Through cause marketing, All For One Media is creating a strong "pull" campaign. (Shutterstock)

    It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the technology components involved in attracting media attention to your brand. Are you implementing social media effectively? Have you maximized search engine traction? Do customers come to you, or do you spend all of your time getting your message out the old fashioned way? Because of its complexity, marketing technology, or Martech, is a mammoth industry anticipated to garner up to $120 billion in CMO expenditures by 2025.
    While there’s obvious utility in streamlining a marketing strategy, most PR professionals will tell you that by automating your media outreach, you’ll lose the personalization that’s imperative to success.
    The answer, according to All For One Media  (AFOM) Corp., of Mt. Kisco, NY, is development of a public relations “pull strategy” to make PR efforts more cost effective and more likely to reach a larger customer base. They suggest the following four components to make the concept of PR pull less daunting and more productive for companies of any size.

    Know Your Audience. All For One Media’s current project is specifically tailored to a tween audience, which feeds into their approach to PR. “We have a musical—a movie that has all the ingredients of what kids love in the movies,” says Brian Lukow, All For One Media CEO. “Great music, choreography, music that kids can relate to.”
    The company’s original film, Crazy for the Boys, is set to begin shooting principal photography this summer. The project reflects a deep knowledge of its audience thanks to a creative team that has cast and choreographed tween stars such as Ariana Grande and Selena Gomez. The plot for the movie is based on universal and urgent coming-of-age themes that range from school anxiety and bullying to the exploration of first love.
    Deep understanding of your audience makes PR more streamlined. Rather than spending time finding and convincing an audience, brands can find and establish fans and advocates much more quickly.

    Align with a Social Cause to Appeal to Millennials. Millennials care more than any other generation about social responsibility. Three fourths of Millennials would take a pay cut to work for a socially responsible company. They spend their money in the same way. AFOM’s current project isn't directed at Millennials, but at their children, Generation Z. Aligning with a social cause makes these parents feel good.  “We’ve taken the bullying epidemic and formed a company that comes right out of our movie,” Lukow says. “In the movie, the principal of the school takes five girls who are not friends and makes them run the student campaign against bullying.
    The anti-bullying message permeates all aspects of the project, from the plot of the movie to the songs. Interactive anti-bullying activism emanates from the project’s websites or social media platforms as well. Connecting the PR pull strategy to a positive and relevant social cause is one of the most sure-fire ways to create a tribe of brand advocates today.

    Use an Activation Event as the Launchpad for a Brand. The activation event is a potent way to launch a brand. Beginning with a bang creates an automatic audience lead-in that solidifies them as probable customers. Popularized by Apple’s product announcement events, this strategy could be a winning prospect for many PR campaigns.
    “The idea of the movie is not only entertaining, but also the launching pad for a girl group,” says Lukow. “It’s Spice Girls meets High School Musical as the characters in the film will survive the movie and become a pop group.”
    Once the movie ends, the audience will have developed a relationship with the band and lyrics which will send audiences proactively searching on YouTube and Spotify, and the company will be ready for them. A strategy like this doesn’t have to involve a movie. But using an event as a definitive and memorable starting point can generate a relationship with a brand that sustains well beyond the the initial contact.
    Leverage the Digital Landscape to Create Virality. All For One Media’s PR strategy will leverage the Internet for viral contact with their target audience. “Today’s teenagers are the first generation to grow up with the Internet and social media,” says Lukow. “Unlike every preceding generation, the Internet has always been there for them. This group of young folks is smart, savvy and wants to be entertained online. Most importantly, the explosive growth of social media outlets such as Instagram and Snapchat as well as streaming music and video services such as YouTube and Spotify have created the perfect storm. The world has gotten smaller and the market’s gotten bigger...more than ever, content is king.”
    What this means: Traditional media like television and radio is fading and transforming. It is being augmented and even cancelled out by web-based media partiularly among audiences such as tweens. However, All For One Media intends to use every available social media platform to make their brand vital and accessible, which is what the current landscape requires.
    In short, for fast traction and lasting outcomes, every aspect of a brand’s outreach should be organized and built around a core and consistent message. By doing this, you allow content to become viral more organically and quickly, allowing you to leverage the most powerful kind of pull strategy available today.