Modern PR Playbook

All Case Studies  🔍 Advertise With Us

180 days. The amount of days since I last saw my parents. They just drove from Florida to Austin for the holidays. They just both pulled up. And I’m so pumped. So, I’ll make this short and get right into it.

In today’s playbook you’ll learn:

• How PR evolved over the last decade

• How your customer service team can help craft virality

• Why speed is the key to modern PR campaigns

• How to craft the headline first before the campaign

Let’s get into it.

But first, a huge thank you to our partners AE Studio and AddGlow.

In Partnership With AE Studio

Hire a world-class AI team for 80% less

Building an AI product is hard. Vetting engineers who understand AI is even harder - and ridiculously expensive.

That’s why you need to talk to AE Studio.

Their team of AI experts from Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford help you craft and implement AI solutions for your unique business.

They’ll help you execute:

• Efficient MVPs built for your specific use case.

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They’re the 95’ Bulls of the tech world. Except you can actually talk to them.

PR campaigns used to take months to plan. It’s now a speed game.

How fast can you react to a moment? Craft a story. Inject your brand into the convo. While the window of relevance is still open.

Three brands who did a great job of it this year:

1. Stanley

2. North Face

3. Solo Stove (this was a planned PR stunt)

Lehhh do it.

1. Stanley’s 120M View Response

A woman’s car caught on fire. She posted a TikTok showing the remains of her melted car.

One object left unscathed. Her Stanley Tumbler. With the ice still in it.

The video immediately went viral driving 90 million views and hundreds and thousands of shares and comments. And drummed up endless coverage.

And within 24 hours, Stanley’s president stitched the video with a reply on TikTok.

He offered her free Stanley Tumblers. And a new car.

The result?

• 120 million more TikTok views

• 10s of millions in earned media (backlinks, social content, and TV coverage)

2. North Face's 16M Views Through Customer Service

A woman got soaked wearing a North Face “rain jacket” while hiking in New Zealand.

Kicker: the jacket was supposed to be waterproof.

So she recorded a video with a few requests:

• Re-design the rain jacket.

• Make it waterproof.

• Deliver it to her on the mountain.

The video got 11 million views - with requests sounding crazy impossible.

So what did North Face do? They delivered. Literally.

Within 5 days, North Face recorded a video of them grabbing a new jacket, hopping on a helicopter, and delivering it to her in the mountains.

The video racked up 5 million views.

Sure, it’s staged. But it shows that North Face is listening and is willing to go out of their way to help their customers.

They flipped the script by turning a story about an angry customer into one where they’re the heroes.

BTW - this doesn’t fix the product problem. Just highlighting the execution.

3. Snoop Dogg's $37M Earned Media Announcement

Snoop Dogg is synonymous with smoking weed. So, his 100 million Instagram followers were confused as hell when he said he’s “giving up smoke.”

The post drove 5 million likes. And thousands of publications covered it.

Confused and with anticipation - people waited for Snoop’s next post.

And on the backend of the anticipation was the launch of Solo Stove’s Snoop Dogg edition smokeless fire pit.

This is called the “viral headline first” approach to brand collabs.

The brand created a story opposite to Snoop’s persona which created shock value.

The first wave of media coverage: Snoop Dogg quits smoking?!

The second wave of coverage: Clarification about the post and collab launch.

The result for Solo Stove?

• 31M likes across social

• 1.2M brand mentions

• $43.5M in exposure

• 19.5B impressions (crazy)

• $37.5M in media value

So here’s the Modern PR Playbook in a nutshell:

1. Speed is of the essence: You have to capitalize on the window of relevance.

2. Go out of your way to show your customers you care - quickly, publicly, thoughtfully.

3. Turn angry customer service tickets into viral public relations moments.

4. Think in viral headlines first, then announce partnership and product launch second.

_{In Partnership With AddGlow}

How To Build A Reddit-Like Community On Your Site:

The problem with Facebook groups? No data.

Okay… and Slack Communities? Still not enough data.

Which is the backbone of any growth engine.

So, here’s how to build a community that drives revenue:

• Run an engagement-based loyalty program

• Create a Reddit-like community on your website

• Collect customer data like email addresses, user traits, and posted content to optimize product description pages

• Integrate your community with existing tools like Klaviyo, Shopify, Twilio, and Yotpo

• Take all this data to refine and optimize your marketing channels

And because your community is on your domain, every post is a unique URL which increases SEO traffic.

This is how Geologie, Wonder Curl, and SweatTent are using AddGlow to build community that grows revenue.

Check out AddGlow to build a community growth engine. 

🕳 Rabbit Hole Reads and Resources

• Celebrity Deals: In Gordon Ramsey’s world, everything is a piece of shit. So when the King of Roasts described Hexclad’s cookware as “utter perfection” - cooking enthusiasts paid attention. Here’s how they made the partnership happen. (LINK) 

• Year on TikTok 2023: @bowserbee grew to 1M followers by showing a billion ways to use pure beeswax at home. And you bet they sold a ton of honey lip balm along the way. Study this list of the top TikTok posts and accounts to step up your performance in 2024. (LINK)

• Playbook: The Solo Stove x Snoop Dogg collab blitzed the internet generating 19.5B impressions. The CEO of Solo Brands breaks down the marketing magic behind the smoke(less) moment. (LINK) 

• Brand Takeover: Where’s the last place you’d expect to see Liquid Death? $100 if you get this right. (LINK)

• Paid Ads: Facebook just killed the idea of using engagement as a performance metric. Here’s what they recommend instead. (LINK)