Strutting confidently around an auditorium of public relations students at Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Adam Ritchie, founder of Adam Ritchie Brand Direction, challenged his audience not to fear intuition and art while not avoiding research and strategy.
Ritchie, clad in a leather jacket straight out of a Clash album, shared these three lessons on how to merge rock and roll, invention and public relations.
1. Listen to The Beatles
In an Agility PR blog, Vigilance Chari argued that attention to detail is among the most critical characteristics for a successful P.R. practitioner. "Desirable PR professionals are those that can pick out the tiny issues and deal with them before they become a problem," said Chari.
Enter The Beatles, a master class in building the most detailed brand in music history.
According to John McMillian of the Daily Beast, "when most fans were introduced to the Beatles, they saw an indivisible group in which each member nevertheless had distinctive attributes."
Although we could go down a rabbit hole of how The Beatles built that prolific brand, the lesson here is about creating a personal habit of excellence. To that end, Ritchie thinks that an excellent practitioner should constantly surround his or herself with great work and listen to The Beatles.
Whether that be The Beatles, Stanley Kubrick or whatever you think is perfect at its craft, the P.R. practitioner will never fail by being surrounded by those things with an attention to detail!
2. Obliterate the Status Quo
"People get into music to be artistically expressive, not to become publicists," said John Paul Titlow of Fast Company. "But one of the most important pieces of the online discovery puzzle is getting on the radar of influential music bloggers and journalists."
For music listeners, the era of Spotify has unearthed an unlimited pool of new music. Meanwhile, for musicians and distributors, this overwhelming pool of new music has subverted the traditional record store experience and made it increasingly daunting to break through with your sound.
For Ritchie, it's a very personal challenge with his band, The Lights Out, and its 2017 album release, T.R.I.P. The Lights Out wanted to reach hard core musicians with the release. Knowing that people no longer go to music stores to find music, Ritchie followed the research to find out where musicians go even when they aren't looking for new sounds.
The answer? Beer stores.
Knowing this, The Lights Out partnered with Aeronaut brewing to release their album on a special run of craft beer that integrated buyers into the band's social media and album. It was a smash hit, garnering coverage in coverage in publications, like MarketWatch and Ad Week, and earning industry awards, including Silver Anvils.
3. Never Write Off Lone Wolves
Despite its impressive work, Adam Ritchie Brand Direction is a scrappy outfit when compared to the likes of Edelman, Weber Shandwick or Ketchum.
To survive in the dog-eat-dog agency world, Ritchie has built a roster of clients who he says genuinely listen. However, the harsh reality exists that any day one of these great clients can walk out the door of an agency and leave it scrapping for new business.
In the Harvard Business Review, President and CEO of Aureus Asset Management Karen Firestone said, "Losing a big client is never fun, and much less than ideal for your bottom line, but it’s as much a part of business as landing a dream account."
For Ritchie, whose smaller set of clients makes him more vulnerable to client departures, this dynamic has taught him not to celebrate the client wins too hard so that the client losses won't sting quite as hard.
The P.R. agency climate demands its inhabitants to have a good chin and stay hungry. Out of this environment, Ritchie has built a complex creative personality where he combines a "badass" confidence with an insatiable desire to always get better.
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