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Diving Into International Public Relations: 10 Rules For Staying Afloat

By Sharon VanSickle

KVO is no stranger to international PR. From our offices in Portland, Ore., and Silicon Valley, Calif., we serve technology clients from all over North America, most of which derive upwards of 50% of their revenues from outside the U.S. Just recently, for example, we conducted a technology forum at Tektronix where we brought in journalists from a number of Asian and European countries to join a contingent of domestic media. We've also been working with a partner agency in the UK to arrange for a European media and analyst tour this month for the CEO of ElectroGlas.

For almost 10 years now, KVO has been a partner in Pinnacle Worldwide - a network of PR firms with offices in over 60 locations around the world - and a thriving technology PR practice. Developing global PR strategies for our clients has long been an integral part of our business.

Below are 10 rules for international public relations we've picked up during our years in the industry. Keep them in mind when entering global PR waters and they are sure to help you capitalize on all the opportunities to be had there.

RULE #1: Decide what approach for extending your company's PR reach worldwide works best for you.
The underlying principal here is "know thyself," which really means be honest about your organization's limitations. For instance, if you elect to build your own network of "best in market" agencies, the time and energy you'll have to commit to overseeing their work and ensuring consistency of messages will increase exponentially.

RULE #2: Do your homework.
Not only will this help you avoid some very embarrassing missteps, it may allow you to tap into a market opportunity that others aren't already swarming over. One of the most potentially humiliating missteps is the failure to determine how a name or slogan will translate. Take Coors' "Turn it Loose" slogan, for example, which translated into Spanish means "suffer from diarrhea." Or the Perdue chicken slogan that translated into "it takes an aroused man to make a chicken affectionate." It can happen to anyone if you're not vigilant. One of the logic analyzers KVO introduced at Tektronix translated into "outhouse" in Scandinavia. And with respect to those "hidden" market opportunities, consider that while Europeans spend $464 per capita on IT each year (vs. $1,095 being spend per capita by Americans), if you dissect the numbers further, you find that Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark and The Netherlands outspend the U.S. on a per capita basis. So don't just jump into Germany, France, the UK and Italy as your initial European markets without really considering your market opportunities.

RULE #3: Beware distributors doing PR.
Many young companies use distributors as their major channel in overseas markets. And often these channels are established with minimal company staff in place in those markets to monitor their ability to tackle the PR strategies. It's important to remember that most distributors aren't PR experts in their respective countries, and, more importantly, most are not representing your product, service or messages exclusively. In fact, in many instances, they are also representing competitive products. So what's the poor journalist or analyst to believe?

RULE #4: Just because these countries may fit in Texas' hip pocket, don't consider the budget investment to be pocket change.
For most companies there's a major disconnect between what percentage of revenues you expect to derive from a certain geography and the percentage of communications dollars you're investing there. Agencies in Europe, Asia or Latin America all employ PR professionals who expect to be fairly compensated. And the labor overhead in many of these countries is substantially higher than that in the U.S. It is not unreasonable to expect $100K for a modest, ongoing PR program in a major international market.

RULE #5: Don't "Do Europe."
RULE #5a: Don't "Do Europe" if your budget is less than your U.S. budget.
Let's face it: the difference between Germany and France is as big as between Canada and Mexico. There isn't a "one size fits all" solution for every country in Europe any more than there is for every country in the world. You may think that "Just Do It" was universal, but there were folks from Nike and their agencies on the ground in every major market massaging that message and tailoring it to resonate in each individual market.

RULE #6: Speaking the same language may be the only thing you have in common.
U.S. companies tend to go into English-speaking countries assuming that everything is the same. They're wrong - these countries aren't just another U.S. state. There are differences in consumer behavior, in marketing etiquette, in how the media and analysts operate, in the tone of voice you must adopt in your messages.

RULE #7: Out of sight, out of mind.
Lots of the companies think they can descend on a country for a media tour and then disappear for 12-18 months and expect a continuous flow of media coverage. U.S. clients should be in front of the media and analysts once a quarter, with an aggressive speaker's circuit and proactive media relations on top of that. Why would we expect that a much stingier approach will keep our companies above the noise level in other countries?
If you can't sustain your PR efforts throughout the year in every country, then focus your PR energies and investment on fewer countries.

RULE #8: Use local know-how.
There's just no way that you can direct effective PR programs from afar without tapping into the local brain trust to help ensure your strategies are appropriate and successful and using local feet on the street to manage relationships with influential analysts and media. Even where language isn't a barrier, we can't sustain the kind of relationship with foreign journalists from Portland or Silicon Valley that is needed to achieve continuous success. And that local talent will help tie your messages to local business issues and create more newsworthy, what we call media-genic, stories. In other words: if you hire a local expert, listen to them!

RULE #9: Be brave, be bold.
Just like here at home, no meek thinkers become known in their industry abroad. It's an incredibly competitive PR market in most major foreign markets and you need to stand out to be recognized or considered a leader.

RULE #10: Appropriate the time necessary to ensure that a PR program can be creatively and effectively implemented.
Now I know that we're all operating on Internet time these days, but we often - too often - end up providing our international team members with insight into the planned program or media materials days or weeks before they're expected to roll things out. Work that we've been working on and developing for months is sprung on them at the last minute. It's critical to the success of your PR programs around the world that you engage and involve your international team members at the beginning of the planning process and at every step along the way. With Tektronix, for instance, a marketing and communications program can't be fully developed and blessed (this means funded) unless we can show that involvement and engagement has taken place in some very proscribed fashion.

In conclusion, don't consider PR a "cheap" substitute for advertising. As was pointed out in a Harvard Business Review article in early 1997, many very successful brands - like Haagen-Dazs, The Body Shop, Swatch, and others - skipped any ad blitz and used public relations strategies to build brands in Europe and elsewhere around the world.

(Adapted from a Tech Tuesday presentation on 3/10/98)