By Leo Valiquette
Seeing the forest for the trees
Francis is fond of describing our roles here at inmedia as “advocates in the court of public opinion.” That’s a much more appropriate and accurate label than “spin doctors.”
But the role of advocate is more than simply conveying our clients’ stories to the outlets that matter. We must also be willing to impress upon clients the agendas, or the simple realities, of the markets we are trying to reach on their behalf. What elements of their story must we have to effectively attract and retain the attention of the media we are targeting? What works? What doesn’t? How is the way the client wants to approach things more of a hindrance than a help to our efforts? To adequately serve our clients, we must deliver frank and honest counsel that sometimes includes feedback from the marketplace that may be painful to hear.
Over at the PR Conversations blog, Kristen E. Sukulac offers an interesting perspective on this by citing a classic exercise in inattentional blindness and change blindness.
PR helps raise venture capital
Bottom line here: good PR pays. Don’t take my word for it. This post at PR Squared may be a couple of weeks old, but the findings of the study it cites are timeless. A survey of 300 U.S. startups that received funding in the past three years found a clear correlation between employing a PR program and greater success in securing new financing.
Time well wasted?
And over at really practical marketing, Mark Nagurski gives a no nonsense primer and how to create, and derive value from, an effective online presence and the pitfalls that come of looking at it in terms of traditional advertising. In his view, less can be a whole lot more.
By Leo Valiquette
It’s that time again for PR practitioners everywhere. With the end of the year looming, attention turns to the next year and charting a fresh plan of attack to take our clients’ stories to the media outlets that matter.
With our emphasis here at inmedia mainly on the specific trade and industry media that move a particular client’s market and care about our client’s story, an easy starting point is the editorial calendar. This typically charts specific topics, trends and issues that a publication plans to cover throughout the coming year. Editors need content and this is a ready means to get a bearing on what they will be looking for and when.
More often than not, however, details are scarce and a followup with an editor is required to validate, or disqualify, the opportunity before we can even see if we can get the client’s foot in the newsroom door.
But while the edcal is a good starting point, it’s hardly exhaustive. For one client, my colleague Danny is engaged in active discussions with an editor about a Q&A-style article. However, in reviewing this particular publication’s edcal, I didn’t see one opportunity for the entire year that appeared to be a fit for the client.
The morale of the story? An edcal only paints part of the picture. It is a great starting point, but no substitute for real person-to-person communication with an editor or journalist.
And even the story painted by the edcal can deceiving. In a call with a client earlier this week, I presented what appeared to be the low-hanging fruit: edcal opportunities coming up in January for which the client appeared to be a perfect fit. Prior to this meeting, I had already pinged the editorial contacts of these publications about discussing their January issues in more detail. No sooner had I told the client about what appeared to be particularly well-suited opportunity that she thought was fantastic, a message popped into my inbox that began with, “Hmm… must be some sort of error.”
Turns out someone had made a mistake and the publication’s focus for January was, in fact, a completely unrelated topic unsuitable for the client.
Easy come, easy go.
And it’s a rare edcal that doesn’t carry the caveat in fine print, “Subject to change without notice.” Edcals are often driven by the advertising department. Sure, the editorial content may be at arm’s length and independent of the sales department’s agenda, but advertising revenue is what keeps the lights on and the paycheques rolling in. While the editorial department must come up with relevant content to fill the page, the advertising department must find advertisers who see the value of plugging their related products or services in amongst the news articles. One is needed to pay for the other.
It just goes to show that effective media relations is a process in a dynamic state of flux. To get the client’s story told requires active and ongoing engagement with the media, all 12 months of the year.
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 Danny Sullivan
So, you want to see your story make the pages of the major business media? Well, if it truly merits that level of attention, then applying the right mix of patience, persistence and PR savvy should pay off… or perhaps you could try a somewhat less orthodox method to guarantee front page attention.
Yesterday’s spoofing of the New York Times by the mysterious Yes Men presents companies with an interesting alternative to traditional PR tactics: if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Just think – Company X unveils version 3.8 of Software Application Y – the cover story on BusinessWeek. Although printing a million fake newspapers in support of every news release is probably going to eat into that marketing budget rather quickly.
Ho hum, back to the drawing board.
