The Brave New World of Public Affairs

Public affairs has evolved – gone are the days of just garnering action on a specific piece of legislation or simply supporting regulation for the good of your company’s bottom line. The breakdown of mainstream media and an American public that no longer digests – nor trusts – a central news source has brought public affairs to the C-suite for many corporate functions. While businesses could hide on public and social issues ten years ago, employees, investors, advocates, and other stakeholders now expect brands to champion their cause – from the county-level all the way to Capitol Hill. 

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As the leaders responsible for managing a brand’s response to social and political issues, navigating an information environment where people and machines serve highly subjective information on channels curated by the public should be a cause for alarm. While public affairs has earned its rightful place amongst the C-suite, we need to prepare for the volatile year ahead by investing in solutions that help us reach decision makers with our highest-value message and surround those critical stakeholders with factual information. I would like to share some ways public affairs teams can strengthen their plan for the year(s) ahead. Some of these approaches are new, some are old, but each should serve you well in the years to come, and it is my hope that the people reading this can glean some insight that further drives their business or cause.

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1. Level the Playing Field for Potential Crises

In the old world, we had a good enough pulse on the source for potential crises. Whether it was some organizational issue or product, we usually knew where potential crises would emerge. In today’s world, it is a much larger playing field – all it takes is one social media post, one news article, one email to completely disrupt your entire organization. Prepare and combat this potential by building a protective shield around your brand, consistently, with always-on messaging that reaches your most important stakeholders. In today’s media environment, the decision makers that move the needle for your organization must have an up-to-date, balanced and factual view of your company. 

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I pivoted from my roots in public affairs to join Applecart, the rapidly growing, VC-backed technology company that has the solution for C-suites seeking to level the crisis management playing field. Applecart’s Decision Maker Marketing platform answers the question on every public affairs leader’s mind: how do I get this message in front of the fifty to hundred people who count versus the entire D.C. metro area? With Decision Maker Marketing, you flip the script on geofencing and lookalike targeting by focusing strictly on the stakeholders that matter to your organization and the people in their orbit. Using this new technology enables your public affairs team to control the information environment where your most critical decision makers are and surround them with your highest-value message so when a crisis occurs, you are ahead of the curve with a steady stream of accurate and effective messaging that supports your cause. 

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2. Combat Misinformation and the Noise of AI-Generated Content 

Twenty-five years ago people watched Good Morning America, they read their newspaper, they checked the evening news. Everyone was more or less on the same page regarding big, institutional issues, but those days are long gone. Each individual subscribes to their own, personalized channel where they consume highly subjective information from the sources they deem trustworthy, even if such material is notoriously biased. Information and disinformation fissures will deepen as we enter an AI-driven world, where we may or may not be able to verify the accuracy of information. How do decision makers trust what is out there? Information silos are serious business for a corporation, especially when those decision makers were once skeptics to begin with, but now only consume information from the sources they trust. The sheer number of sources makes it even harder to get your message directly to those hard-to-reach people.  

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What we offer at Applecart is very powerful because we can get our clients’ messages precisely to who they want and seed their message into the conversations where they need to be. It provides Heads of Public Affairs with a way to get their highest-value content to the people who matter most in a world where you do not know what is out there and you do not know who is putting it out there. Now you have a way to get your message – a factual message – in front of the right people at the right time. 

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3. Expand Measurement and Proof of Value Beyond Atmospherics 

I am so proud of how public affairs professionals have arrived in the C-suite; however, we have always been the strategic, swiss army knife but with an achilles heel regarding metrics and reporting. Don’t let metrics around proof of value be your weakness. Usually the measurement stick of success has been atmospherics: e.g., does a Senator feel good about your brand or did the bill pass? Atmospherics should not go away, but public affairs teams need to start using technologies that show exactly who amongst your key decision makers and the people in their orbit engaged with content and took action based on your campaign. 

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I have never seen anything as efficient as Applecart’s Decision Maker Marketing platform. It can reach exactly who you want it to reach and seed conversation within those networks of influence for a particular decision maker at a cost 50% less than the standard Washington, D.C. ad campaign. Applecart provides a one-of-a-kind tool to connect the content, which all too often sits on a generic news hub or LinkedIn page with the actual news channels where decision makers consume information. The platform is built to enable you to reach the decision maker and everyone around them with your message, and that has a tremendous, measurable impact. Not only are firms eliminating wasted spend, but they are also showing with precision who saw their message, took action, and accomplished the desired outcomes of a public affairs campaign. 

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4. Think About Issue Advocacy from the Local Perspective and Make a Real Impact 

I have met with many communications officers and public affairs leaders who do not want anything to do with an issue unless it is recognized on a global scale; however, the opposite approach works much more effectively for businesses. I have found that when an organization gets involved at the grassroots level with mayors, governors and individual members of Congress on issues such as transportation, conservation, health equity, workforce development, and so on, they are able to avoid the partisanship of national/global issues and generate great, unbiased stories that generate even greater brand sentiment and awareness. Public affairs teams can then couple these stories with Applecart’s Decision Maker Marketing technology to deliver them to the stakeholders in the relevant local geographies that move the needle for their cause. 

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It is my hope that Heads of Public Affairs use the evolution of our space as an opportunity to improve how we as a profession speak to our publics, our stakeholders, and attach our brands to worthy causes that bridge political divisions. Throughout my time in public affairs I have always said: be accurate, be positive, and don’t be afraid to put a well-researched solution into the world to solve a problem. I believe Decision Maker Marketing will be the choice solution for many teams now and in the future, and I look forward to being a part of that journey for the companies partnering with Applecart. 

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To learn more about Decision Maker Marketing, go to www.applecart.co.