PR Chicago

But is it news?

What makes a successful media pitch? From time to time, many of us in the PR business must tell a well-meaning client that his or her story clearly isn't news or even feature worthy.  Unfortunately, it's like telling a mom that her baby is ugly: she doesn't believe you and she hates you for saying it.  Some tips for telling a good news angle from a bad one:

1. It's something the average reader would like to know. For consumer media, put on your "average reader" hat and consider whether the story is relevant for many people, or if it interests only a niche market.
2. It's timely. Your story might even be ahead of its time. Some six or seven years ago, I pitched a story on identity theft to some legal magazines and newsletters. "It's not a story," I was told. "We don't think it's a problem." In other cases, the ship has sailed far away. Last year's trends are last year's news.
3. You have supporting information. Does a reporter have enough data to make this a relevant article? Consumers who have used or are using your client's product or service, endorsements from non-commercial third-party sources, facts and figures on the market for your client's product or service -- all this is essential to a good story pitch.
4. Your client is available for an interview -- and media trained. Sometimes you lose a good placement because your client is reluctant or unavailable for an interview. Even worse, sometimes your client is ill-prepared for media questions. Make sure you develop some incisive sample questions and answers so your spokesperson can prepare adequately ahead of time. 

Good deeds and good Samaritans

There are those grinches out there who believe that a good deed, if done or encouraged by a corporation, is not a good deed at all. Shame on them. Only those who truly help the poor and give to charities anonymously can be said to be altruistically pure. The rest-- the celebs, the philanthropists, the corporations -- would like the world to know that they care. Is that so bad?

Witness the cynicism shown during the recent rash of "Pay it forward" coffee purchases during the holidays at Starbucks. Some bah humbug bloggers suspect that Starbucks employees started the whole chain --purchasing a free cup for coffee for someone in line at Starbucks so that person would purchase coffee for the next, and so on. Oh, the humanity!

A very clever and effective big-city promotion for Starbucks was its "Red Cup on Cars" campaign. A red magnetic coffee cup was affixed to the top of a car. Each good Samaritan pointing out the coffee cup (or even rushing to remove it and give it to the driver) received a $5 gift card as a reward, and Starbucks received some great mentions on major market TV stations.

PR Pests and Cranky Bloggers: Can't We All Just Get Along?

Not since the wave of lawyer jokes hit some years ago has a profession been so reviled as PR. As much as PR professionals work to conduct themselves ethically and, moreover, not make pests of themselves, journalists and now, some holier-than-thou bloggers have become INCENSED that we DARE to sully their inboxes with press releases and PR materials.

Granted, a number of newbies, overeager entrepreneurs and even some big agency people who should know better have angered journalists such as Wired editor Chris Anderson and blogger Tom Coates. Perhaps Chris Anderson is being a bit disingenous, since Wired Magazine is basically a compilation of items about new tech gadgets (and where, I might add, would he have heard about them, if not from PR people?) interspersed with a few articles. And even stranger is Coates' rant...it seems that his blog appeared on a list of MOST INFLUENTIAL blogs (the NERVE!) and since that posting PR people (or so he says) have been sending him masses of unsolicited product information. Again, a bit disingenuous. 

Apparently, these folks have not heard of 1) the delete button or 2) the practice of sending all unsolicited emails to a folder to be sorted out at leisure, if at all. Another idea: don't provide your personal email address if you're going to be so offended. Send it to a favored few. Trust me, we don't want to send you an email if you're going to get all cranky about it.

Also,it might be well advised to provide PR people with a list of the correct contacts for specific sections of your publication. Sometimes it's not clear from the publication or the web site, and often we can't get through to anyone at your office to find out who we need to contact.   

The Live Earth ecopalooza and other annoyances...

• I wonder...did the Live Earth artists get to the venue in an energy efficient way? If we combined the square footage of all of their various residences, would we be able to comfortably house the denizens of a mid-sized town? Is anyone just a bit annoyed that they're telling US to conserve energy? Vinay Menon offers a very funny take on the subject in a column in the Toronto Star, saying that the stars' promise to carbon-offset energy consumption is .."a bit like buying somebody a hat after you've pulled out his hair."
• I wonder...why retail operations often don't carry event sponsorships through to their stores? Posters, custom coupons, event tickets for customers, even special products created to highlight sponsorships...although it takes more work, the payback is in increased customer awareness.
• I wonder...if the iPhone is such an awe-inspiring gadget, why don't I want one? Although I would consider myself an early adopter, I remember my purchase, oh so many years ago, of the Apple Newton. Can you say....wait for the next iteration?

Scrapbooking dogs and other stupid story ideas

PR folks have been regularly lambasted for bad or boring story ideas and their penchant for pitching even the most inappropriate media outlets (check out badpitch.blogspot.com). But when you have a less-than-scintillating product to promote, you sometimes have to look high and low for decent story angles. We do what we can.

That said, the media shouldn't come out of this unscathed. Recent articles on the $54 million lawsuit for a pair of pants a hapless dry cleaner lost and the hiccupping girl who, finally rid of the persistent problem, ran away from home, underscore the media's apparent fascination with stupid stories.

And now this find: one journalist has requested leads on pets with hobbies from a PR service that helps journalists find sources and information for stories. What kind of hobby would your dog have? Would it be a traditional dog interest, say, digging or chewing? Or maybe your dog enjoys scrapbooking or collecting sports memorabilia?

