Emily Porter Emily Porter

While I love my career, I often dread the question, “What do you do?” Typically, it leads down a convoluted path.

Once I get past explaining what PR is, the next inevitable question is usually an inquiry regarding the brands I represent, which opens a whole new can of worms. While the brands are impressive in their own right, unless you’re in the same industry, chances are you may not have heard of them.

Most brands are the “Intel inside,” powering the latest technologies, providing a platform for understanding or playing a very important part in something much larger. Ingredient brands, if you will.

For marketers and PR people, ingredient brands pose a different set of challenges as they aren’t always single-handedly in the limelight or easy to explain. But there’s nothing more satisfying than taking an ingredient brand and bringing it out from underneath the shadows. Every brand has a story to tell, and for ingredient brands the perfect PR recipe can often boil down to these five key elements:

Turn the oven on high

Most ingredient brands are business-to-business by nature and therefore don’t think or act like a consumer brand. They’re running their oven at a safe 325˚ when it should be much hotter at 450˚. What does this mean, really? Ingredient brands tend to worry about all the other parties they touch — worried about being humble and taking any credit — without really focusing on their story. By approaching marketing and PR in a conservative way, they are doing themselves a disservice. For anything to get cooking, ingredient brands need much higher heat — they need to extend more energy, more time and more focus into crafting and telling their own story. Recently, for example, we encouraged one of our high-tech ingredient brand clients, a research company, to attend a consumer tech press event. A total standout at the event, the company had an opportunity to tell consumer media about how they fit into the mix and how important they are in enabling the future of the Internet of Things among other technology innovations. Stemming from the event, a few days later they had a press opportunity with a major top-tier news outlet. By taking a risk, and turning up the heat, they reaped the reward.

Everyone has different tastes

Often ingredient brands get stuck in the gerbil wheel, pitching their go-to media friendlies and forgetting about forging new relationships with the ocean of reporters that are out there. Sometimes the story you’re serving up to your typical reporters just doesn’t taste quite right for what they cover; not to mention it can be extremely limiting in terms of driving results. For ingredient brands to truly be successful, their PR teams need to be extremely industrious and resourceful. For example, one of our ingredient brands recently had a program launch for which they wanted to create significant media buzz. While we targeted our usual suspects of business reporters, it wasn’t until we branched out and caught the ear of an entertainment reporter — playing up the impact this launch would have on that specific industry — that we landed a full-page print and online story in The Wall Street Journal. The angle we served up for her was exactly what she was hungry for and accomplished our goal of generating noise for this behind-the-scenes brand.

Cook with friends

As with most ingredient brands, it takes a village. In other words, the brand is the enabler of someone else’s technology, solution or product. The end product is typically what gets the lion’s share of the media’s attention and the ingredient brand is left to pick up any of the remaining crumbs. Often these ingredient brands are timid to ask for more, and too humble and reluctant to claim they play an important role in the final product. More so, ingredient brands are often remiss to ask others — integrators, customers, partners — for help. Without the support and help of friends to tell help tell their story, it’s difficult to bring it to life. Armed with a rich arsenal of backers and commentators — especially those with strong brand equity and awareness — ingredient brands can garner the right press attention and deliver a compelling story that is multi-dimensional. Also, there’s no shame in riding the coattails of a more recognized brand. Recently, one of our clients embarked on a sizeable project with none other than Google. While some of the reporters we outreached to may not have heard of our client, they certainly knew Google — and so you can imagine where we started our pitch.

Seasoning makes everything better

As a PR professional with more years of experience than I’d like to admit, I’ve read just a few press releases in my day. Most often the biggest failure of a press release is its inability to provide substantive commentary and testimony from a company or third party. New hire announcement? I bet the company is “excited to welcome them to our team.” New product announcement? I bet it’s an “exciting launch that will have a major impact on customers.” New company acquisition? I bet they’re “excited to embark on this new chapter.” Bland. Bland. And even more bland. A brand’s voice and commentary or attributions from third parties deserves to be powerful in content, compelling, provide some opinion and voice, and go beyond just regurgitating the news or facts. By offering up good seasoning, media are bound to take note and gain a better understand of the announcement’s real impact.

Promote the recipe, not the ingredients

While it’s important for an ingredient brand to shake its humble nature and not be afraid to toot its own horn, it’s impossible to completely abandon the other ingredients that comprise the recipe. With a technology ingredient brand, specifically, there’s often a long chain of other technologies that come before. Allowing that linkage to surface and take shape is critical to connecting the dots and explaining to people how your brand fits in. We represented a semiconductor equipment company that helps manufacture computer chips. Like many consumer brands chasing seasonal stories, we decided to chase one and created a story around how this small company — that’s so, so far behind the scenes — makes watching (and enjoying) the Super Bowl possible. The result? A major network broadcast piece bringing to life the brand’s story in way never told before. By focusing on the bigger picture, the recipe, and not just the minor part our client played, we were able to expand the vision to gain coverage.

Chef, author and TV personality Anthony Bourdain once said, “The way you make an omelet reveals your character.” As an ingredient brand, this also holds true for how you approach marketing and promoting your brand. Your brand character surfaces as you craft the perfect recipe and tell your story.

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Emily Porter is senior vice president of Havas Formula’s Business and Technology division.