By Linda Forrest
There’s a good reason our blog was so quiet last week. We’ve been incredibly busy launching the world’s first bionic finger, Touch Bionics’ ProDigits, to the worldwide media. We’ve had tremendous uptake on the story from all sorts of media all over the world.
I’ve thoroughly bastardized Dylan Thomas in this post’s title, but it’s for a good cause. This morning, the fruits of my labor appeared on “Good Morning America,” one of the highest-rated morning shows in the U.S. and one that airs worldwide. Here’s the segment: .
Getting this segment to come together was no easy feat. We launched last Tuesday, and I began pitching GMA in earnest the following day. I spoke often to with the medical producer there and by Thursday morning, it was set – they were going with the story. I’d lined up a patient in NYC and a prosthetist to come into the city for an in-studio segment Monday morning. Elated, I let the whole Touch Bionics team know we were set; ProDigits were going to be featured on “Good Morning America.” I was told to expect a call from a producer to go over the finer details later Thursday afternoon.
This is where our story takes an unexpected turn. The call came, but it was to say that they didn’t feel the story was different enough from the i-LIMB Hand, which they had covered in 2007, and so they were going to cancel our segment. The patient we were originally going to feature has a partial-hand prosthesis with all four fingers and a thumb so it does not, in fairness, look that much different from the i-LIMB Hand. Nonetheless, this is how I felt.
Having come so close, I was not going to take no for an answer. So I began to pitch all of the other angles to the story – we had other patients, in other locations, with other circumstances. ProDigits is a huge technological advancement from the i-LIMB Hand, it’s the first device of its kind and, before it came along, partial-hand amputees had no other option to regain any meaningful level of functionality. We could tape in advance, we can provide experts, here’s research to back up our claims of the numbers of potential patients… Basically, I would not take no for an answer. I knew that this was a compelling story and that it would be of interest to GMA’s audience. It was just a matter of presenting the whole story of ProDigits and what was available from a resource perspective and convincing them that we could provide the producers with the components they needed in order to put together a good story.
It worked.
They went for the compelling story of Michael Bailey, a 24-year old student in Atlanta, Georgia, who lost three fingers in an industrial accident nearly two years ago. Michael’s prosthesis clearly shows his remaining finger and thumb and so, presumably, tells the story of the partial-hand prosthesis better. GMA senior health and medical correspondent Richard Besser flew all the way to Atlanta on Sunday to do a great interview with an amazing Michael Bailey and the piece aired this morning. (The hit was all the sweeter because this morning was the the debut of new “Good Morning America” host George Stephanopoulos, ensuring our story even better ratings! In a little banter with his co-host that’s not seen on the posted segment, Stephanopoulos, who got to shake hands with a model ProDigits, said the story had given him goosebumps.)
Phew!
This was a lesson in perseverance, and in knowing the whole story, one that extended well beyond the news release. When I was hit with that first setback, I was able to present that whole story and win the day. We couldn’t be happier with the result, and, more importantly, neither could our client.
By Linda Forrest
There’s a war going on on the internet. A war between traditional content providers and consumers. Ironic, given that the battle is over a communication channel, that what we have here is a failure to communicate.
It’s been impossible for me to avoid information lately about paid content on the internet, subscription models for newspapers online, and Rupert Murdoch’s gaffes when it comes to information distribution in a connected world.
It all started with an article in a recent Vanity Fair about Murdoch’s determined stance on making readers pay for online content. The fact that he told an interviewer last week that he plans to drive readers to the paid content by blocking Google from indexing his newspapers, a move that renders their content invisible to the world at large, shows that, as Michael Woolf posits, perhaps he just doesn’t understand what’s at stake here and just how pervasive Google is.
As Valleywag suggested, perhaps Murdoch should read a recent report from Forrester that says that 80% of the 4,000 consumers polled will not pay for online newspaper content and that the remainder are divided on the payment model they’d agree to (subscription versus paying for individual articles).
The real trouble starts when you factor in that 60% of newspaper executives are working on paid-content models. Yikes.
Today’s media world is transparent for those who wish to see, Have a question for your marketplace? Then pose it in any of the many channels available to you. You’ll quickly learn what your customers want and what they don’t want. The fact that those in control of the traditional media aren’t even trying to really understand the tools available to them and devising new revenue models around this new reality is just pathetic. Perhaps the traditional media deserves to dwindle to the point of irrelevance if it’s so unaware of its environment.
