PRAXIS is all about engagement, connection, and learning.  The attendees of the summit include senior communications directors, CEOs of PR firms, middle management – both from consulting firms and in-house.

Students of Class of 2020 got the opportunity to meet, listen and learn from the trendsetters in Public Relations. One of the highlights for the student of SCoRe was the interaction with Barri Rafferty, President, and CEO –Ketchum before her keynote on evidence based creativity in PR

Following are 8 highlights of Barri Rafferty’s session at PRAXIS8

by our 8 students of PR

1. The left and the right side of the brain paradigm –

Barri spoke about the left and the right side of the brain and how important it is to deliver the communication to get good results. She says that the left and the right side of the brain paradigm, where the right side of the brain works on data and the left on the creativity. She pointed out that the world is changing dramatically and disruptive technologies are coming every day which is evolving the targeting audience.

– By Neha Goyal (Read her full blog post here)

2. Change in technology consumption dynamics

We live in a “multi-channel, multi-screen and multi influenced e- commerce dialogue” and the world is constantly changing and according to a data she highlights during her speech referring to 2019 says that 118 emails, 41 million web messages and 4.5 million videos are exchanged in a single minute.

She says to reach a set of target audience the communication should be extremely effective because the average attention span of a human being is about 7 seconds, which is less than that of a goldfish.

– By Lakhshita Singh (Read her full blog post here)

3. How to deliver the message correctly

We have to come up with an idea that should be attractive enough to grab attention and informative in such a way that the message is delivered in a short span of time. Now we can use data to even drive creativity in PR, she gave an interesting example to explain this point- “we see a lot of women grooming tutorials on YouTube for women but have we encountered any such videos for men like how to shave, etc,- no. So if a brand comes up with an ad for it, that will be wasting your time and money as you are targeting a wrong set of audience because men are not interested in these types of videos.”

– By Kritika Khatwani (Read her full blog post here)

4. Creativity and Data

Creativity in PR can come from anywhere and from anybody even from a simple thought and can create wonders.

In our personal interaction with her she talked about that the Data has become an integral part of our daily lives and there is huge number of data available which makes it easier for us to identify while strong content with creativity can create magic. 

– By Snigdha Parasrampuria (Read her full blog post here)

5. Communication forms –

We can use communications to generate business results and here are some points-

Visual Storytelling can help in conveying the message with effectiveness and creativity. Influencer Mix was also one of the Key aspects she discussed in relation to the Jameson Irish Whiskey campaign: Jameson music. My favorite is “Cover the progress”, as the campaign delivered a strong message through simple words and was able to get a large number of earned media coverage. One should get inspired by all these campaigns and should try to inculcate the Knowledge in different campaigns.

– By Saloni Ginnare (Read her full blog post here)

6. Campaigns – How to design them

She spoke about campaigns and what to keep in mind when designing them so they are successful in reaching the target audience. When one tries to drive societal change, one must remember that the purpose should be really rewarding and be based on research and understanding. She also believes that the CCO can often be the conscience of the company. Many global CEOs have publicly said that it’s no longer okay to have financial stakeholders as number one but today companies have to prioritize because of the wide range of stakeholders from employees, customers, and consumers and what is the impact we are having on all of them. She added that there should be a deeper understanding of the audience, their style of purchasing, data and analyses, etc. This method would create evidence-based creative. It is essential to measure the impact to see what is working and change it, if it isn’t working, make it more relevant.

Another area she talked about was content to e-commerce. She said communications have a greater role and is currently driving the new lead generation to sales. We need to understand what drives their purchase behavior. We need to look at all the networks like Facebook, Instagram, etc. and we need to hire more digital video creators, marketers, copywriters, social media experts, etc. She went on to add that storytelling is a great medium and can also be used to communicate a message without using words.

– Nafisa Jalal (Read her full blog post here)

7. Power of purpose

There were several points that she covered in during her talk, one being the importance and power of purpose. To put forth her point she discussed a campaign called “prescribed to death” which established National Service Council as a leader in the fight against prescription opioid overdose. In the campaign it carved 22,000 faces of overdosed victims with the pills. A machine carved a face every 24 minutes. By giving this issue a human face Ketchum was able to get a lot of impressions which led to the success of the campaign. 

– By Niharika Dowerah (Read her full blog post here)

8. Case Studies

Barri Rafferty believes that it is important to leverage the available data and use creativity in PR to hit the right spot. The left brain-right brain paradigm helps us measure this with the help of evidence based creatives. She supports her argument with the help of a number of case studies throughout her speech. The first case study by “The Clorox Company” focused on the emotional impact of cleaning. The case study is a different way of thinking about measurement. In this case, the firm used the algorithm of happiness to create an impact among its target audience.

In the second case study she spoke about was focused on peanut allergies and was aimed to educate the masses about the implications of peanut allergies. This was a challenge was achieved through business and analytics by focusing on increasing peanut butter consumption to aware the public. Another case that she focused on identifying sales opportunity through digital platforms, mainly by optimization of social media and websites. This was an example of using both the left brain and the right brain.

– By Dikshita Kaushik (Read her full blog post here)

Interesting article – The house of PR