Content marketing as an antidote to media’s game of broken telephone
By Linda Forrest
Does everyone remember the game broken telephone? There’s a brilliant example of it from the Simpsons that added the phrase “Purple monkey dishwasher” to the lexicon of some circles.
What does this have to do with B2B marketing? When it comes to the media, quite a bit, as it turns out.
As Francis wrote last week, while media coverage is more credible than paid advertising, the message is hard to control:
Media relations practitioners have no say over how much space their story will get, where or when it will run, or what other messages — even opposing messages — might also run in the same story. You can mitigate this lack of control and vastly increase your chances of achieving your desired outcome, however, through the effective and strategic planning of your media relations efforts along with a sharp tactical understanding of how newsrooms operate.
In today’s age of media aggregation, it becomes even more challenging to control the message as media coverage that could be incorrect, misleading, or otherwise wrong can mutate and propagate well beyond the initial piece.
