Marketing often operates in silo. Pick your channel. Agree your message. Make it stand out. Done.
Results in silo are great, but they might not contribute to the goals of the brand at the highest level.
But you can challenge this thinking, by adopting an approach rooted in PR, guided by a creative framework, a killer idea, a good hook and a compelling story.
Integrated campaigns that are crafted with a PR-mindset ensure goals are shared through-the-line. There isn’t one single outcome as a marker of success, but many, some measurable, some that drive conversion, but many more intangible that will provide waves of awareness which translate into action over time. With the right reinforcement.
This is brand-building territory.
And in brand-building territory, doing five things at once (deliberately), with each element designed to reinforce the other, almost always beats doing one thing perfectly in silo.
It’s in the consistency of that brand-building that you start to see the proof in the pudding. And that is where PR comes in.
The difference between reach and resonance
The challenge with brand campaigns is that awareness on its own or as a one-off is fragile. You can achieve enormous reach, millions of impressions, strong engagement, and still watch it evaporate within weeks if there’s no structural reason for it to stick in people’s brains.
We don’t store information because it was delivered to us once. We remember things because they are encountered in multiple contexts, reinforced over time, and connected to something we already care about.
The more ways a piece of information reaches us – through different channels, in different formats, from different sources, in different words – the more likely it is to stick.
This is the crux of the argument for integrated PR campaigns.
PR responds to how memory and brand preference actually work – building slowly, over time, with the right messaging, in the right places, working together in collaboration, rather than apart in silo. Rinse and repeat.
Making each moment count
The power of integration comes not from repetition of the exact same message, asset, video or promotion, but from complementary consistency.
This is where each channel, activating its own version of the same narrative content, is tied together within an ecosystem that makes the campaign make sense as its story gets pieced together.
An example in action…
Let’s look at how this played the hero campaign we did for Hoseasons – “Say Hi to Summer.”
Broadcast PR: Storytelling delivered by ITV presenter Josie Gibson did something very specific by providing third-party credibility at scale. Ambassador-led broadcast PR created the perception that Hoseasons is culturally relevant and being talked about, not just promoted.
Ambassador stays and influencer content: Content partnerships were leveraged to create depth and context. The audience isn’t just being marketed to but instead, they’re watching someone they like have an experience they’d like to have. This is where brand aspiration and discovery takes flight.
Experiential marketing: PR stunts operate on a completely different playing field; direct-to-consumer. Physical, memorable, sensory experiences cut through in a way that digital content rarely achieves. The people who encountered the Ice Cream Van Tour didn’t just see the brand; they interacted with it.
A spike in bookings during launch week showed that this combination of channels produced a real result in a way that a couple of social posts just wouldn’t have been able to replicate.
The compound effect
When channels work together, they multiply the potential impact of a campaign.
For consumers, each brand encounter should build on the last.
The social content made them aware. The media coverage made them take it seriously. The physical interaction made them feel something. The influencer content added authenticity. The competition drove engagement. And before you know it, brand discovery felt natural, not manufactured.
By the time that consumer visits a website, or clicks follow on social media, the brand isn’t just one option among many, but one they feel they have a relationship with. Brand preference is often decided by exactly this kind of accumulated familiarity.
This is the compound effect of integrated campaigns. And it’s why the question “which channel drove the booking?” is often the wrong question.
The honest answer for campaigns like this one, is that the booking was the cumulative win, the result of multiple encounters across multiple channels over a sustained period that all made sense, rather than vying to cannibalise each other.
What this means in practice
To get the most out of an integrated campaign its all in the planning – and that shouldn’t hinge on an ROI or a silo, but instead start with addressing the right questions….
What do we need to achieve?
Which combinations of activity get us there?
It requires agencies and clients who are willing to think through-the-line and work collaboratively towards the same goal.
Resist the temptation to silo and measure each channel in isolation, and trust in the compounding logic of a sustained, multi-channel approach.
When storytelling is genuinely integrated and consistent, it produces something that no single-channel campaign can match: the feeling that a brand is everywhere, is speaking to me (the consumer), and is worth paying attention to.
That’s what a good integrated strategy is built to do.
Thinking about how to build a campaign that works harder across multiple channels? Let’s talk.
