By Linda Forrest
One of the attributes that inmedia is quite proud of is that with our agency, we feel that your whole story gets told. Because our vertical teams (meaning clients aren’t sold by the highest executives in the company and then work is actually implemented by a junior team) are involved in client engagement from the outset, everyone on an account has a thorough understanding of our client’s story and business objectives well beyond the scope of today’s news release.
But how do we come to understand a client’s whole story? Even before we’ve signed on with a new client, we typically will do some research into the media and analyst opportunity for a company so that when putting together our proposal, we have a reasonably accurate 35,000 foot view of the company’s media and analyst landscape – what publications and firms are covering what aspects of the company’s space, whether competitors are being profiled in areas where this potential client could be referenced as an expert resource and so on.
Then, at the outset of a client engagement, we undertake intensive briefings with a company to learn about the company history, the balance of its marketing activities, target vertical markets, information about the company’s technology platforms/products, competitive differentiator and so on. At these briefings, it is immensely beneficial to have multiple perspectives and viewpoints from within the company in the room. And here’s why.
By including in the conversation team members from sales, marketing, the executive suite, the technology knowledge-keepers, and hands-on account managers, we can ensure that we are in fact getting a company’s whole story from multiple perspectives. Tactical implementers may be privy to information that the executive suite is not and vice versa. As such, these sessions not only benefit us but can offer visibility internally as to company alignment, marketing and sales objectives, customer pain points, purchasing decision makers and influencers and so on. Our inclusion in this exercise enables us to ensure that the materials and campaign that we develop is suited to the right target audience, includes the correct key messages and will best tell the company story well beyond an immediate news hook. Perhaps, given a particular client’s circumstances or media market, the best approach is not news release driven but instead would be better served by an ongoing campaign of bylined articles. Or maybe a series of speaking opportunities will best meet the needs of a company looking to establish thought leadership in their particular space…
The only way that we can truly know what tactics and program will best suit a particular client is to have this in-depth understanding and then build a program that will help that company meet its marketing and sales objectives. In order to do that, we feel that it’s important to build a well-rounded understanding and that requires the cooperation and input of a range of knowledge-keepers.
By Linda Forrest
Further to my post from a few weeks ago asking if journalist burnout was the reason for the escalation of the hacks vs. flacks war, I’ve done a little bit more digging in order to hopefully gain some insight into what job satisfaction ratings are like in the PR industry. Interestingly, the most recent figures that I could find point to very high job satisfaction amongst PR professionals, certainly higher than those indicated by journalists in the prior study. The International Association of Business Communicators, an association for public relations professionals, conducted a survey in 2006 and published the results last year. According to Communication World, the 2007 Profile salary survey was sent to 724 accredited members of the IABC, 125 of whom responded. Though a smaller sample size than the next most recent survey, conducted in 2002, the results from this study reflect an upward trend in both salaries and job satisfaction. In addition to the salary data gathered, respondents indicated the following:
Respondents to the pulse survey somewhat or strongly agreed with the following statements:
-If I had to do it all over again, I would choose a career in corporate communication (84.8%).
-Corporate communication is more respected by the media now than it was five years ago (63.2%).
-My salary compensates for the number of hours I am compelled to work (70.4%).
-I am satisfied with the opportunities for career advancement at my current company or organization (60.8%).
This analysis, coupled with the salary data collected, would seem to indicate that the PR industry is generally contented and well compensated. Perhaps my assumption that PR flacks can claim some of the same complaints as journalists is just attributed to the grumpy (and most vocal) contingents of both industries, those hoping that indeed the “squeaky wheel gets the grease.” Then again, a small survey is not necessarily representative of the entire industry, but still, it does give us some valuable, if limited, insight into the current state of the PR nation.
Since that original post, we’ve also received word from Simon Owens pointing us to his blog where he’s dug a little deeper into the original study that I referenced and interviewed the researcher who authored the original study on journalist burnout.
By Linda Forrest
Many moons ago, I had the great pleasure of taking a communications course with Dr. Eric McLuhan, son of world famous media theorist Marshall McLuhan. A well-respected author and professor in his own right, Dr. McLuhan’s course was designed in order to provide the students, who were studying a range of topics in business management, with a solid language base upon which to establish themselves as competent writers and communicators.
