By Leo Valiquette
A frequent challenge with the classic pitch approach to technology trade media is that, while you may have crafted a well thought out and punchy line to approach them with, you have no idea what it is the editors are actually looking for. Sure, you may sometimes find your approach is successful, but many of your failures could have been averted by following a simple procedure: Ask the media about what elements they see in your story that are of interest to them.
In addition to being a less aggressive tactic than trying to sell a specific story angle every time, this kind of approach is also often welcomed by the editor or reporter, who is fed up with fending off pitches that don’t hold any interest whatsoever.
I am not throwing the concept of the story pitch out the window – some of the best hits come through bringing an innovative story idea to editors that they had not previously considered. But asking questions can help even the best pitchers to improve their game.
Once you have established a clear idea of what your various targets are looking for, then your pitches can be tailored to fit the needs of those targets. It sounds obvious, but this is about more than just going to the web site and reading the “how to get coverage” section. It is about approaching a specific person and getting them to provide you with their perspective on what elements of your company or product story could be useful to them.
Coupling this information with your knowledge of what you can deliver gives you a clear view of how to work with this target. It may mean that you have to wait for six months for some kind of milestone or industry event to occur, but the important fact is that you know what the opportunity is.
By Leo Valiquette
Labarge Weinstein hosted yet another well-attended and informative Startup Drop-in event last night for The Ottawa Network, and the theme of the evening demonstrated how seemingly innocuous things can have a most profound impact when duplicated on a large scale.
The theme was cleantech, featuring Ron Dizy of Sempa Power Systems, a Vancouver firm that specializes in hybrid power systems that help cut utility bills for commercial and industrial buildings. Ron talked about how customers can cut their power bills by 10 to 30 per cent by switching to electrical heating during off-peak hours and back to fossil fuel-based heating when the demand for, and the cost of, electricity is at its highest.
The evening also featured three of Ottawa’s rising stars in the cleantech sphere.
Energate, which helps consumers and utilities manage and reduce energy use in the home, was represented by chairman and CEO Niraj Bhargava. He emphasized the simple truth that we’re all creatures of habit unlikely to adopt methods of energy conservation if they mean curbing our use of the domestic comforts we’ve all come to take for granted, such as heating and air-conditioning. Energate’s speciality is managing energy use in ways we can bear to live with.
Dave Gerwing, president of Menova Energy, talked about how much power there is untapped in the rays of the sun. (I believe he said enough sunlight strikes the earth in one minute to power the planet for six months. Any error in that statement is entirely mine). But the trick is to capture it. Menova has developed a high-efficiency solar concentrator that captures this clean power source for electrical power, heating and lighting, hundreds of times more efficiently and at a fraction of the cost of traditional solar power technology.
But the most profound illustration of how the little things can add up to monumental proportions came from Scott Feagan, CEO of TireStamp. His company is in the business of making devices that allow corporate fleets to monitor and manage tire pressure and condition. Sounds like a practical enough solution, but not much of a “Wow” factor, is there?
Well, then Scott started talking about how quickly an under-inflated tire wears out, how under-inflation impacts fuel efficiency, how many gallons of oil are needed to make a replacement tire, the highway fatalities attributed every year to blowouts on commercial vehicles, and the billions some of the big parcel companies pay each year in fuel, no one in that room was left with any doubt that proper tire inflation and maintenance is a huge factor in reducing global pollution and resource consumption.
As individuals, we often wonder what we can do to make a difference. The truth is, there is no magic bullet to cure our environmental challenges. But, as last night’s event demonstrated, all those little things we can do, either at home, on the road or in the workplace, can add up in a big way.
By Leo Valiquette
The Ottawa Citizen’s Mark Anderson wrote an entertaining and insightful piece this week about the tribulations of being a generalist business and technology reporter confronted by media releases loaded with tongue-twisting jargon.
As a former business journalist, I can certainly empathize with the challenges faced by those on the receiving end of the pitch machine. Attention spans are pinched by the news demands of the day and the host of other pitches clogging up voicemail and email inboxes. That which isn’t easily understood is easily trashed in favour of that which can be deciphered in five seconds or less.
As Mark emphasizes, this doesn’t mean that you have to try and provide the Dummy’s Guide to your client’s technology in the brief time you have to make your pitch. What you must do is convey in clear dollars and cents terms the significance of the news. Companies don’t peddle products and services unless there is an obvious financial benefit (well, they shouldn’t anyway). There’s the benefit to themselves in terms of the value they are bringing to the market, and there is the value to their clients to improve their own service offerings or drive greater efficiencies that will boost profit margins.
As we say at inmedia, it’s about the business case for the technology. Follow the money and find your story.
By Leo Valiquette
Before I head off to a long weekend of turkey, ham and all the various and sundry other foodstuffs that go along with it, I’m joining what promises to be an A-list crowd peppered with big names from the NHL for tonight is the annual CEO of the Year gala hosted by my former colleagues at the Ottawa Business Journal.
It promises to be a memorable evening, even for one such as myself who has only a lukewarm interest in the professional hockey season, with tributes from Wayne Gretzky and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman.
They’re coming, of course, to honour the 2008 CEO of the Year, Ottawa Senators chief executive Roy Mlakar. This year’s pick, as determined by OBJ senior staff and the winners from previous years, is a departure from the typical private-sector executive one would expect in a tech-heavy town like Ottawa, but as this week’s profile in the OBJ attests, Mlakar has proven himself a savvy and successful CEO who has confidently guided the franchise through some shaky times.
Congrats to Mlakar and hats off to the team at the OBJ for the work they do to recognize business excellence in our fair city.
By Leo Valiquette
All right, just to make sure everyone is caught up and on the same page now, Apple CEO Steve Jobs did not have a heart attack over the weekend.
But all it took was a bogus posting to CNN’s online citizen journalism portal to demonstrate once again just how viral the web can be and and sucker punch Apple’s stock price. This has sparked plenty of commentary and navel gazing today about the risks of allowing average citizens to break so-called “news” without their scoop first being subjected to scrutiny and third-party verification. Check out Scott Karp’s take on how this was a failure of open systems and Matthew Ingram on how this was not a failure of citizen journalism.
This incident does reinforce the importance of trusted and reliable sources to bring us news and information that has in some way been confirmed and verified. The fact that CNN’s citizen journalism site, iReport, allows such misinformation to be uploaded and broadcast to the world, should serve as a wake-up call that content that’s been judged in some way is more important now than ever.
Sure, the nature of the web allowed this false report to be corrected as quickly as it was initially broadcast. But that’s irrelevant. For a period of time, those who were paying attention believed the CEO of a major publicly traded company was in a potentially life-threatening condition, with the hit to Apple’s stock price only the most obvious example of the chaos that can quickly ensure from such misinformation. As Karp says, such uncensored citizen journalism is an open invitation to those with malicious intentions to manipulate the public for their own ends. And the intent doesn’t have to be malicious for damage to be done. Someone with the most honourable of intentions can do similar harm simply by being wrong.
Of course, there should be a distinction made between eye-witness news — such as providing an account as a bystander or participant, or capturing on video a disaster or other dramatic event –and broadcasting unconfirmed rumours or outright lies. Even in this always-on world, we still need gatekeepers of some sort to make that judgment call.
