Creativity isn’t instant. It’s not a button you press or a lightbulb that flicks on at will. The best ideas, especially in PR, need time to marinate. Yet there’s an increasing pressure to deliver ideas on demand, to treat PR like a microwave meal: quick, convenient, and instantly gratifying.
But here’s the thing, PR isn’t a microwave. It’s a slow cooker. And when you make sure the recipe is done right, it delivers richer, more impactful results.
The Myth of Instant Creativity in PR
Jon-Stephen Stansel, as cited by The Marketing Millennials, perfectly sums up the flaw in expecting creativity to happen in a flash. Like advertising and social media content, PR campaigns aren’t created overnight. They require thoughtful ideation, strategic planning, refinement, and above all, time to develop into something truly special.
In PR, creativity is never limited to a single great idea; it’s about shaping that idea to fit within your broader brand narrative, aligning it with your business goals, and ensuring it resonates with audiences. This requires:
Deep research and insights
Understanding what makes your audience tick, what gaps exist in the conversation, and how your brand can meaningfully contribute.
Strategic development
Refining concepts so they align with your brand’s mission and values, while also ensuring they are timely and relevant to external factors such as cultural moments or industry trends.
Collaboration and execution
Bringing together internal teams, external partners, and media to ensure the idea lands at the right time, in the right way, and with maximum impact.
Measurement and adaptation
Testing ideas, refining messaging, and evolving campaigns based on performance and feedback. Don’t limit yourself to one campaign; continuously improve on it.
All of this takes time. And when rushed? The impact is often diluted or even missed entirely.
Why PR Needs a Balanced Diet of Creativity
There’s a time and place for reactive PR (those quick hit, newsjacking moments that capitalise on trending conversations). These are powerful tactics for short-term wins, but they’re only one part of a balanced strategy.
Through sustained storytelling and long-term brand building, PR can implement through-the-line campaigns that don’t just make a splash but create ripples that benefits your brand long-term.
Strategies that focus on brand building should include a nice mix of planned campaigns, reactive opportunities, and creative or data-led narratives that reinforce your brand’s positioning.
Take, for example, some of the most impactful PR campaigns in recent years. They weren’t one-off stunts; they were well-timed, well-researched, and well-executed strategies that built momentum over months, even years.
Similarly, brands that champion sustainability, diversity, or social impact don’t just drop a single press release and walk away. They live and breathe it – building ongoing narratives, leveraging both data and creativity to tell compelling stories over time. This is what separates ordinary PR moments from those that drive real brand growth.
Giving Creativity the Space to Breathe
If PR is to be a true growth-driver, brands need to create space for creativity to flourish. That means:
Investing in long-term thinking
Avoid filling a content calendar or banging out press releases without much of a hook. Coverage for the sake of coverage won’t help anyone. Instead shape narratives that endure and give your teams the room to develop meaningful stories to complement chasing quick reactive wins.
Bridging the gap between reactive and proactive
Quick wins are great, but they should be stepping stones to the bigger, more meaningful moments a brand creates. A well-timed stunt can create buzz, but it should also feed into a larger, ongoing story that builds credibility and brand resonance.
Encouraging cross-disciplinary collaboration
PR doesn’t exist in a silo. The best campaigns are born from collaboration between PR, marketing, creative teams, data analysts, and even product teams. When different perspectives come together, creativity flourishes.
Measuring and learning from results
Balance smart execution with creative evolution. The strongest campaigns are those that adapt based on real-world results, with insights from media, performance, and audience engagement helping shape the next phase of storytelling.
The Future of PR Creativity: Embracing the Thoughtful, Not the Rush
Let’s shoot for substance. Throwing out half-baked ideas just to stay in the public eye isn’t enough. The future belongs to brands that embrace slow-cooked creativity – those who are willing to invest in thoughtful, strategic, and well-crafted narrative-led campaigns that have real potential to resonate.
So, next time you feel the pressure to churn out ideas at speed, remember: the best PR doesn’t come out of the microwave. And the brands that allow their ideas to simmer? They’re the ones that will leave a lasting impact.