The idea of including marketing in an agile product development strategy, as @FrancisMoran wrote about earlier this week, isn’t all that far removed from what newspaper execs need to do here. Listen to your market as you’re deciding what to do and involve them in the process. Rather than engineer newspaper content delivery to suit your revenue desires, find out how your readers want to access your content and build a revenue strategy around that. Seems obvious…
By Danny Sullivan
While much of the PR industry will refer simply to “news releases” as a term to cover the whole spectrum of outbound news flow, at inmedia, we at least choose to assign some level of importance to releases before deciding on the level of effort to placed against them. Attributing a level of media value to a release at the outset will ensure that PR resources are not being wasted on outreach that is never going to yield results.
A good example to illustrate this news value is the customer-win announcement. Companies love to be able to announce new customers and often feel that this should always be a newsworthy item among the media. And so it may be, some of the time. There is a huge difference between announcing a deal where the new customer is prepared to speak about the strategic decisions behind a purchase that has a significant dollar value attributed to it, and a deal where the customer is not prepared to say anything more than the fact they are “working with” the new vendor. The news value here is vastly different; one can reasonably be expected to be pitched for real coverage, while all the other can hope for is, at best, a couple of lines pulled direct from the release.
Sometimes this value-assessment exercise can be challenging. Companies often have an inflated opinion of the importance of their news, but taking a clear stance at an early stage helps prevent awkward questions after the fact. News that is simply an FYI to your market should be exactly that – a piece of information to be noted but without anyone making a great fuss.
Conversely, news that you know has real value should be explored to its fullest extent. I’ve had a few experiences in recent months with news stories that had definite value but that took a bit more than just sending a release to media to secure coverage. Follow up is hugely important; it can be amazing how often you speak to editors who claim to have not seen your news story, then checks inbox, finds it and agrees that it’s something they should be covering! For important news, you should never assume that simply sending the email will guarantee it is seen by your targets.
Another common experience is the editor who may have seen the release but “doesn’t cover news” so thought it was irrelevant and deleted it. For this situation, you need to be aware of the deeper issues that your news story addresses. If you are releasing a new product, why does it have the new features and functionality it does? Do they address a trend in the marketplace? Can this trend be explored as part of a feature?
Establishing the importance of news is a crucial exercise for any PR person to undertake for every announcement, helping both manage expectations and ensuring that effort is expended in the most useful areas.
By Linda Forrest
This week, as usual, we’ve been doing myriad media and analyst relations activities on our clients’ behalf. I’ve been reminded time and again how important it is to adhere to best practices and how if you do, both your agency and your clients will be well served.
Let me provide some examples, and link back to previous posts on this blog that reveal what we feel are best practices in each area.
Sciemetric Instruments, a quality management systems technology vendor and one-time inmedia client that recently returned to the fold, is in the midst of a series of briefings with the most influential analysts in their field, both at boutique firms and the biggest firms. We counseled the company on how best to present its story to analysts, both those it has spoken with in the past and those with whom it is speaking for the first time. The briefings are going very well and we’re not only increasing awareness for the company but also gathering actionable insight into how the company might engage each of these firms to best effect. Our Danny Sullivan, @inmedian, has written about how best to engage with analysts here, here and here.
As we’re still in the early months of our engagement with Agresso, we’ve been working to set measurable objectives for our work, something @FrancisMoran wrote about in his series on PR measurement here, here and here. Agresso told us they selected us as their PR agency of record against some of the stiffest international competition we have ever faced at least in part because our methodology would give them clear, unambiguous objectives against which they could readily evaluate our performance and their PR ROI.
I’ve been doing considerable pro bono work for Help Lesotho, a charitable organization working to support at-risk youth in a tiny African nation that’s been ravaged by HIV and AIDS. There is a big event coming up and we’re working to create a groundswell of media coverage across Canada by profiling local supporters who have been invited to Ottawa to meet the King of Lesotho, who is coming here to express his gratitude. The process of gathering the information is the same whether our client is a charity or a technology company; it’s important to get the whole story and so we’ve been updating the media kit for Help Lesotho, speaking with internal knowledge-keepers at HL, gathering information from the supporters themselves and developing the right media list.
