This is the next entry in our “Best of” series, in which we venture deep into the vault to replay blog opinion and insight that has withstood the test of time. Today’s post hails from April 2008. We welcome your feedback.
By Linda Forrest
Today, I’m doing a lot of work that’s invisible to the client’s naked eye. Having previously posted on database maintenance, a “behind the scenes” task that is incredibly important to the integrity of the PR campaign, I thought I would post a few other tasks that your agency is regularly undertaking on your behalf, invisibly.
As we’re nearing the end of launch campaigns for some new clients, I’m starting to get a feel for the full range of opportunities that exist in the mid- and long-term for these clients. This means I’m researching the published opportunities available in editorial calendars for target publications for these clients, establishing a list of relevant tradeshows and conferences where company executives could be spokespeople or where there might be value in attending for business development purposes (let’s hope they bear no resemblance to the cautionary tales mentioned yesterday), and generally getting a feel for the PR opportunity outside of the Tier 1, or most influential, media with whom we had in-depth conversations on our clients’ behalf during the launch phase and within which we have a firm handle on the opportunities forthcoming.
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By Linda Forrest
Yesterday, guest blogger Ken Rosen talked about the importance of using the same language as your customers. He referred to not only communication disconnects caused by language barriers, but also how, in order to be successful at customer engagement, you must speak the same language and define both features and benefits in terms that resonate.
How does this approach translate to PR efforts?
We had the good fortune this week again of having the story of a user of the advanced prosthetic technology of our longtime client Touch Bionics go global. The story had all the makings of a great piece – a precocious young man writes a cheeky request to an idol, who in turn pays for his branded bionic hand. This one had story angles to spare: human interest, business, technology, health, science, charity…
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This is the next entry in our “Best of” series, in which we venture deep into the vault to replay blog opinion and insight that has withstood the test of time. Today’s post hails from February 2008. We welcome your feedback.
By Francis Moran
About a month ago, as part of my continuing series of Francis’s favourite fictions, I tackled the too-widely held myth that public relations can’t be measured. I described how, at inmedia, we establish a critical path, or set of outputs, for every project and ongoing program that allows our clients to certify that we’re exerting the amount of effort we said we would. This, I said, was a good starting point for program measurement, but a woefully inadequate one.
I went on to describe what we call outcomes, a set of clear and unambiguous objectives we set that tell our clients what they should expect by way of actual coverage by our target media and analysts, with more granular objectives established for specific program elements such as news releases, product launches, contributed articles, speaking programs, trade show support and so on. Applying such an approach turns the whole PR value proposition on its ear; instead of a cost centre that should be managed down to its minimum, a client can now view the PR function as an investment centre, and can answer the question, “Are these results, or outcomes, a sufficient return on the investment my PR agency or department is asking me to make?”
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This is the next entry in our “Best of” series, in which we venture deep into the vault to replay blog opinion and insight that has withstood the test of time. Today’s post hails from January 2008. We welcome your feedback.
By Francis Moran
Francis’s favourite fictions is a continuing series of posts on common myths surrounding the practice of public relations. When I give this as a presentation, I subtitle it, “Everything I know that’s wrong about PR I learned from technology company executives.” Today’s fiction comes courtesy of a chief financial officer at such a venture who nixed her marketing vice president’s intention to hire us, saying, “I can’t measure marketing so I won’t fund it.”
Too bad; the company she used to work for is now out of business, taking a genuinely valuable technology advance and more than $30-million in investors’ money with it. Maybe now, she at least has a yardstick with which to measure the cost of not marketing.
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This is the next entry in our “Best of” series, in which we venture deep into the vault to replay blog opinion and insight that has withstood the test of time. Today’s post hails from January 2008. We welcome your feedback.
By Francis Moran
My colleague Danny Sullivan made the strong case earlier this week in favour of negotiating embargos with trusted journalists that gives them advance access to your announcement and executives so they can do a better job with the story. In return, they promise not to publish or broadcast anything until an agreed upon time and date, usually the point at which you release the news to the rest of the world. The benefit to the company making the announcement is that the journalist has more time and flexibility to deal with the story and, guess what, so does the company. It’s a tidy win-win situation, and something we do whenever practical.
Something Danny didn’t get into, though, is the frequent situation where clients confuse embargos and exclusives, an understandable mixup given that both usually entail giving select journalists advance access to the story. But whereas embargos still treat all media outlets equally in terms of when they can run with the story, an exclusive entails favouring one, or a small handful of, outlets, giving them advance and exclusive access to the story and permission to run with it prior your making a more general announcement.
Journalists love exclusives. Some clients swear by them. We point blank refuse to do them, and here’s why.
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