Help us help you

PR isn't strenuous, but it IS stressful. That's because we can find ourselves trapped between clients who have unrealistic expections and media people who, in an industry facing serious economic downturns, don't even want to deal with us. We do want to do a good job, though, so here are some ways to get the best value from your PR firm:

• Stick around. Sometimes CEOs come to a town to do interviews and are willing to devote about 30 seconds to the task. Sure, it's not the easiest thing in the world, but since you're here, why not take advantage of the opportunities that your PR firm presents? And if you don't like talking with the media, we can help train you so you'll feel more comfortable and confident.
• Give us some great information to work with. PR people are often criticized for not providing in-depth information to the media. In some cases, it's because clients don't feel the need for pitch materials, such as b-roll, backgrounders, bios and photos. Won't you let us develop them? In addition, are your management people available for interviews? Could you provide contact information for satisfied customers/clients? Does your web site have adequate content?
• Allow us time to tell your story. Getting in-depth coverage doesn't happen overnight. We need to nurture our media contacts, providing the right pitch at the right moment. Then we need to follow-up with the requested information and interviews in a timely fashion. Sometimes this takes months, given the extreme demands on the time and attention of today's overworked print and TV reporters. Be patient. It will be worth it.
• Keep the dialogue going. We love to discuss story angles with clients. Often some usual fact or idea will result in a great media placement. We also like to explore some other ways to build awareness for your product/service, including demos/sampling, networking with business/community organizations, sponsorships, radio promotions and special events.

The best PR programs result from an ongoing client/agency partnership. The client must be committed to and actively participate in his/her own PR efforts, and these efforts must be constantly evaluated and reexamined so that they meet the changeable demands of the media and the public.

Blogs, Drifting

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

What is a hobgoblin, anyway?

While berating myself for failing to post, I've noticed quite a few blogs, seemingly abandoned and floating aimlessly through cyberspace. Some tout long-shuttered restaurants, or refer breathlessly to events from the 90s.

Now I'm hardly the soul of consistency, but shouldn't bloggers be required to clean up their detritus after, say, a year or two? Pretty soon we'll be encumbered with piles of blogging driftwood as folks lose their initial enthusiasm.

Which brings me to the PR focus of this rant. So many corporate web sites I visit exhibit this same lack of consistency. On some, news releases haven't been posted for years.  What does this tell the media? That nothing's been happening? That you let your in-house PR staff go and don't think you should communicate anything to the outside world?

Social Media: Too Trendy for Traditional Media Outlets?

All the blather about Social Media and the Social Media News Release assumes that our clients aren't looking for coverage from traditional media sources.  Wrong.

With the exception of tech and major media, most of the media outlets to which we distribute alerts and releases (and the information isn't unsolicited)  aren't even going to visit the client's web site. What's more, they don't like to click on links to download photos or obtain additional information.  As for blogs, forget it. Many newsrooms, especially at the smaller community papers, have outdated and slow computer systems. Some TV stations still want faxes, for heaven's sake.

So until cash-strapped newspapers get some major technology upgrades, and until the non-tech-oriented reporters/producers get comfortable with social media, we'll be talking amongst ourselves.  In the meantime, there's no substitute in traditional media for a well-written, well-timed and targeted pitch.

When is Guerrilla Marketing NOT Guerrilla Marketing?

When a large advertising/marketing/pr conglomerate executes a stunt to publicize the new logo for an office supplies superstore and calls the event guerrilla marketing.  Adweek covered the announcement last week with some fanfare. It seems a specially-designed vehicle projected an image of a giant rubber band ball bouncing along Michigan Avenue in Chicago. Very clever, and also cleverly timed to coincide with a retail trade show that opened last week.

Colin McKay covered this to some extent in his blog, Canuckflack, but I'd like to add that now it appears that big agencies are developing and executing PR stunts and calling them guerrilla marketing, possibly because of the trendier connotation.  Hey guys, guerilla marketing is under-the-radar and underground by its very nature. You don't do the following: 1) send out a press release that you are going to do some guerrilla marketing 2) use guerrilla marketing to promote a new logo for an office superstore and 3) think that it's guerrilla marketing simply because you haven't asked the city for a permit. And I'm not even getting into the use of the guerrilla marketing "campaign" as the topic of a presentation at the retail convention (and the "rollout" of the surprise guest: the world's largest ball of rubber bands). A PR stunt by any other name is still a stunt.    

The Power of Numbers

Colleague and PR pundit Lisa Faulkner-Dunne recently observed that editors love numbers. She observed this because she attended one of those ubiquitous media luncheons in which editors and producers tell PR people what interests them. They also tell PR people, generally in a world-weary tone, that 1) they should really read the publications they are pitching and 2) they shouldn't call harried editors asking about receipt of press releases. They're right, in a perfect world. Of course, if I only pitched the publications I read, the possibility of getting any ink for my clients would be very limited indeed, what with time spent reading the local papers and business journals, general interest pubs and watching the local news.  This is all sandwiched in between looking at blogs and Internet news sites and watching reality shows like Project Runway and Top Chef.

Back to the numbers: a cursory glance reveals that, like garden plantings, they're mostly odd numbers and multiples of five. Let's see...in today's paper we have a cover story about the Oscars with not one but three lists of five things ..5 blunders, 5 "smart moves" and the opinions of 5 critics. On the cover of another section, we peer into a celebrity's home (well, not really) to discover 15 things about him, including the condiments in his refrigerator and whether he puts his dirty dishes in the sink or the dishwasher. Whoa! I'm riveted. But wait! On the cover of another section, we find that 1,111,174 people in the Chicago area have sex on the average night. Did I want to know that?

What does this obsession with numbers mean for PR people? Will our news have to fit into a list of five things or thereabouts? Should we write news releases as lists of five things? Failing that, we should probably wait until this fixation on numbers passes, if it ever does.  Of course, the upcoming release of the Number 23 movie is bound to spur all sorts of lists of 23 things, or 23 lists of 23 things.