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
It’s been a busy time for Twitter.
The microblogging platform, on which all of the authors on this blog have accounts – @FrancisMoran, @LindaForrest and @inmedian – has recently announced several key partnerships that will move the social media platform from the early adopter stage to the mainstream. Microsoft and Google announced a few weeks ago that they would include “Tweets” in their search results, legitimizing for many skeptics the platform as a bona fide media channel and information source. Then, today, a partnership with LinkedIn was announced wherein Twitterstreams will be included in LinkedIn profiles.
This is a big step, and should increase adoption in the professional world from the dismal figures IDC collected earlier this year. Not to mention how it will impact Twitter’s bottom-line; it’s value was theoretical for a very long time but with a handful of powerful partnerships such as these, the money will be rolling in.
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.
By Francis Moran
For many years here in Ottawa, I was associated with a large marketing communications agency, many of whose account executives knew they could get a rise out of me by describing media relations as “free advertising.”
“It ain’t free, and it ain’t advertising,” I would consistently reply, with not a little vehemence.
My colleagues were, in the main, just poking fun; I believe they knew better. But for far too many people and for far too long, using advertising rates and data to measure the success of a media relations campaign was a broadly accepted practice. Called “advertising equivalent value,” or AVE, the practice consisted of measuring the column inches and seconds of air time of media coverage generated as a result of a media relations campaign and then assigning a value to that coverage based on what it would have cost to buy the same space as an advertising campaign. And, because everyone knows editorial coverage is more authoritative than advertising, many users of this methodology then compounded their malpractice by adding a multiplier. With no coherent rationale or science to support them, many would say editorial coverage was worth twice as much, or five times or 10 times as much, as advertising.
The allure of AVEs is easy to understand. There is undisputed value in getting your message disseminated through the media, and the implied endorsement of editorial coverage is far more influential than the naked sales pitch of an ad. AVEs deliver a single, easy-to-understand dollar figure that purports to calculate an ROI for a media relations campaign and allows straightforward and often compelling comparisons with advertising. In a fight for budget, AVEs were a potent tool that said the a dollar spent on PR would deliver a higher ROI than the same dollar spent on advertising.
Problem is, it’s an utterly bankrupt practice that delivers no meaningful insight whatsoever. It fails at both a strategic and a tactical level, and if its practitioners can’t understand that, they should at least reject it for purely practical reasons.
Here’s what I mean.
Strategically, advertising and media relations are deployed for fundamentally different reasons. Although in an integrated marketing-communications campaign both serve the same objectives, they do so in very different ways. For example, media coverage will rarely convey the call to action that is at the very heart of most effective advertising. On the other hand, it can usually communicate more nuanced, sophisticated and detailed messaging than can an ad.
Tactically, advertising enjoys the advantage of pinpoint targeting; you have absolute control over what is said, where it is said and how often it is said. Further, your advertising messaging will stand alone, unpolluted by opposing points of view. Media relations offers no such control. Although media relations messaging can be focused and efforts most certainly can be targeted at selected media and journalists, you surrender control over what is done with that messaging. Journalists might bite on your pitch or they might not. Even if they do, they will decide which bits of your messaging they will transmit for you. Where and when that happens is entirely outside your control. And reporters will often go to extraordinary lengths to source opposing or, at least, alternative messaging to create the editorial balance they were taught in journalism school must be integral to every story.
This strategic and tactical analysis is beyond the ability of many non-marketing executives to grasp, and I forgive them for it. (Any marketing executive who fails to grasp this, however, ought to be relieved of her or his responsibilities.) But even if they can’t wrap their heads around the strategic rationale against AVEs, executives ought to reject them on purely practical grounds. It ought to be obvious to everyone that an ROI calculation based solely on AVEs should be rejected if only because all media coverage is not favourable, all media coverage does not deliver a positive ROI, all media coverage does not support — indeed, much of it opposes — the achievement of organisational objectives.
What was the value to Nortel (Enron, Worldcom, Bernie Madoff — I could go on forever) of all its recent high-profile media coverage? Point taken, I trust.
Regrettably, even PR measurement specialists could be lured into this easy and utterly faulty approach. In the mid-1990s, I spent six months on a consulting contract with the Canadian branch of what was at that time one of the two largest media relations measurement outfits in the world. Pioneers in the field of computer-aided media content analysis, this company had a well-tested and fairly rigourous methodology for evaluating the results of a media relations campaign. When a client we were pitching asked that AVEs be included in the report we were proposing, the account executive selling to that client acquiesced.
