Picture this. When you see two gifts laid out on a table (and you know that the value of what is inside is the same), one is wrapped with a beautiful festive wrapping paper, tied together with a thick, satin ribbon, and top it all, a beautiful handwritten card on it; while the other one is in a crumpled plastic bag with no decoration effort whatsoever. Which gift would you choose to pick up? Or better yet, which gift would you be happy to give to a friend?
For all you cynical peeps out there, thinking that you are not one to fall for beautiful packaging, we know that automatically, on the first instinct, you would be attracted to the first one.
Which now leads us to our point of this article. We are here to share with you how important it is for brands to utilize press kits as part of their marketing strategy, especially if you are looking to gain organic social media coverage through the content creators that you are giving your products to.
With our experience in working on various social media campaigns, we can guarantee that a thoughtfully curated PR kit goes a long way. With so many brands competing for attention on social media, it’s important for us to go back to the basics – to which we want to create a meaningful experience for the content creators right from the start and that means from the moment they receive your products through a PR kit. Here is why. 1. It builds a good first impression of your brand and products.
When you distribute your products to key opinion leaders in the hopes they talk about your brand, products or services, you are trying to leave them with a memorable first impression. We would like to remind you that these content creators receive products from various brands all the time, so it would take something a bit more special to entice them to talk about your brand.
Think of it as your very first date. You would at least put on a nice outfit to meet the person you are interested in, just so you would leave a good impression. Same goes for your initial contact with a content creator who will potentially share about your brand on their platform. With a thoughtfully curated PR kit, you show them that you genuinely care about them, and want your products to add value to their lives – no matter how small the impact is. Ultimately, it just shows that your brand is willing to go beyond a transactional exchange of products for a good word, but rather, you are trying to build a relationship with them simply because you are confident your products would be beneficial to them.
2. It creates a memorable brand experience.
When you invest in curating a meaningful PR Kit, you are investing in creating a brand experience in the most straightforward and tangible way.
When someone receives a carton of milk for a social media campaign, that is all there is to it. It is just a carton of milk they can find walking down the aisle of any grocery store. But when you send them a DIY breakfast at home kit complementary to that same carton of milk – paired with healthy ingredients to make a wholesome breakfast like granolas, pancake mix and even the kitchen tools and instructions to create these breakfast meals, suddenly what you are giving them is not just a carton of milk, but a week’s worth of healthy breakfast that can kickstart a lifestyle that your brand advocates for.
And just with that, you create a lasting brand experience that is not only crafted for the influencer or media platform, but rather for the audience that is consuming the content created by them.
3. It drives talkability.
Adding on to the brand experience, a well thought out PR kit would drive content and talkability on social media.
When there is a story told through a PR kit, suddenly the items are not product-driven, but rather it becomes value-driven.
When a shampoo made with natural ingredients is highlighted in a way to which the ingredients are so beneficial that it can be made into healthy food recipes, it creates a story that can be shared and hyped about on social media.
Suddenly the content is no longer just about the shampoo, but about the benefits of the key ingredients, it is made up of. With that, you can translate your brand values through a tangible and easy to visualise manner for your target audience to relate to.
Now that we have convinced you on the importance of creating an experiential PR kit, we are going to be backing it up with some past case studies to which PR kits basically was the superhero that successfully brought our clients to results of flying colours.
Looking back at campaigns that were previously executed involving PR Kits, such campaigns performed relatively well. Why? Instead of just focusing on the paid branded content postings by the influencers engaged, some of them would go the extra mile in posting organic content for their own page/account and this would usually be in the form of unboxing videos which greatly benefits both parties.
Taking the Kundal campaign for example, although an unboxing was not part of the set deliverables, some just gave it as a value add because PR Kits brings a sense of exclusivity & influencers appreciate that. With PR Kits, the brand is seen to be appreciative of their collaboration and in turn, influencers provide these videos as an added bonus. The Kundal campaign managed to gather an engagement rate that exceeded the industry benchmark. Since it was a combination of an unboxing and products review via the influencers Instagram Stories, by looking at the percentage that it achieved collectively, it is safe to say that the influencers managed to drive their content well which led to a good audience response.
Let’s take a look at one last campaign who’s PR Kit was perfectly out of the ordinary. Have you ever thought of breaking a block of ice in order to retrieve your PR Kit? Well, Sunsilk did it. To market their product – Sunsilk Hijab that aims to provide scalp relief for their consumers who wear hijabs, they decided to get a little creative with their PR KIts. Their PR Kit was quite literally a block of ice (to resemble the ice cold feeling you get when using Sunsilk Hijab) and the influencers involved had to break the ice block to get to the product.
For Sunsilk, they wanted to do something out of the ordinary for their unboxing video. So what could be more out of the ordinary than seeing influencers breaking a block of ice? Yes, it sounds crazy at first but it gets people talking. Now that is creative and helps gather more attention to the brand and product.
So you see, adding PR Kits for a campaign and distributing it to influencers can sometimes bring unexpected results. Influencers are innovative, they will find ways to create organic postings when it comes to PR Kits and that right there is something worth noticing. It shows how much effort they put into the line of work that they are venturing into, whether they are new to the industry or not.
On top of that, by giving influencers PR Kits can also sometimes show how much brands actually value them. Some influencers have shared with us how much they loved the PR Kits which they have received. This actually gives influencers a certain sense of value which in the long run would translate into brand loyalty.