch – one that is newsworthy, that showcases your organization, that is authentic, interesting and even entertaining, that provides a glimpse of your brand personality and of the people that work in your organization – it is important to look at it from different angles of how that story can be used, how it can be told, and who would be interested in hearing it. Creating interesting and engaging pitches for journalists and bloggers is one component of communication. For our clients, we often look at how we can take an interesting pitch – which, I must repeat, is a concise story idea put into a style and format that works for the specific journalist or blogger – and use it for other stakeholders, if it doesn’t get picked up by media.

Newsrooms are shrinking; bloggers are overwhelmed with good (and bad) pitches. Generating traditional media coverage or having a blogger write about your organization isn’t a given – even if you have a great story that would/could/should work for them. Sometimes there just isn’t space to cover your story; other times there isn’t enough time or person power to do so. It is just the reality of the times we live in.  However, that doesn’t mean that the story can’t be told; it means you have to think of other ways you could use the content.

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The discussion about the connection between PR and social media is always interesting to me. At AHA, we believe that social media provides an opportunity to share information, learn, educate and connect – and that has always been a part of what we do as public relations professionals. However, we also work with some great marketing and advertising agencies and there are areas and opportunities in their world for social media as well. We often partner with them on campaigns and we’ve never had an issue understanding where each component or initiative lives or how it fits together in the bigger picture.

I think that it’s important to remember that social media provides an opportunity to connect and engage. It also offers people the ability for interactivity, giving them the chance to put their voice forward to an organization, brand or initiative. Sometimes an organization’s social media initiative is through a contest or a marketing campaign; other times it is through what we would consider a more PR-related approach. Some examples are short video segments that showcase the people behind the scenes of a company; Q&As with industry experts, the CEO or other senior executive; thought leadership pieces such as white papers and Twitter conferences or “meetups” (tweetups).

With our clients, we work with them to develop the objectives of the initiative or campaign. We then define the strategy and build the plan. It is there that we begin to identify how we will share information, create engagement and interest, and make sure that the relevant stakeholder group has the opportunity to participate in a way that makes sense to them. And during this process, we bring everyone involved to the table and focus on creating a team effort, rather than a territorial battle. However, we have had projects where there were some challenges in this area and this is where it is important to already have clearly defined objectives, strategy and the roles and responsibilities that you can look back on.

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Here at our PR agency, we’re big fans of Jeff Bullas. He’s a smart and funny guy. More often than not, one of us will come into the office talking about a social media tool, technique or strategy; and, like magic, we get the link to Jeff’s blog and he is talking about the same thing. It’s like he’s a mind reader – an incredibly smart, strategic mind reader. And he is funny, irreverent and not just a little cheeky. We LOVE him.



And so – it was no surprise to see that another one of our favourite sites Ragan.com has a piece by Jeff that has some pretty impressive stats and facts about Google+. I have to admit, at AHA we’ve been checking it out. We took a great webinar on it by Chris Brogan and we’ve been reading everything we can about it. It looks interesting – but right now, it is a bit of a ghost town.



For the most part, AHA clients aren’t early adopters of new technology or social media tools. Our clients could be called mid-adopters and some are mid-to-later adopters. Many of our clients want to know where their stakeholders are before adopting a social media tool or technology and that makes sense for them. And it’s our role to guide, assist and support them. We are a communications agency that understands social media – not a social media marketing firm. It is important for us to be on top of Google+ and I am finding it very interesting. It certainly provides a range of options that Facebook doesn’t offer. However, we’re still watching it. We’ll keep you posted.



And if you don’t follow Jeff Bullas, you really should. He’ll up your social media game.

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