By Danny Sullivan
It’s not uncommon to sit down with a startup technology company for an initial discussion about a potential PR engagement and have a conversation that goes something like this:
Tech company exec: “I think we need to start doing some PR and I’d like you to present us with some ideas.”
PR agency: “Er, okay, but can you first give us some idea of why it is that you think PR will help your business at this time?”
Exec: “Well, I was hoping that you could tell us that …”
Of course, at this point the conversation typically becomes an exercise that should really have been started before the agency even entered the equation. That is, to explore what are the primary reasons for engaging a PR program, and what it is ultimately supposed to achieve.
Yes, the PR firm brings the expertise needed to plan and execute an effective program, but they are not the experts in your business … you are. Can you really expect a PR agency to sit down at the first meeting and tell you how they can help you achieve your goals or overcome certain challenges, when they have little idea what those goals and challenges are? Of course not. PR is not a cookie-cutter proposition, and its practitioners work best when they can apply their knowledge to a specific scenario, which invariably changes dramatically from company to company.
This doesn’t have to be an extensive exercise, and the information needed to get things rolling is probably common knowledge within your organization. Simply ensure that you have a fairly clear idea of what it is that you expect from doing PR, and then you can expect to have a valuable conversation about what the experts can do to help you.
By Francis Moran
“I’ve just come to expect that my (public relations) agency can’t write,” was the astonishing admission I heard a few weeks back from a vice president at one of Ottawa’s larger technology companies who called us to see if we’d be interested in participating in an agency review process.
(I’ve promised not to name him (or her) for reasons that will be obvious as you read the rest of this post.)
I could hardly believe my ears. But yes, he said, it had long been his experience that the PR practitioners he had been dealing with from a range of different agencies and across a number of companies just weren’t very good writers, and so it fell to him to write most of the materials used in his campaigns. One of the key reasons he was approaching inmedia, he told me, was our very strong reputation in the marketplace as superb writers, a reputation he said was confirmed when he read our blog and web site.
I chalked this one up to what I assumed was just an unfortunate experience on the part of one technology marketing executive until I relayed the story to a colleague last week, a CEO at another technology company here in Ottawa and an insightful marketer in his own right. I was again utterly gobsmacked when he said he didn’t view writing as a core requirement in the PR function, that the ability to pitch the story was far more important.
“And what do you do,” I asked him, “When the pitch is initially well received and the next words out of the reporter or editor’s mouth are, ‘Sounds good, send me something about it.’?”
Here’s the thing. To work at inmedia and, I believe, to be an effective media relations practitioner anywhere, you must be able to write at an expert level and you must be able to effectively pitch what you’ve written. There is no hierarchy between these two fundamental skills. Lack one, and you’re out of the game.
And here’s why.
To believe, as these two otherwise successful technology marketers clearly do, that writing is either not terribly important or that your PR function, whether internal or an agency, can be permitted to be lousy writers, is to completely beggar the entire communications process.
In the first instance, despite all the wonderful new communications tools at our disposal, most journalists still want to see something in cold, hard black and white, even if it is delivered electronically. And even if they don’t ask for it, it’s just gotta be in your best interests to give them well-written material so they have the complete story, with all the relevant facts and accurate spellings of company, product and people’s names to which they can refer. This is just so basic I’m staggered it needs stating.
Second, how in the heck does a PR practitioner demonstrate her or his understanding of the story without writing about it? Yes, a properly written document proves the communicator can — gasp! — communicate. That is, the words run together in some sort of comprehensible order, everything is spelled correctly and the commas and periods are in the right places. But it still won’t be any good unless the person writing it actually has a thorough grasp of the subject matter.
Effective writing is not a case of cutting and pasting bits and pieces from other documents to make a different document and it needs to be more than a merely technically accurate use of words, grammar and punctuation. Effective writing is the process of distilling what has been learned — from other documents, certainly, but also, and critically, from interviews with a range of subject-matter experts — into a new piece of work. It not only communicates the story to all who read it, it also demonstrates understanding.
Bottom line: If your agency can’t write about it well, they almost certainly can’t pitch it well. And even worse, they probably don’t even understand it well.
So, did we get the business? Well, that’s another story that I cover here: The Ottawa inferiority complex theorem strikes again.
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
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 Danny Sullivan
The Beeb reports today on an iPhone app designed by Barack Obama’s campaign team. What next?
This article proves again that Apple, for so long cemented in its position as the outright PR leader among technology companies, continues to generate waves of positive ink without even having to try.
If built on any other platform, this would have been just another article about an interesting mobile web app. The headline would have read “Obama targets cell phones to win support” or something similar. If it had been developed on Windows Mobile, do you think the article would credit Microsoft in any way?
Nope, of course not, but because the developers picked the iPhone to roll this out on, the article ends up with iPhone all over it. The casual reader might even think that Apple was behind it. Lovely!
But I’m just envious. It’s great when your PR is self-propagating – but for most of us, there’s a whole lot more work needed to get the ink!
