Brand Journalists

At the latest PRSA Phoenix New Pros Mentorship Program meeting, we heard from a panel of in-house PR pros, including Caitlin Bohrer and Amy McConnell. This panel gave great insight into the corporate world of PR and how it differs from agency life and nonprofit work.

One of the questions brought up a great discussion: “How do you see PR evolving in the next five years?”
These PR pros, like many others, agreed that the future of public relations is continuing to strive to meet people where they want to be met, and focusing on communication channels that are non-traditional like social media and other digital platforms.
This led to a conversation about how different forms of PR – from nonprofit to agency to in-house/corporate – take on different roles for their prospective clients. Just like Alison’s list of the many ways to define PR, this panel of internal communications pros considers their role in corporate PR mostly defined as “brand journalism.”

Brand journalism is a mix of content marketing, public relations and corporate communications that builds and tells stories that focus on highlighting a company’s marketing messages. Rather than directly marketing through traditional means, this form of journalism weaves marketing messages in with its content and can also be referred to as “marketing through journalism.”
It’s no secret that the PR pro’s role is multi-faceted, and it was interesting to hear directly from internal communicators on how they see brand journalism as a major part of their role in the corporate world.

PR pros – what are your thoughts? Do you consider brand journalism a big part of internal communications?