Corporate PR and Data Strategy: The Perfect Marriage?
Why aren’t corporate PR officers involved in data strategy? Leadership drives adoption, but what about bridging communication gaps and changing attitudes and behaviours toward data? Here’s where PR officers could excel—especially when leaders are disconnected, or when monetising data products is the goal.
What is Corporate PR?
Corporate PR fosters trust, shapes perceptions, and aligns messages with strategic objectives. This isn’t limited to external communications—it’s about creating internal alignment too.
How Can PR Help Your Data Strategy?
Building pipelines and products can be straightforward, but ensuring people use, monitor, and maintain them is another story. Common issues include:
Data silos: IT and business are often misaligned.
Lack of a clear “why”: Business objectives are disconnected from the data strategy—or worse, the strategy doesn’t exist!
PR professionals excel in communication and alignment. Their strengths could bridge these gaps:
Telling the “why”: Crafting narratives that connect data initiatives to business goals.
Building trust: Advocating data ethics, transparency, and value.
Driving engagement: Fostering collaboration and adoption across teams.
In my experience as a BI consultant and analytics engineer, stakeholder communication has been crucial to project success—whether building scalable data models or modernising cloud infrastructures. I’ve seen firsthand how clear narratives and alignment accelerate adoption and value realisation. My background in PR has definitely helped me succeed with this, which got me thinking - ive never come across a business that uses PR to communicate internally for data strategy. I've only seen PR be used for external communication and media relations.
Maybe PR officers go by a different title in some organisations, but their ability to drive behavioural and cultural shifts around data is indispensable.
