How PR teams can help a brand rebound from a product flop

There’s no such thing as surefire homerun when it comes to a product launch or campaign. No matter the quality of content or the product its promoting, sometimes things just don’t resonate with the target audience.

While no one likes to admit failure, there are important lessons that a PR team can learn from these situations. By understanding what went wrong, there’s a chance to make fixes that can salvage the effort.

“If you’re thinking about a PR campaign that’s supporting a product launch, but the sales aren’t there, then you’ve got to ask yourself why,” said Anne Marie Squeo, founder and CEO of Washington, D.C.-based Proof Point Communications.

Squeo experienced one of those challenges firsthand while a vice president of communications at IBM. By the time she joined the company, it had already  issued what Squeo described as “hundreds of press releases” about Watson, its AI-based offering. The focus of those communications was to highlight the company’s thought leadership in the still-emerging artificial intelligence space.

The technology famously beat trivia masters on Jeopardy in 2011. By 2016, then-IBM CEO Ginni Rometty boldly stated that Watson was on track for use in some form by a billion people by the end of the following year.

That didn’t happen.

The product was expensive to adopt, and it wasn’t the industry-changing, do-everything solution that it was made out to be. In fact, it didn’t work very well. As a result, clients openly expressed their disappointment to the press, and the narrative surrounding Watson as a breakthrough in artificial intelligence quickly turned into a PR and business issue.

“We really had to move quickly to understand why this was happening, what we had said, and how we had fallen short of our promises,” explained Squeo, a former vice president of corporate communications for IBM. One of her assignments had her oversee Watson, cloud & technology communications.

First things first: Determining where things went wrong

When facing a struggling campaign or product launch, the first thing to do is to perform a root cause analysis to diagnose why things didn’t go as planned.

At IBM, Squeo and her team started by examining all of its previous releases, public statements and advertising language related to Watson. The goal of the “autopsy” was to understand the extent of the problem and where the disconnect lay between marketing claims and actual product performance.

In the case of Watson, the product simply wasn’t meeting the hype surrounding it.

Often, companies blame marketing and PR when sales don’t come through, Squeo said, but if “you’ve got an amazing product, no amount of marketing and PR can hide its appeal.” She gave the example of the almost-overnight success of Dollar Shave Club.

“PR can’t fix it unless we understand and work to address the reason the story appeared in the first place,” she added.

Scale back communications to avoid brand damage

When facing a difficult campaign or product launch, Squeo emphasized the importance of limiting public messaging while working to address those internal issues to avoid doing additional damage to the brand.

Generally, if a product launch isn’t getting traction or is receiving criticism, the PR team should turn its outward-facing messaging to the successful business areas while reworking its approach to the field product, Squeo said. Any messaging about the struggling product or campaign should focus on facts and clarifying information.

Squeo left IBM in late 2018, so she wasn’t there for all the aftermath of the Watson fallout. From the outside, it felt like the company had stopped talking about Watson almost entirely. She agreed with the approach.

“I didn’t see many ads for it, and when I watched IBM’s investor days, they barely mentioned it,” said Squeo. “So, I think that’s a clear sign they’d moved on. They were focusing on other parts of the business instead.”

Don’t be afraid to try new things

Just because a campaign doesn’t hit right away, it doesn’t mean the product is bad or there isn’t a market for it. PR teams need to test and iterate, adjusting media strategies and messaging as needed based on data and feedback.

If traditional PR and marketing haven’t gotten many hits, it may be time to shift to a paid approach, where you don’t need to convince someone to promote your product, Squeo said. If the paid approach is done well, it might help the other side and make the media more receptive to pitches.

In some instances, the best strategy is simply giving more time for the campaign or product to find its audience. Some campaigns or products take longer to have an impact, especially if the product or service is expensive or a longer-term investment rather than a short-term necessity, Squeo said.

“If one thing isn’t working, you can try shifting your focus to see if you get better results by shifting your approach,” she said. “You should always be looking to learn and adjust.”

Be a thought leader, not just a ‘doer’

Rather than simply executing orders, Squeo stressed the need for PR professionals to take a more involved approach in the campaign analysis.

“It’s our responsibility to take that expertise and make it actionable and explainable to our internal partners, whether it’s the product development team, sales team, marketing team or CEO,” Squeo said.

“We need to clearly explain why we’re recommending a particular course of action, what results we expect to achieve,” she added. “If those results aren’t delivered, why that happened and how we’re addressing it.”

When facing a campaign or product challenge, it’s vital to collaborate across departments. PR teams should work hand-in-hand with the product development, sales and marketing teams to fully understand the challenges and to develop effective solutions.

“I don’t think you can do that alone,” Squeo said. “All those things play a role. It’s not just marketing and PR.”

Casey Weldon is a reporter for PR Daily. Follow him on LinkedIn.