My Favorite Saying: "Everything Works in Concert"

By Lorin Munchick
Published October 2020

When Elon Musk recently announced he was firing his whole internal PR team, I’m not sure he was doing it to engage a new agency (but if he did, my contact details are all over our website!). Rather he likely felt like other marketing channels were doing a better job securing coverage and online chatter. 

While none of our current clients have the same reach of a Twitter account with nearly 40 million followers like the Tesla founder does, they all have heard us mention (usually from our first conversation together) our belief that “everything works in concert”. Meaning, PR is part of a larger marketing strategy that is most effective when hitting potential customers with multiple touchpoints -- PR, earned and paid influencers, social ads, SEO/SEM, email marketing, retargeting amongst many others.

At the outset of all of our client relationships, we discuss in detail what their complete marketing strategy looks like, so that we can do our job more effectively as PR professionals. We pride ourselves on playing nicely in the sandbox with other specialists, understanding that each has a role to play for everyone to win.

What effective PR brings to the table is unique, authentic and credible perspectives from the media which paid activities often cannot achieve by themselves. This creates a wholeness to the brand, either B2C or B2B, and ensures that other marketing messages carry that much more resonance. Imagine seeing a pretty cool new product on your Instagram feed and wondering if it really is as good as it looks? Asking yourself, should I buy this and does it really deliver on the promise? Then while flipping through Twitter, you see a post with a review of that very same product. Yes, perhaps a little creepy with the data connections, but you click through to then read a feature about the product, understanding a trusted journalist’s perspective, learning more about this new brand and as a result, are that much closer to being sold on the purchase.

Some clients enter into conversations with Carve feeling that PR metrics often are a little fuzzier than the direct linear correlations of paid ads, making it a more difficult internal decision for them to justify. We have worked hard to close that gap, utilizing several tactics to begin better attribution to specific media coverage -- including proprietary coverage scoring, unique URLs and paying close attention to social engagement and sharing.

And so while we still aren’t sure if Elon’s retrenchment effort was a PR stunt in itself, it certainly had that effect, creating even more talking points for the media. If you are looking for similar creativity, let’s talk more.