Singletouch, a vendor of a data-capture platform for contractors, is about to launch into the U.K. and simultaneously make an announcement in North America, which means that it’s time to refresh the media list. This task, though grueling, is vitally important to make sure that our list is up to date so we’re pushing against the right levers on our client’s behalf. @LeoValiquette wrote about the importance of a media list refresh here.
NetCentric Technologies, developer and marketer of document-compliance software, is in the process of submitting bylined articles to its key publications. Contributed articles written by subject-matter experts can be a high-value component of an integrated PR program. They can shed light on issues in the marketplace that are under-reported or misunderstood, provide a solid business case for a technology offering, provide a step by step how to, and on and on. @LindaForrest – that’s me! – wrote about bylined articles here.
I’d list more of what we’re working on but perhaps my time is best spent doing the work rather than writing about the methodology behind it.
As you can see, we’re quite busy these days! Luckily, we’ve got a clear set of best practices in each of our practice areas to abide by, which makes the tasks a whole lot easier.
By Linda Forrest
There was a study released earlier this week suggesting that less than half of PR people (at least those surveyed) deemed the press release “useful.”
Some of the data from the study caused me to give my head a firm shake:
“One of the main reasons for the decline of the press release is the recent explosion of the use of social media in public relations and the perception that releases are less relevant in those venues. A majority (64%) of respondents who issue releases say they target them most often to print outlets, while 23% send them to online news and financial sites.”
Uh, what?
It seems to me that what we have here is a nomenclature problem.
Press release. News release. Social media release.
Do these three designations conjure up significantly different images in your mind? Or is the name of your interface with the media irrelevant and the effectiveness of the tactic and content of the piece what’s most important?
I would argue it’s clearly the latter.
It seems that a large swath of the PR industry would rather spend time arguing about what to call communications materials or complain about how shoddy tactics are ineffective instead of find the most efficient ways to work with media targets, regardless of what the interface is called.
The best practitioners know that one market-facing document does not fit all, and that a range of materials will need to be developed and the pitch tailored for specific targets. That said, the call-it-what-you-will release still has a role to play. An important one.
In our industry, I would argue that people throw around the terms “press release,” “media release” and “news release” and that they are used fairly interchangeably. It’s difficult to find consensus on the internet about what the commonly accepted definition is for each of these terms because there are arguments in a lot of different directions. If you ask me, it doesn’t really matter; it’s merely semantics.
If the study is referring to the antiquated press release that’s merely sent to print media, then yes, of course this is not the most effective methodology to employ in 2009 if you’re hoping to get coverage for your clients. If the study is referring to the effectiveness of news releases, which are more widely distributed to all types of media, then I heartily disagree that they’re “a necessary evil” or not useful.
A well crafted release that contains, without hyperbole, all the facts of a story, a strong lead, meaningful statistics, pertinent contact information and information on how to find out more about the story, is an effective tool and will be welcome to journalists, if the subject matter is of interest to them and if the release is compelling and if the story resonates with the reporter, and if… While some reporters hate releases on principle – and who can blame them, when the least of our industry has been sending out preposterous drivel and sullying PR’s good name for years – others welcome the concise details that either enable them to write a story without further inputs or provide them with the necessary tools to investigate further.
There’s a lot of hullabaloo about the “social media release.” I would argue that any well-crafted release in the year 2009 would contain social media elements. If it doesn’t, you should strongly consider whether your agency is serving you well. SEO should be a consideration when crafting a release and, increasingly, access to photos and videos and direction to interactive channels such as Twitter profiles and LinkedIn profiles are becoming commonplace.
The unfortunately named “spray and pray” style of public relations never garnered the success that considered and focused efforts do. Has any company in history achieved the full potential of its story merely by sending out a “press release?” Probably not. We’ve already talked about the secret to successful PR on this blog: it’s hard work, applied consistently against the right targets. That’s it. A release may or may not be an effective tactic, depending on the nature of the story, but it is by no means an ineffective tool. Media relations is so much more than sending out a release and practitioners, prospects and customers who don’t understand that are fated to be disappointed in their PR efforts because they simply don’t understand the discipline.
