When you stop to think about it, you realise that stepping into a new year is not as glamorous as it seems. It’s not some main event, and the difference between the last year and a new one is literally a day. Looking at it from this perspective, you realise how easy it is to get lost in activities and celebrations without taking time out to pause and reflect on the past year. So, this is me taking that pause and reflecting on 2021, the highs and the lows, as well as hopes for 2022.
I remember tweeting sometime in January 2021 that I was so sure that I was going to grow so much during the year. When I made that tweet, I had no idea that the events of the year were going to stretch me far more than I had hoped for professionally and personally. This article though is focused on my professional journey and growth process.
Professionally, 2021 presented me with an opportunity to learn at the speed of light. After executing give or take over 20 major and minor campaigns on the MTN account throughout the year, I would summarise the experience this way: lessons were learned, skills were developed, muscles were built, tears were shed, friends were made and lost and growth was exponential.
Through my experience working as a PR consultant for MTN Nigeria in 2021, I have highlighted key important areas to master to succeed in PR. For each point, I will share how I navigated these key areas and what I hope to achieve in 2022.
- Client Relationship
I intentionally didn’t title this as ‘Client Management’ because when you think about it, our clients don’t really want to be managed. Having an actual healthy relationship with a client is key when you work in this kind of field. What I realised in 2021 was that understanding your client’s expectations and working closely with them to achieve set goals, goes a long way in the overall success of campaigns executed. Honesty is also extremely important because, in this line of work, it is highly important to build trust. There were instances when the client would ask for something that was not ready and instead of trying to ‘manage’ the client by telling them that the document was ready, I chose to be honest and this surprisingly helped in reducing anxiety and ensuring that quality work was delivered at all times.
- Media and Influencer Relationship
As pivotal as these sets of people are to Public Relations, they are often overlooked. In 2021, I worked closer than ever before with journalists across business, technology, brands and entertainment beats. Public Relations is storytelling and the media helps us to tell our stories. The major successes we recorded on the team on numerous campaigns were because our media partners continued to support us and helped tell our stories. While looking at our annual report for the year, I noted that MTN had a total of 12,121 media mentions, giving the company a share of voice of 51% among the four major telcos in Nigeria. This was mainly due to the support of our media partners. In 2022, I hope to continue to work closely with the media and build stronger relationships.
- Team Relationship
I don’t know who made the quote that a team is only as strong as its weakest link but this saying could not be more accurate. When you actually understand this, you’ll see the need to ensure that every member of the team you’re working with is committed to doing great work. Working together with my teammates in 2021, I learned that everyone has their strengths and areas for improvement and the hack is to play to people’s strengths while actively seeking ways to help each other improve in areas that require improvement. In 2022, I hope to continue to build stronger relationships with my colleagues where we can share knowledge and grow together.
- Storytelling
There is always more than one way to tell a story and I think an important part of the work that we do is finding out the right angles to tell your brand’s story. One thing I am absolutely grateful for is the storytelling culture of BHM. I have colleagues in other agencies who attend events and send out a press release from the event and call it a day. At BHM however, for every story worth telling, you’re required to find the business, brand, lifestyle and entertainment angles to them, depending on the story. I must not forget to mention the variety of social media content we put out for campaigns ranging from threads to slidegrams, quizzes and the likes. Working like this helps you develop that nose for news that every media person is supposed to have. So, you don’t go to an event to tick boxes and sit pretty, you’re actively looking for the right stories to tell, people to interview, pictures to take and any other thing that will aid your storytelling.
- Reporting
Like one of our clients would say, the work that we do is show and tell. And how better to do this than by presenting data. Despite the fact that reporting can be quite cumbersome, I enjoy doing them. They give you a brief moment to reflect on the work done, note your successes and discover areas for improvement. In 2021, I attended about three seminars on how to create effective PR reports because in the world of public relations, getting results for clients doesn’t matter if they don’t know about them. Reporting is the single most important part of a PR campaign because it shows the value of your work. Looking into 2022, I aim to discover new ways to showcase the successes of PR through reporting.
In 2021, I worked on the highest number of PR proposals in my professional career, executed four major campaigns for MTN including the MTN at 20 campaign, MTN’s partnership with Nigeria Football Federation campaign, the mPulse Spelling Bee campaign and the biggest campaign of the year, MTN’s Public Offer campaign. It was a year of learning new ways to do PR, smashing goals, developing key relationships, growth, and I’m looking forward to what 2022 brings.