Fight the terror of empty PR

Imagine the perfect pirate. They are different and rebellious, they do edgy stuff, and they are always fighting the status quo, right? We think PR needs that same spirit - we must go back to fighting for a cause. That's why we are launching a Pirate Manifesto for PR. It's a call to arms for all communications professionals and journalists to join us and declare a war. A war on the empty message.

One good example of what we are promoting comes from Human.co - an activity tracker that encourages users to move at least 30 minutes each day. They have created visuals of cities based on usage data of their users. See their gorgeous visualizations of Amsterdam for walking, running, biking and public transport.

Human.co's visualizations of their users' movement

Not only have they created nice visuals, they have created a full campaign site around movement data in cities around the world. See the link below for realtime tracking of 900 cities around the world and how they rank compared to each other. 

The beauty of this campaign is that it is so close to their core purpose: getting people to move more and showing how people in their city are moving, right now. It's interesting and relevant to their potential users and it inspires people to join the movement. The icing on the cake is when they did the same for Burning Man and showed the temporary city as it was during the event.

The campaign works well because it's close to the brand's purpose, it's relevant to local cities around the world, and it's timeliness in realtime data and the visual stunning images make it easy to share. It also works wonders with current events like Burning Man.

Another activity tracker Runkeeper does a lot of things right: they are very good in their community building and they very actively engage with their users. It's a refreshing example of customer engagement. However recently they changed their logo from what is referred to as 'the Dude' logo to 'the Balloon Animal' logo. See below:

There have been many discussions about the quality of the new design, and we'll leave that to the experts. The interesting thing is that the thinking behind the change is noble - be more inclusive to the women in their user base (since their old logo was a guy, doh!).

The point is not about the logo or whether the word is ugly or not. Even the reason behind the change can be good - however what does a changed logo actually do for a user of Runkeeper? Will their female users be helped? Will their experience be improved?

The answer is almost certainly not. Just another uninspiring release on PR Newswire and a blog post full of jibberish.

There's a big contrast here between these two companies, both are in a similar space and both have a clear purpose: to help people live more healthy. However one is actually showing how they are doing that with data and an interesting way to visualize it. And the other is changing it's logo to say it wants to connect more with a specific demographic. 

So, well done Human.co. This is a nice way to combine your purpose with execution - we hope you get the deserved exposure. Please show us more.

As for Runkeeper, we like your thinking but without something to back it up it's just fluff. The intent is there but that is no longer enough - you've got to show your intent in something of value. 

A changing logo could still generate (some) exposure if you're Google, SONOS, or in this case, Runkeeper. However for most smaller companies this is not news, and will not get exposure on its own. Better to go back to figuring out what is valuable to your users and start creating stories from that purpose in a way that resonates. Eventually it will give you the exposure you want.

And in the meantime: you're creating something interesting and not empty.

Like what you read? Agree with us to declare a war against the empty message in PR? Be sure to read our Pirate's Code of Conduct and sign the manifesto!