I went ballistic. How could you choose to beggar a potent, effective and scientifically rigourous PR evaluation methodology by hiving on a discredited and scientifically unsupported approach like AVEs, I asked? The best answer the account executive could provide was that the client was demanding it. “If I sell shoes and a customer demands yellow shoes, I’m going to sell him yellow shoes,” this guy told me in an exchange I’ll never forget.
My contract was not renewed and I went on to refine my own media content analysis methodology that continues to inform both my strategic development of a campaign and my post-campaign evaluation. And yellow shoes are never on offer, no matter how much a customer might demand them.
In grudging defence of that misguided account executive, though, it is true that our clients and employers have long demanded we give them AVEs. This is one of the reasons this discredited practice has persisted. But practitioners who know better have an increasing arsenal of resources they can deploy to help sway even the most literal-minded boss.
Chief among these is the Institute for Public Relations, a respected research body, whose Commission on Public Relations Measurement and Evaluation recently voted 19 to 2 to reject AVEs. A consistent advocate of the uselessness of AVEs is Katie Paine, who presented at last month’s Third Tuesday Ottawa, and who greeted the IPR declaration as the industry’s “Emancipation Day.” Here in Canada, the Canadian PR Society instituted its Media Relations Media Rating Points System several years ago. It falls well short of being proper content analysis but it is a considerable improvement on AVEs.
I hope I’ve heard for the last time that media relations is free advertising. Even in jest.
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Are embargoes dead?
October 30, 2009 by Linda Forrest
By Linda Forrest While we’ve previously shared on this blog what we feel are best practices when it comes to the use of embargoes and, after seeing a PR misstep, recommended that it would have been an effective tactic, the debate continues on whether embargoes are still an effective tool for PR practitioners or will […]
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Seemingly disparate thoughts
October 29, 2009 by Linda Forrest
By Linda Forrest Last week, my family went on a quick trip to the States to do some shopping. As with any good roadtrip, we brought along handfuls of CDs (we’re old school like that) and listened to quite a few different albums on our trip there and back. One of these was the fabulous […]
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The generalist rises again
October 28, 2009 by Francis Moran
By Francis Moran Most of this blog post ran on DangleTech last week, a general technology and management blog to which I make the occasional contribution. I am running it here on our own blog not just to get extra mileage out of it but because it continues the conversation I started a month or […]
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Post suitable for ages two and up
October 27, 2009 by Linda Forrest
By Linda Forrest This past week, there’s been a lot of brouhaha in the media about Baby Einstein and the refund that Disney, the parent company of Baby Einstein, is offering. The New York Times called the refund offer “a tacit admission that they did not increase infant intellect,” a damning admission and a triumphant […]
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The Ottawa Network’s Startup Boot Camp spawns ventures
October 26, 2009 by Francis Moran
By Francis Moran Although only one team, Cambrian Mobile Content Delivery Network that wants to improve the experience of viewing video content on a mobile network by caching the most popular content at individual cell sites, came away with the $5,000 first prize at this past weekend’s Startup Boot Camp organised by The Ottawa Network, […]
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Garnering publicity the right way
October 19, 2009 by Leo Valiquette
By Leo Valiquette The non-adventure of balloon boy last week got me thinking about the pitfalls, and potentially pointless expenditure of time and resources, of resorting to gimmickry to get media attention in the context of a marketing and promotional campaign. And while companies that attempt to woo the media with whatever manner of promotional material […]
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Garth Brooks’ PR misstep
October 16, 2009 by Linda Forrest
By Linda Forrest Let me preface this by saying that I love Garth Brooks. I think that truly, beyond being a spectacular entertainer, he’s an exceptional human being, devoted father and just seems like an all around wonderful person. I’m very excited that he’s announced his un-retirement and wish him every success in all his […]
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Is this better? Or, how about this?
October 15, 2009 by Linda Forrest
By Linda Forrest The Huffington Post is getting a lot of virtual ink about the fact that they are A/B-ing headlines in real time – offering one headline to half their readers, another to the other half, determining which one is the most effective in getting people to click, and adopting it as the one […]
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