Press releases are a great tool to build your brand credibility.
There's so much we need to discuss about branding.
Your brand credibility can be conveyed in four ways through press releases.
By using the logo or the image and then through marketing campaigns,
the vision of an organization can be shared as well as a couple of internal
operations that can be made known.
So, let's go ahead and look at each of these in detail.
The first way of communicating credibility is actually non-verbal and
that's just through a logo or an image.
Now given that this communication happens at a subconscious level,
the logo should be designed so as to convey the professionalism of the company.
A poorly designed logo, it goes without saying,
it will make people dismiss something outright.
So the logo should be included in a press release,
as well as on the company's website and on the product.
People will become familiar with this logo.
And eventually, they will come to prefer it over other brands.
Hence, why consistency is so important.
Now if you look at the new BP logo, it was launched back in 2000.
It was originally designed to win over environmentally aware customers.
And to achieve this aim at the time, what they did was they changed the slogan.
British Petroleum into Beyond Petroleum.
So, the greenness of the logo certainly communicates at
a subconscious level and it did achieve that result.
Now if you look at marketing campaigns, brand credibility is communicated
also verbally, for example, through the marketing campaign.
So here, the pricing and
the warranty of the product will affect the perception of the customers.
In fact, I relate quality directly to price.
So depending on the success of the marketing campaign, these aspects will
increase or can actually decrease the credibility of the product and the brand.
For example, a press release could actually announce an extension of
the warranty of the product and that will in turn.
Increase your brand credibility.
Let's take a look at the vision of the organization.
Brand credibility is communicated through the vision of the organization and
this should be clearly stated on on the website, and
in press releases where possible.
For example, there's the boiler plate area within a press release that gives
us an opportunity for that.
Really, there's three main aspects of the brand vision here.
We've got the values that will characterize us as a brand.
This is the companies beliefs about how business should be conducted.
For example, honesty or prioritizing customers needs and so forth and
then we've got the brand vision for the future and
they should spend ten years ahead showing how the company and
its products will fit in the changed future environment.
And then of course, we've got the purpose of the brand and this is not solely
related to profit, rather we should state how the brand is going to make the world
a better place and any of these aspects can be used to frame the press release.
For example, if a technology report announces that in ten years time,
70% of vehicles will need to be electric in order to reduce pollution.
How is the vision of your company going to fit with this change in the environment?
Now internal operations is interesting,
because brand credibility is communicated through internal operations and
this must reflect quite clearly how the company is going to deliver its region and
whether it has achieved what it had set out to do.
Business and performance reports are equally suitable topics for
the press release.
This will increase the brand credibility,
as well as provide some publicity on the matter.
Now if we look at the example of BP again following the deep water arise and
oil spill that was back in 2010,
BP actually developed a great deal of effort to regain brand credibility.
However, to truly live up to this green vision that they portray and
the green vision was to explore new ways of living without oil.
BP should not have invested in Deepwater Horizon and
continued to produce fossil fuels in the first place.
In fact, far from being authentic, their branding merely consisted in
creating a new acronym to appeal to environmental individuals.
The question is did they deliver on that?
So the crisis altogether with the discrepancy with BP's brand vision and
what they actually did may well, of course, a big loss for this company.
So this is certainly something to think about and I would encourage you
that you consider branding as part of your press release strategy, and think
every step of the way how can we also act in good faith towards our own brand.