Why Is A Vegan PR Agency Needed?
Pursuing a vegan lifestyle is amongst the most noble causes you can follow, with most vegans saying it’s essential. (Especially given the state of the world’s climate.) Even the most cynical minds would be hard-pressed to disagree with this sentiment. The issue is, whilst many commend the lifestyle from the outside; it’s a much bigger ask to get them to commit to it themselves. One of the issues fuelling this is the image that veganism still possesses in the mainstream media.
What you want people thinking about when they hear ‘vegan’ are the health benefits, the good it does the planet, and the problems it can solve. What people actually think of is often militant do-gooders who love nothing more than to shout from their moral pedestal. Here at VerriBerri, a foremost vegan PR agency in the south-east; our job is to bridge that gap, day by day, inch by inch. We put together this blog on how important PR is to help veganism access that mainstream.
What Will A Vegan PR Agency Do?
The depth of resources and contacts that PR departments have at their disposal is incredible. Not only that, but over time PR executives develop a keen sense for what material should be pitched to which journalist. Time grants PR teams to develop relationships with journalists and secure them repeat work for the future. Simply put, there is no substitute for a good PR team. If you want your vegan brand, and veganism more generally, to start entering that mainstream echelon of the media; then you need to be securing pieces in leading publications. Without a PR team at a vegan PR agency, you’ll find that very hard to do indeed.
PR teams work tirelessly on your brand’s behalf to convince journalists you’re worth their time. Make no mistake, individuals working within PR have to graft like you wouldn’t believe. After all, they’re trying to instil long-lasting change. That’s the thing you have to remember, they’re not looking for a quick sell. They’re looking to initiate an entire shift in media perspective from veganism as something on the fringes of society, to being something that is the norm.
Things You Can Do Yourself
If you find that finances are a bit tight, or aren’t so bothered about accessing the highest-tier mainstream publications, then you can try tackling PR in-house yourself. Whilst we wouldn’t necessarily recommend this and would always say go with a vegan PR agency, there are certainly things you can do to help your cause. Firstly, you need to look at your writing in terms of grammar, content and style. Unless you have something that’s really going to hook a journalist they’re not going to bat an eyelid at something being put out by a non-PR firm. In order for them to look at your pitch or press release just long enough, you need to make sure your content is watertight and then some.
Check your grammar, check it and then check it again. Any spelling or grammatical mistakes and you’ll have lost the journalist in an instant. They don’t have time to be dealing with those who can’t proofread, it will say to them that quality-wise, you’re not a brand that sets the bar very high. Secondly, don’t come across as overtly advertorial, the last thing a journalist wants to trawl through is another sales pitch.
Get to the point as soon as you can whilst still writing in an engaging style. Finally, consider carefully when to pitch/release material – pressing publish on a Friday afternoon may not get the sort of response you’d been hoping for because they’ll be winding down for the weekend just like everyone else.
In-House Marketing
Whilst we recommend PR incredibly highly, marketing is something you’ll most likely be able to do in-house should you have the technology. Creating content such as blogs and slick graphics, working on the back-end of your website for SEO value and managing social media accounts can all be done by your brand. This is a great way of keeping costs down provided that you put the hard yards in. Marketing something as contentious as a vegan product will require extensive legwork. This effort will need to be continuous as well and not just a short burst. Consistency is absolutely vital in all forms of marketing, but particularly social media marketing. This level of consistency is much more difficult to sustain than you may have thought.
One word of advice about your marketing from a more birds-eye level, however, don’t come across as preachy. If you look at successful vegan marketing campaigns such as Gregg’s vegan sausage roll, they’re incredibly self-deprecating and humorous. As a lifestyle movement, veganism simply doesn’t have the numbers behind it to take the principled route. Humour is much more likely to win people over to your cause, and at the end of the day, that’s all it should be about. The more people you can convert to a vegan lifestyle, the better. It shouldn’t matter how that’s done and if it involves a bit of mockery and pride-swallowing, then so be it. Looking for the right tone to convey is one of the main remits of a vegan PR agency.
Contact Us
Veganism is going to increase in popularity as a lifestyle in the coming months and years. To prevent that increase plateauing, however, requires an attitude shift so that everybody sees it as an enticing prospect, and not just a proportion of the population. That way, we stand a better chance of turning what is currently a lifestyle choice into the default lifestyle. So, if you’d like to find out more about our vegan PR agency, then get in touch! Call VerriBerri today on 01376 386 850. We’d be really interested to have a sit down, a brew and discuss the angles your vegan brand wishes to focus on going forward!