PR may be serious business, but for consumer brands, the best results often come from adding a little fun into the mix. Just ask Courtney Merolle, a Bospar account director who has built her career helping brands boost their media presence through smart campaigns, unique reports — and yes, a playful touch.
In this Expert Insights interview, she shares why consumer brands should loosen the reins when working with a PR team, how using playfulness in PR strategies can open doors with reporters and when consumer brands should start preparing their PR strategy for the holiday season (hint: It’s now).
When it comes to PR for consumer brands, what are companies and execs getting wrong?
Most consumer clients that approach us for PR services typically have a background in marketing, and they bring that mindset to their PR goals. This can mean they have a message or strategy that’s overly narrow for PR purposes. In marketing, the focus is on getting the exact message out to the exact audience at the exact preferred time. When you’re paying for the placement, you can do that.
We often see a learning curve when brands transition into working with PR teams. Because it’s earned media, brands have to be more nimble with their overall message and the conversations they are joining. Ultimately, reporters’ articles are going to be on their terms — so PR’s strategy needs to be designed to fit into their stories and beats. If brands stay too close to their own lane and aren’t willing to be flexible, then they won’t see the high frequency of media coverage that they want.
How can consumer brands get the most from PR?
With consumer brands, the magic happens when they give their PR team the freedom and autonomy to be creative and more playful with their approach to media. However, consumer brands tend to focus on how PR pitches or the style or manner that we pitch in when, ultimately, how we pitch doesn’t necessarily dictate the final piece. If we’re given the ability to be more crafty, unique or even a little bit sensationalized with how we’re pitching, brands will get a lot more PR coverage from it. Designing PR with heavy oversight or reviewing not only kills creativity, but also slows us down. In this media landscape, speed is important.
I previously did social media for an ice cream brand that leaned into their playfulness and branding. Because they ensured that I knew their audience, messaging, style and language, the team had full trust in me to execute in a way that resonated with the audience while remaining a strong reflection of their company and products. I had free rein to be creative and didn’t have to run every idea by them — which is especially important because in social media, like PR, time is of the essence. This level of trust led to a big social media moment for the company when I found myself (while running the brand’s social accounts) amid a chat with high-profile figures Chrissy Teigen and John Legend via Twitter (now X). This helped it go viral and boost its visibility. In another timely moment, Olympian Chloe Kim tweeted that she’d love to have ice cream during her Olympic performance. By replying to her, the company landed a mention in The Washington Post, which was heavily syndicated.
PR works in the same capacity: Equip your team with a strong foundation, and then give them the space to do what they do best, which is engaging with media outlets.
What important consumer trends should be on brands’ radar? How have they shaped how you approach PR strategies for that sector?
Thanks to AI, we’re in an era where people are shopping in a totally different way, like asking ChatGPT for product recommendations. So, for consumer brands, knowing about generative engine optimization (GEO) is going to be incredibly powerful. This impacts us because it changes our PR strategies. Historically, consumer clients have been uninterested in news release distributions since they don’t directly go to their consumer. But GEO changes everything.
Having long-form and consistent messaging that goes out regularly and is easily scraped by AI influences how these LLMs understand and recommend products. Putting out news releases or prioritizing opportunities not simply based on UVM, but their AI-friendliness, will make a huge difference in consumer brands’ success. Bospar has put this into practice — so much so, when we ask new business prospects how they found us, many credit ChatGPT. So we can see how important content and AI is to search.
Unique or quirky data also goes a long way in securing coverage from top-tier media outlets. Now it also helps companies rank higher within AI searches. For example, when we worked with Jugo, a videoconferencing platform, we conducted a survey that gave us an attention-grabbing stat about people who participated in inappropriate activities during a work videoconference meeting. PCMag picked up the story, which was a great win.
I was curious if the stat would appear first in some of my AI searches surrounding the topic. Since the statistic is something most companies don’t have, I found that AI searches about the topic were quick to reference the PCMag article and our original news release, even years later.
Being quirky and creative can make a world of difference in how searchable your company is within AI. While this example is a bit wild, it shows that consumer companies have so much room to play with the type of messaging and data they create.
What’s the single most important PR investment a startup consumer brand should make?
Investing in social media and branding is incredibly impactful. It’s getting harder to differentiate consumer brands and their products in an overly saturated market. Today’s consumers aren’t usually buying an incredibly unique item, they’re buying a product that aligns with how they want to present themselves in this world. This means a company’s culture, ethics, social media presence and branding are all under scrutiny, making them all the more critical to prioritize and invest in.
Brands must define who they are, which means figuring out their tagline, message, tone, target customer for their product, etc. Think about Pepsi’s branding and how it cleverly competed against Coca-Cola via its playful messaging — I still remember the iconic vending machine ad all these years later. Another more modern example is Wendy’s, which did a stunning job in building a very sassy personal brand via X that captured the attention of millions of consumers.
Many companies skip this step, feeling they’ve already done the work. But when PR gets involved in messaging and branding workshops, a lot of value comes from it. We can help discover those social media and branding gaps, so that companies can capture their audience.
How can consumer brands best use PR to cut through the seasonal noise during the holidays?
Start planning early, and start now. Consumer brands and their PR teams should be thinking about Black Friday and Christmas in August or early September. Building out the data that defines trends or informs predictions around the holiday season takes a lot of legwork and can be a great project in the slower summer months. That way, they are ready to go with all campaign materials when the time is right, which is typically late September or October. While it feels early, media follows a similar track as department stores, putting out holiday gear as soon as kids go back to school — timelines are consistently moving up! As one reporter told me recently, if you are sharing holiday angles in November, “the train has already left the station!”
What consumer PR campaign are you especially proud of?
Our work with Luggage Forward stands out. Luggage shipping is a quirky and interesting topic, but there’s only so many times a reporter will write about it. If consumer brands stay too close to their lane and remain hyper-focused on a message that supports their value proposition, they’ll run out of content very quickly.
When presenting Luggage Forward to media outlets, our public relations strategy was to position it not just as the luggage shipping expert, but also to position its CEO as a travel expert. We expanded her media presence by having her comment on trending travel stories, hacks, travel news, etc. Because of that, we’ve been able to speak to more opportunities and secure a steady beat of media coverage. While each individual story may not connect back to Luggage Forward’s value proposition, we’ve raised their overall brand awareness among the media, which will continue to open up more doors. Media begets more media!
You enjoy staying active. What are some of your favorite ways of doing that?
I usually stick with weight lifting, Pilates and hot yoga. Recently, I purchased Bala weights — one- to three-pound weights that go on your wrists or ankles — to use during at-home YouTube workouts. I enjoy following Chloe Ting’s workouts, in particular — they’re free, and she has different programs available. It’s a nice way to keep up with exercise in the summertime when there’s a lot more travel and you may not have as much time to get into the gym.
