We’re often asked by clients (both current & potential) whether we offer online PR services & consultancy, to which the answer is a resounding yes. But by online PR, we aren’t just talking about sending out optimised press releases via online newswires, because as far as we’re concerned almost all forms of digital marketing can have a PR aspect to them.

Take the newly launched Frank Lampard TV channel being offered to Orange mobile subscribers. At first glance this just seems like another attempt by the mobile companies to come up with a product that will encourage people to use the services that the operators all paid so much for. But on another level it is a great piece of PR. How so? Well, I’ll explain.

The top story in the Guardian sport section this morning was about Lampard’s ongoing contract negotiations with Chelsea. And where did the bulk of the information in this article come from? An interview with The Guardian? A Chelsea press conference? No, it was from the new Orange channel, and was attributed as such.

Now I don’t know how much coverage the story got in the other papers (a lot it would seem), but as anyone interested in attracting young male consumers knows, the place to be in newspapers is in the sports section, as that is the bit they tend to read first.

Whilst traditional PR often ends relies on staged photos, in the digital world, where you can offer exclusive content of the sort the papers are dying to get hold of, you can put your brand in front of millions of potential customers. And even if they don’t sign up to the TV channel, they will at least associate your brand with the favourite past-time: football.

We’ve done a lot of work in this area with our sister agency Karen Earl Sponsorship and it really is a fascinating area. Because if you have a deal that gives you access to these sports stars, and have the expertise necessary to exploit them in a digital manner, sponsorship & PR can suddenly seem like very sound investments.

Of course these sorts of deals also leave you open to all the normal dangers of interacting with users in a digital environment, as shown by the first comment on Frank Lampard’s blog on the Orange site:

frank, your fat

Quite.

On a lighter note, I just wanted to share this spoof video produced by Mitre, the football manufacturer for the Football League. It ridicules the recent ads for Nike which feature Ronaldinho & Wayne Rooney, and is, incidentally, another great example of how to get great PR by activating sponsorship deals online.

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