Accessing The Right PR For Kids
Garnering positive exposure for your brand can be tricky at the best of times. When you throw the word ‘kids’ into the mix, those difficulties are compounded tenfold. The reason for this is that there’s so much more red tape, legislature and safeguarding guidelines to follow – and rightly so.
Your brand shouldn’t suffer from a lack of exposure just because you’re targeting a younger demographic. So, what’s the solution? How can you toe that line between getting meaningful brand exposure, whilst at all times maintaining the children’s best interests? The answer is to utilise an agency that specialises in PR for kids. Some people assume that the skillsets needed for kids’ PR are the same as for any other brand. This couldn’t be further from the truth. The team here at VerriBerri, an agency specialised in PR for kids, wanted to explain some of the intricacies of this specific subset of PR.
Children’s Wellbeing Is Number One. Always.
There are certain occasions in life where you need do things properly. PR for kids’ brands is one of those times. As a children’s brand, your care of duty to your customer is greatly amplified when compared with more standard companies. The microscopic, forensic kind of attention you have to pay when making any decision involving a children’s brand is utterly warranted. Especially when you consider the potential ramifications should such an adherence fail to be met. Yes, your brand is looking to make money and provide a good service. More than that, though, you’re looking to do that in a way which never endangers a child in any way.
If your brand, untrained in the arts and intricacies of PR, attempts to gain brand exposure in-house, you are likely to fall short of such measures of compliance. A specialist PR team will land in no such pitfalls, rather, they’ll stay abreast of all the latest guidelines and safeguarding measures whilst still gaining your brand traction. What if a child is the brand itself? If you’re dealing with any sort of personality whereby the brand happens to be the child themselves, then you need to deal with this equally carefully. A PR team acts as a very good buffer between the media, who virtually always have an agenda, and the client. Whilst parents can do this job, they’re so personally attached that it can be hard for them to remain objective over matters. The media are an overwhelming wolf-pack at the best of times, having your own PR team in front of you can be more beneficial than you’d realise. With a team targeted on PR for kids, that media ‘wolf-pack’ becomes a far less intimidating proposition.
PR Is A Very Broad Term
What does PR have in common with a hexagonal piece of plastic held aloft on a rainy day – they’re umbrellas! An umbrella term, to be exact. PR, or public relations, isn’t simply one thing. It encompasses a wide-ranging spectrum of services dependent on the situation or project at hand. Traditionally, PR was about gaining your brand exposure within publications; whether these were magazines, print newspapers or brochures. This still forms a large part of what PR is today, but there’s also so much more.
Take events, for example. An agency that works on PR for kids, will not only secure you or your brand a place/stall at key trade events, they’ll attend them for you on your behalf as well. This is, again, especially important if the brand is someone under the age of eighteen, where a public appearance may not be what you want or feel comfortable with. Just in the way that PR is a broad term, so too is the term kids brand. When you think of this term, you have to remember that this incorporates wildly differing age groups.
A kids’ brand can be a product for babies, or it can be a service offered to youngsters in their late teens. You need to fully understand your audience, therefore, and put your finger on the pulse of what is the correct tone to adopt for your brand. What may be appropriate for a toddler’s brand, may appear patronising to children only to a couple of years older! This seems obvious, but far too many brands fail to nail their brand’s tone. A team specialised in PR for kids can help you ascertain that brand tone of voice. Then, subsequently, they’ll use that same tone when pitching to potential publications on your brand’s behalf.
There Ain’t No Crisis Like A Kids Brand Crisis
There are few sectors where crises are as damaging as they are to children’s brands. When parents’ children come into the conversation, trust is much easier lost than it is gained. Crises can often bubble up from something as innocuous as a miscommunication or misunderstanding. The public rarely see it as such, however, and so having a crisis management team on-board to help proactively deal with the aftermath of any potential crises is incredibly important. An agency which offers PR for kids, will also meticulously examine where things went wrong, and construct contingency so that such a crisis will never happen again. Further to that, they’ll start on the long journey of rebuilding trust; this rebuilding comes from one thing and one thing only. Honesty. If you make mistakes, be honest, people will respect you a heck of a lot more; they’re also far more likely to get on side with your brand once more.
As you can begin to see, operating a children’s brand can be a minefield, but the benefits can be wonderful. Seeing your product or service provide children with that innocent, uninhibited joy that only they can experience is a life-affirming thing. It’s a wonderful thing from a PR agency’s perspective, as well; the creativity and more abstract kind of thinking that a children’s brand affords is matched by very few other sectors. So, if you’d like to find out more about our agency delivering PR for kids, then get in touch! Call VerriBerri today on 01376 386 850 or click here to fill out our online form.