Why We’re Turning Our Back on PR


Please note: This is a very rare post about us. Come back tomorrow if you’d rather read more B2B marketing and PR ideas and insights.

As of today, we’re turning our back on public relations – not as a discipline but as a siloed function – and saying goodbye to BlissPR. Our new name will be Bliss Integrated Communication. The new brand reflects who we are now…not who we used to be.

It wasn’t an easy choice.

We still passionately believe in the opportunity to earn audience trust and attention, as opposed to buying it. The news media is morphing, so there’s a constant stream of new ways to build relationships with reporters. Another bonus? Writing skills have never been more important due to the cluttered marketing environment.

Perhaps most importantly, we still love being in the business of marketing ideas. The bigger the idea, the more complex the idea, the more we love wrestling it to the ground to create clarity and action.

But PR is a silo. It’s certainly a meaningful, critical component of almost every successful B2B marketing program. It just doesn’t have big enough shoulders to carry the weight of business communication by itself.

We know “Integrated Communication” does a better job of describing how we help our clients. Our job is to solve business problems with an actionable marketing strategy that can naturally extend into a rich universe of tactics, including content marketing, search engine optimization, events, web and social analytics analysis and, of course, PR.

These days, our client work covers an incredibly broad array of activities, from our traditional media relations work to developing a Google Analytics dashboard to creating an e-book to conducting a 25 country social media audit to parsing FINRA regulations to writing a song for a client blog.  We just don’t believe that the term “public relations” adequately illustrates all of those activities.

In the end, what matters to us most? Extending the 37 year foundation we’ve built with so many clients and alumni. We believe in keeping promises, demonstrating smart, creative ideas and delivering outcomes. Oh, and retaining our right to be passionate about ideas – even if it means revealing our geeky side.

That will never change.

Do you want to see our brand in action? Visit our new website www.blissintegrated.com to see more about us.

What do you think about our new name? How would you define “public relations?” Has “integrated communication” earned the right to replace it?

 

Connect with Elizabeth:

Phone: 212.840.0017

Email: Elizabeth@blissintegrated.com

Twitter: @elizabethsosnow

LinkedIn: Elizabeth Sosnow