By Leo Valiquette
As a former journalist, nothing warranted a head shake more than PR folks who weren’t interested when opportunity came knocking.
Sure, there are always situations in which a journalist is a burr under the saddle, pricking away at tender spots that an organization would rather keep out of the public eye. But I’m talking about positive media opportunities or, in some cases, followups on pitches that have been made by the PR practitioners themselves. As a journalist, I personally experienced situations in which a PR person would make a pitch, then disappear or stonewall when we expressed an interest in pursuing the opportunity.
Michael Hammond, a reporter at the Kitchener-Waterloo Record and former colleague from the Ottawa Business Journal, pinged me today about three separate examples of apparent PR apathy towards the media this week that caused a great deal of teeth grinding and hair pulling in his shop. And again, these were positive story opportunities that were brushed off.
I invited Michael to appear on our blog with a guest piece about these incidents, but he was so incensed he had already published his rant on the Record’s blog, which you can read at A necessary evil.
The moral of the story? Take all the good press you can get. Duh!
By Leo Valiquette
Say what you will about the mindset of Hollywood executives, they do like to reuse and recycle, even if the concept of “reduce” remains beyond their grasp.
We’ve seen the bigscreen reboots of such classics (I use that term loosely) as Charlie’s Angels, Starsky and Hutch, The Dukes of Hazard, Get Smart, The Fugitive, Bewitched and Shaft, with The A-Team on its way in 2009. It’s seen to be a safer bet to hang your hat on a franchise with some pedigree, than try to woo consumers with something entirely fresh and unique. Of course, there’s no shortage of examples where such caution has resulted in a bomb at the box office. Treading the line between attracting older consumers nostalgic for classic television and engaging younger consumers with something updated and current in the same package can be a risky proposition. As is always the case in product marketing, trying to be too many things to too many people can backfire.
All this to introduce the reboot of the mother of all franchises – Star Trek. Yes, I contend, it is bigger than Bond. All that’s left after this is the return of Gunsmoke.
After six television series (including the animated one) and 10 theatrical releases, the entire franchise is being rebooted with a new movie and new actors in the roles immortalized by the old series, anchored around the characters of Captain James T. Kirk, Dr. Leonard McCoy and Mr. Spock. They have dared to recast these pop culture icons with fresh faces who portray them a few years prior to the time period encompassed by the original TV series. The first trailers have just hit the Internet. This isn’t your daddy’s Star Trek. It’s fast, slick and the starship interior looks like it was designed by Apple engineers. There’s even a clip in the trailer where it looks like Spock loses his temper with Kirk and takes a swing at him. (Where’s the logic in that?)
The studio is obviously hoping to engage a younger audience, after a somewhat feeble response to the last television series and theatrical movie. It remains to be seen if they are beating a dead horse with an offering that will only serve to alienate the core fanbase that has stood by the franchise all these years. With the release date still far off in May 2009, the studio has lots of time to kick the marketing and promotion into high gear (no doubt with the affiliated merchandising to pad any softness in box office revenue).
Whatever the outcome and the general audience reaction to this franchise reboot, I think there will be interesting lessons learned about marketing and managing audience expectations when meddling with such an iconic brand, much like Coca-Cola’s experience with New Coke.
By Leo Valiquette
A new study commissioned by Microsoft finds that Britons spend about one quarter of their daily television habit flipping channels. But it’s hardly an attention-deficit trend limited to the U.K., or to television for that matter.
Bombarded as we all are by the sheer volume and variety of media each day, it’s a struggle to keep our attention span focused for too long on any one thing. Back in the ’80s and ’90s, there was talk of the 500-channel universe, and while the number hasn’t yet crept quite that high, the Microsoft study confirms that a near-infinite channel selection isn’t necessarily a good thing. As this study found, Brits spend an average of a week of their lives each year trying to make up their mind about what to watch, in the process often missing something they wanted to watch.
What do people do when faced with overwhelming choice? They often limit the options to what they know. The study found that more than 40 per cent stick with a handful of familiar channels, while one in three watched only the five main U.K. networks.
In the media business, channels are replaced by pitches, news releases and breaking news from the big names that demand attention. All the news that’s fit to print (or broadcast, or blog about) is too much to fit. With shrinking budgets and fewer hands on deck, media today are overwhelmed by choice, so much so that good material can get lost in the shuffle and never get fair consideration.
