If selling a product is the first goal of any marketing campaign, selling the brand itself comes a close second. This is the essence of public relations: controlling what is said about a brand and directing the conversations around it to maintain the brand’s public image.
PR is a massive worldwide industry and any company with a public profile needs to engage in it to some degree. In addition, the internet has introduced a number of new challenges and opportunities that traditional PR practitioners need to understand. An excellent recent example of web PR in action is how clothing brand LOFT turned a negative sentiment around to their benefit. In July 2010, the company posted some pictures of a skinny model wearing their new cargo pants on their Facebook
profile. Even though the photos were pretty typical of the brand’s previous promotions, fans complained that the pants wouldn’t look good on normal-sized, “real” women. They demanded proof that the pants were suited to all body types. In response, LOFT’s own manager of digital programs, a woman named Julie, posed for photos wearing the pants and uploaded them to the Facebook page the
next day. Other women of different sizes from the company did the same. The fan response was extremely positive, the product was affirmed and customers became more supportive of the brand. You can read more about this and some other web PR scenarios here: mashable.com/2010/08/30/social-media-attacksbrand.