Through course material, we were taught the wonders of styling sentences and how to properly use punctuation. These sound like fundamentals and they are, but the amount of proper grammatical and punctuation training included in a typical primary and even secondary school curriculum is positively lacking. This post-secondary course had us circling grammatical errors, doing word puzzles, correcting punctuation, and learning the true value of a semi-colon among other activities in the name of strengthening our communications abilities. As a result, I feel that each student in that class ended up a better writer and although I’m not certain of the whereabouts of the majority of my classmates, I’m confident that they’re better communicators today because of it.
Having always had a love of language and reading, I consider myself quite the philomath and get positively giddy at the prospect of learning a new word (being in technology PR, this opportunity presents itself quite often, as you can imagine.) Dictionary.com’s Word of the Day email has been coming into my inbox for years now. Having had no idea that I would end up in public relations as my career, my strong feeling is that no matter where I ended up career-wise, I would have been well served by my love of knowledge and language, in part fostered by the course taught by Dr. McLuhan.
Writing is predominantly what we do here at inmedia. Although we may not subscribe fully to the idea that the medium is the message, I feel lucky to have been educated in part by Dr. McLuhan and to this day still make use of some of the reference materials provided in that class. Everyone, even professional writers need to “sharpen their saw” on a consistent basis and I’m glad to have these tools at my disposal. So, thank you, Dr. McLuhan.
By Linda Forrest
Yesterday’s Bulldog Reporter had an insightful piece suggesting that the model for PR is broken and some suggestions on how to start trying to fix it. It struck me that the author was suggesting a best practices approach to PR, something to which we’ve long adhered, but that sadly, the industry as a whole is being judged by our weakest link: those agencies and practitioners that are doing a shoddy job and dragging our reputation down with them.
The reminder at the start of the piece about the recent escalation of the hacks vs. flacks war was fresh in my mind when I saw a story on Gawker about the high incidence of journalist burnout. This study made me wonder about this chicken and egg scenario: are hacks hating on flacks because they’re dissatisfied with their own jobs? I certainly don’t think that this is wholly to blame for the friction between the two camps but is certainly something worth noting. Also worth noting is the irony that the vast majority of the complaints registered by journalists could easily be voiced by PR professionals as well. It would be interesting to see the results of a similar study on how satisfied PR practitioners are in their careers…
By Linda Forrest
Typically, when we engage with clients, whether they’ve ever done any media and analyst relations in the past or not, we engage in something we call a ramp up and roll out. This media and analyst launch ensures that all the key target media and analysts for a company are made aware of our client and its offerings, and is usually centred around a news release that either has some sort of “today” hook or positions the company in the marketplace as a thought-leader or ground-breaker in its own particular niche.
The main goal of this exercise is to get a lay of the land for what the media and analyst opportunity for the company is over the long term. Any coverage that we get, and inevitably we do get coverage for our clients during the launch, is, in fact, largely a by-product of this investigative and introductory exercise. What we hope to end up with after the roll-out portion of the launch is a clear view of the ongoing opportunity to tell a company’s story and what sorts of methods we can employ in order to harvest that opportunity.
The arrows in our PR quiver extend well beyond hitting send on news release after news release, and methods we employ and to what degree depend on what will best serve the needs and further the sales objectives of the client. Sometimes, especially when a launch has gone particularly well in terms of garnering immediate coverage, companies tend to think, “We’ve done PR now – look at all this coverage. I don’t have to do anymore for a long time as we’ll ride the wave that this initial push has created.”
These companies are doing themselves a great disservice by losing the momentum created by the launch and by not pursuing the worthwhile opportunities unearthed during this process. Our strong counsel to clients is that the best approach to media and analyst relations is a sustained, on-going conversation with the media and analyst targets who have the potential to greatly influence purchasing decision-makers in your market. Through the launch, we have established a “Rolodex factor” that means that when media are writing an article about a topic on which you have a perspective, there is a much greater chance you’ll be included. Likewise, if an analyst is writing a report about your market and the vendors therein, you will be included as a worthy competitor. Although some mindshare is gained during the launch process, the only true way to learn of and take advantage of these appropriate opportunities is to maintain the conversation with media and analysts and the only way you can do that is to engage in an ongoing PR program. The specific dynamics and budget of the program are variable propositions; we map out what we feel is the ideal program and then, if required, augment it based on budget and other considerations.
Whatever your budget, if you’re going to invest in PR – and it is an investment, not a cost centre – it’s best that you have a long-term view and plan to support the program for more than just a launch. If you wait too long to re-engage after a burst of PR activity, the progress that you made can disappear, and disappear quickly.
