Know what you love, Love what you know.

Even before you are assigned an account, it pays to do your homework. You have to know the brand proposition, what are the key messages that your brand would like to communicate and what are the key features of a certain product. This will save you from the moments when the media asks you about a certain feature of the product (most of them are technocrats in what they write about) and you going: “Uhm, I have to check.”

As part of the team handling Volvo Cars, I had to handle media loans of their press car fleet. The problem with cars is that they have a plethora of abbreviations, acronyms and terms that would confound the average car buyer. Just to give you a taste of what I’m talking about: BLIS (Blind Spot Information System), ACC (Adaptive Cruise Control), Sensus (Centre Console Entertainment System), DSTC (Dual Stability and Traction Control), PCC (Personal Car Communicator), ABL (Active Bending Lights), etc.

Some of these features are class-leading innovations that might not be obvious when you take the car out for a spin, albeit, it’s these same technologies that differentiates your products from competitors. You need to know all of these terms by heart.

Reviewers even ask about which platforms that the cars are built on or engine number series or why it’s called a T5 (which is a transverse 5-cylinder engine).

Imagine buying a smartphone from a promoter that’s struggling to tell you the functions of the phone. Unless you've done your homework, I don’t think you’d be convinced to pick-up the phone anytime soon. Now picture a promoter who knows every specification of the phone, why it’s built the way that it is and what are the benefits of owning a phone like this. Much better, right?

This is not confined to cars alone. Even bags have their own product codes, design features, colours or collections that they belong to. At the end of handling a press loan for bags, you should be able to identify a fake, simply by looking at the bag and knowing that they don’t fit.

The brand proposition gives you a rationale on why they've designed their products the way they do. It gives you ‘emotions’ that you can attach to a specific product or brand. You can easily obtain this information from a CI (Corporate Identity) document or from a brand guide.

As a PR practitioner, representing a client, you have to know the brand and its products inside-out. You are the unofficial spokesperson for the brand and you love the brand! And in order to love something, you have to know it well. 

Zahir Zaini

Curtin Miri

14575097