Public Relations is often about telling your story to the media. But what about the people who work for you?

Making news begins at home. It’s possible to send a strong new message to the press that covers your industry, or your company if you’re a big player. But is your message to the media the same one that you are telling internally? Internal communications can sometimes get left in the margins, or not fully engaged. The complications from that scenario should be clear but some of the more obvious ones — like keeping morale high during a transitional phase or a new C-level hire — can get lost or murky in the process.

Case in point: Last year a large, privately-held US company acquired a manufacturing concern across the pond. After a series of meetings to get clear on the media points and overall strategy, a couple of us PR types looked around the room and saw the client contented as clients can get (a good thing). But then we asked, “How are you handling the news here in the US with your employee base and how are you handling it abroad inside the company that is getting acquired (in a country that was already bleeding jobs because of the ‘deep recession’)?”

The three people on the client side of the desk looked at each other and then at their PR people and their contentment turned into a sour cream-like substance. They hadn’t thought of this piece at all. After another round of discussions, all parties agreed that a clear message should be crafted for the presidents of the two merging companies to share with their employees. Each message would reflect the overall merger-and-acquisition announcement but individually there would be take-home news for the workers and their families.

For the US-based employees (who might fear that such an acquisition would mean eventual cut-backs in the labor ranks to help fund the acquisition), the message was simply, “We are expanding our footprint abroad, which will add to our ability to market and manufacture more heavily on the continent. And there will be no loss of jobs in North America.”

For the company abroad being acquired, the message was similar but the nuance was slightly different: “Given the state of the country’s economy [worse than here], we want to assure you that the new ownership does not plan any layoffs at this site, or the other operation (in another city not so far away). In fact, not only will jobs be preserved, the acquisition will create even more positions in the near-term.”

The day the news went live on the international wire at noon, employees at both organizations had already been briefed at a company meeting two hours before the announcement. When the story was reported, both messages were conveyed in the US news release and the release abroad. The coverage was overwhelmingly positive everywhere it was reported. In fact, in the country where they acquisition was done, the news tone was often jubilant!

Moral of the story: Watch your backside in all your communications. Be uniform in your messages and personalize them to your internal audiences whenever you can. It goes a long way — and you won’t have that scent of cream going sour in the employee kitchen when the big news is coming down all round the people who make it happen every day they get up and go to work for you.

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For more resources, see the Library topic Public and Media Relations.

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Martin Keller runs Media Savant Communications Co., a Public Relations and Media Communications consulting company based in the Twin Cities. Keller has helped move client stories to media that includes The New York Times, Larry King, The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, plus many other magazines, newspapers, trade journals and other media outlets. Contact him at mkeller@mediasavantcom.com, or 612-729-8585

Guest post by Drew Gerber

Today I have the pleasure of introducing you to a PR expert, Drew Gerber, with plenty of helpful tips and insights for small business owners. This article was written by Drew Gerber:

Your PR Campaign

Hiring a publicist or doing your own PR isn’t something most small business owners or entrepreneurs really want to do. You’re busy running the day-to-day operations that keep the doors to your business open and investing the little time and money you may have just doesn’t seem feasible or realistic. Sound familiar? But think about this. Whether you’re just starting out or have been in business for a few years, media exposure is valuable to your success — just a little work on your PR campaign a day can produce tremendous results.

Valuable and Unique Message

At the very least you have to have a strong brand and message. They’re what define you, and what will help differentiate you from your competition. When creating your brand and message, look to combine what makes you a) unique and b) valuable to your target market. Valuable and unique messages produce great PR campaigns and will attract better and more loyal customers.

Your Unique Message – Your Mantra

After you’ve created your brand and message it’s important to employ consistency into all aspects of your business. You have to give the same messages over and over again through interviews, your pitches and your press materials, so be consistent and make your message your mantra. A repeatable and unique message is what will make you stand out from the crowd, forcing people to remember you and your product.

Your logos have to be a direct reflection of your branding and messaging too, along with all the little things like your voicemail message, how you answer your phone, your website design, etc. Think about it: If you’re branding your business as a fun and carefree company and your voicemail is dull and unenthusiastic, you’re not really holding true to your brand.

The thing about PR is that it’s in everything you do. It’s not just about landing interviews on television, it’s about how you interact with the public — how you deliver your message to make yourself stand out from the crowd.

What ways have you found to stand out from the crowd?

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For more resources, see our Library topics Marketing and Social Networking.

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L. Drew Gerber is CEO of www.PublicityResults.com and creator of www.PitchRate.com, a free media connection service for journalists, experts, and publicists. Sign up now for free publicity advice including a free online marketing course. Gerber’s business practices and staffing innovations have been revered by PR Week, Good Morning America and the Christian Science Monitor. His companies handle international PR campaigns and his staff develops online press kits for authors, speakers and companies with Online PressKit 24/7, a technology he developed (www.PressKit247.com). Contact L. Drew Gerber at: AskDrew@PublicityResults.com or call him at 828-749-3548.

Listen to What the Market Tells You

If your marketing message hasn’t changed lately, perhaps it’s time for a fresh approach. But the days of engaging a traditional marketing or advertising agency (to come up with a catchy campaign for you to push out to the masses) are over. Way over.

