The small Innocent Drinks PR team achieves great things

Sarah left an interesting comment; Innocent Drink’s PR team comprises just two lucky people. For a company with such a popular brand, and generates so much positive publicity, that’s impressive.

So clearly then, there is no link between the size of an in-house PR team and positive publicity? Quite possibly, the reverse is true. The larger the in-house PR team, the worse the reputation of the company? Understandable perhaps if the role of in-house PR is to counter negative publicity.

How about this, if a company embraced PR principles throughout their entire company, then the only need for a PR team is to handle the run-of-the-mill media engagements e.g. Responding to queries, setting up interviews, organising press events etc…Which is exactly what I imagine the two members of Innocent Drink’s PR team are doing.

I might be wrong, and they could be contributing corporate level PR thinking on a daily basis, but I just can’t see how in a company with such entrenched values. What can you suggest?

“Err…Let’s continue being perky”
“Yeah!”

Anyone have some good thoughts on this one? If big companies fully embraced the principles of PR, they could cut most of their in-house PR team right? (perhaps their agencies too?).

Be sure to read Stephen’s great post on Innocent Drinks last year.

Comments

[Stephen Davies]

I think the great thing about Innocent as they've instilled their brand values into each of their employees - the way internal PR should be - but to the point where each employee, regardless of their job, effectively 'PRs' the company.

Lots of people want to work for Innocent purely on its reputation and culture. It's almost perfect.

However, I still think they require experienced and professional PR people though. The strategic and creative initiatives will always demand seasoned pros. And besides, if/when Innocent fall into some kind of crisis situation they're going to need those same PR people to communicate with the media and Jo Public to help prevent long-term reputation damage.

They're on a pedlestal now, it's a long way down.