At inmedia, we focus on connecting with the media that matter for our clients to tell each client’s story, regardless of who those media are and if we have ever spoken to them before. We engage in a dialogue that brings our client to the attention of these specific media and educates both the journalist and ourselves on where there is a fit between what the media outlet needs and what our client does. It’s a personalized approach that can be tedious and frustrating, but crucial to rising above the noise. It’s far more effective than hoping for the best with mass e-mail blasts, or relying on “existing relationships.”
This focused approach is the only way to take a client from being just another channel lost in a universe of hundreds, to being recognized as a useful source of information, news and perspective.
By Leo Valiquette
I’m always on the lookout for interesting advice and insights that can serve me as a PR practitioner as well as provide insight to those interested in how things work, or should work, on this side of the fence. Here are some recent links of interest.
Be heard
As a PR gun, you are the gatekeeper for your client. It’s not only your job to take the client’s story to the media, but also to qualify and investigate media opportunities when they come knocking. Not all media opportunities are ideal for your client and some can in fact be a well-disguised sales pitch that’s nothing more than a nuisance. Even when there is an ideal fit, you must still ensure your client is prepared for the interview with an overview of what ground the journalist wants to cover and how specific questions should be answered.
This requires that you, as the PR gatekeeper, interview the journalist to some degree. As Cece Salomon-Lee at PR Meets Marketing says, you can’t be afraid to ask questions that put your client’s best interests forward.
Communication works two ways
Meanwhile, Richard Edelman articulates the evolution of the PR function into a critical tool for public engagement that must be part of business strategy and policy formulation. His particular point that strikes close to one of our key foci here at inmedia is positioning the client as a go-to expert in certain areas relevant to their subject matter expertise to become part of a public discussion on broader issues. Maybe this kind of content doesn’t talk about your client’s products or services, but it still contributes to the marketing effort.
Sometimes, silence is golden
Lastly, there’s much to be said about pitching your client’s story to key media in the context of current events. Under the appropriate circumstances, it can be an excellent means of demonstrating the value of your client’s product or service using a real world example of what pain point it addresses or problem it solves. It can also give teeth to that story pitch you have in mind that demonstrates your client’s authority and thought leadership in an area relevant to their market.
But note my use of the word “appropriate.” It may be wise to give hard thought to putting out a news release that references a recent event in which lives were lost, no matter how strong the case that your client’s product could have made a big difference.
This may seem like common sense, but as the folks at the Bad Pitch Blog point out, common sense doesn’t always prevail. Of course, if you are interested in finding out how quickly you can have a cocked and ready shotgun in your hands in the middle of the night, this may be just the thing for you.
By Leo Valiquette
Most of us in Canada are no doubt familiar with that amusing commercial from Rogers about a fellow bragging to his friend about his new high-definition flatscreen television, despite the fact that the picture quality is horrible because he lacks the HD box for his television to display a true HD signal.
Well, this week my eight-year-old antique gave up the ghost. I had long ago decided that, should the day come, I would go with a Sharp Aquos 1080p LCD television. Within 24 hours of the old TV’s death, I had the new one on the wall.
Now, to set up the new TV, I simply connected my standard cable without any HD box, fully expecting to be confronted by god-awful picture quality that would be unbearable to watch.
But, to my utter amazement, the picture quality was at least as good as it was on my old TV. There was none of the blurry distortion dramatized in that Rogers commercial. Maybe I am not enjoying the full HD experience, but I certainly do not feel a pressing need to rush out and buy the HD box.
Granted, this is my personal experience after having the new TV set up for only an hour. Perhaps I am missing something.
But before I even got the TV home, I was in the electronics store shaking my head at a split screen comparison of the quality difference between a regular DVD picture and a high-definition Blu-ray disc picture. Again, there appeared to be a little exaggeration at work. Later at home, I played a standard DVD movie on my standard DVD player through the new LCD TV. When compared to the split-screen comparison I saw in the store, the picture quality was much closer to that of the Blu-ray than it was to the standard DVD as it was portrayed.
Comparisons can be a very effective means of selling buyers on the merits of your product or service, but in the bid to create that “wow” factor that allows your product to fly off the shelves, be cautious about massaging the facts. Your product may clearly be better than your competitor’s, or the status quo, but be careful about trying to present those advantages more dramatically than they really are. Sure, you may dupe the unsophisticated buyer, but, guaranteed, there are plenty of savvy people who will see through the gimmick and out you on — oh, I don’t know — a blog, perhaps?
