Say hello to Wildfire labs! It’s a … wait, what is it?

Here at Wildfire Towers we’ve been pondering the ‘science’ of PR. The PR industry has increasingly focused on how it can make itself more scientific, but what of the creative spark and storytelling flair that sets it apart from its marketing relatives? Do they not matter anymore?

We thought it was about time someone looked at this tension between art and science in the PR industry and that’s why we’ve set up Wildfire labs.

We love a bit of empirical data here, so our labs team will be running a series of experiments to analyse both the science and the art of PR and explore new approaches to delivering results and creating compelling campaigns.

To kick things off, our first experiment looks at a fundamental question: how do you know PR is working?

Rightly, the idea that you can boil down the effectiveness of PR to an AVE figure has largely been abandoned by comms teams. However, the converse of this – that PR is inherently unmeasurable – is equally misguided.

We wanted to look at the psychology of how PR influences people, and discuss new measurement approaches that demonstrate how PR delivers tangible results to businesses. Go here to find out more.

The Wildfire labs team (sadly minus an Igor) is hard at work on its next experiment; in the meantime we will also be posting a regular stream of ideas and thoughts on the future of PR.

If you’d like to get involved in what we’re doing or have any suggestions of experiments you’d like to see, then we’re all ears. Contact the team on labs@wildfirepr.com or tweet us: @WildfirePR.