Did traditional ad agencies ever really know what the target market truly needed? The old approach – one-way push marketing – relied on researching broad demographic information, created a memorable marketing message, and mounted an expensive ad campaign. They spent a lot of money – but did they ever really LISTEN to the audience? And, if not, how could they truly know what the audience needed?

New Marketing Messages Authentically Solve Customer Problems

Through new media, companies now listen; and from those learnings, the marketing message becomes clear:

• Potential customers voice their pain and needs
• Companies listen and interact with them, beginning real relationship
• Marketing messages can now communicate how the company can help solve the customers’ pain and problems
• By giving first, companies build trust and long term value

Traditional ad campaigns took huge budgets, long years, and one message repeated constantly. Now THAT’S risky!

New Marketing Messages are Less Expensive

Enter the little guy…who now competes with the big brands and builds relationship online just like they do. Huge budgets aren’t necessary. Fancy agencies with contrived messages aren’t relevant. And today, one little customer’s voice published online can make a difference – getting a company’s complete attention.

If you haven’t seen the video, “United Breaks Guitars” (8.7 million views – and it’s fun!), along with the accompanying CNN news coverage of its viral impact – it’s well worth a few minutes of your time to show how one bad customer service situation can now become a giant company’s PR nightmare.

So, if your marketing campaign could use a refresher… log on to the internet and listen. Then interact, engage, give, and build relationship.

What are your favorite places to log on and listen to your customers? Your Competitors?

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For more resources, see our Library topics Marketing and Social Networking.

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ABOUT Lisa M. Chapman: With offices in Nashville Tennessee, but working virtually with international clients, Lisa M. Chapman serves her clients as a business and marketing coach, business planning consultant and social media consultant. As a Founder of iBrand Masters, a social media consulting firm, Lisa Chapman helps clients to establish and enhance their online brand, attract their target market, engage them in meaningful social media conversations, and convert online traffic into revenues. Email: Lisa @ LisaChapman.com

Cast a wide net. No, not fishing advice, or an Internet command. If you feel you have exhausted your outreach to conventional reporters, editors, producers and assignment desk people, despair not in your quest for coverage. Consider the freelance writer or producer. They’re out there, and they are more in demand now than ever before as media companies trudge through the recession with less staff. Of course, there are more freelancers now than ever before, too, but that’s another story.

Said companies often will backfill with a little help from the brave and noble freelancer (and these days, that can often be a former staffer who was cut or opted out). I can’t think of a section of the Star Tribune in Minneapolis, for example, that doesn’t rely on one or two freelance bylines every day of the week. Knowing who they are and what they cover can be a good way to pitch your story if you’re not working with a PR agency or consultant.

Advantages to Working with Freelancers

1) Freelance writers and producers usually have tight connections to editors, upon whom they rely for work — and vice versa. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship, usually grown over time that proves its worth with every publication or piece that makes its way into your local newspaper, on to a radio or TV broadcast, and into a magazine.

2) With the economy, or recovery, or whatever you want to call it taking its sweet time to make the nation whole again, it’s likely that this trend will become more commonplace. Magazines have always used an abundance of ‘lancers to fill their pages because it’s a business model that works. Newsprint and to some extent, broadcast are now embracing it.

3) Freelancers are hungry for work. Speaking from personal experience, the nonaligned scribe either is hustling to make ends meet and/or working a part time job so they can do what they love more, write or produce. If you feed them a good story, chances are they will come back to you when their own story ideas run out, or perhaps offer you as source in another piece — thus achieving one of the goals in PR: to make media aware of you enough so that they call you as source rather than your PR person. It happens. All the time.

4) Freelancers generally abide by the same rules and professional conduct of those in full time positions so there’s no need to feel that these individuals are somehow second-rate or are not to be trusted or won’t do a good job. I know a handful of freelancers that write and produce circles around their peers and I often pitch them as regularly as I do the folks “inside.” And they usually have more time to hear your pitch.

5) Freelancers can turn into staff employees overnight. When hiring freezes go away, job offers sometimes go to these individuals first. Having a good relationship with a freelancer in that case just become a huge plus for your or your organization.

Do your homework and see who’s freelancing articles in the media you need to reach. Given the many means of finding contact information on many social networking sites, or by just calling the media company where that person is contributing work, can usually get you the information you need to make the connection.

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For more resources, see the Library topic Public and Media Relations.

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Martin Keller runs Media Savant Communications Co., a Public Relations and Media Communications consulting company based in the Twin Cities. Keller has helped move client stories to media that includes The New York Times, Larry King, The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, plus many other magazines, newspapers, trade journals and other media outlets. Contact him at mkeller@mediasavantcom.com, or 612-729-8585.

Top Brands in Trouble

Luxury brands the world over are continuing to struggle. Coach, a luxury leader in the leather handbag market, has experienced quarterly profit slumps exceeding 30%; Saks’ same-store sales down in excess of 23%; BMW’s U.S. sales taking a 28% nosedive; Well, you get it.

And consulting firm Bain & Company predicts that the 10% or greater drop in the overall luxury market won’t recover until 2012. Time magazine give us insightful new ideas:

Diversify – The Promise of Pleasure

“What can these brands do to battle this malaise? Maybe BMW should try selling ketchup or mayonnaise. It’s not as ridiculous as it sounds: according to a study in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, recession-wracked shoppers are eager to embrace luxury brand names over a wide range of product categories, including those with little logical connection to the brand’s core item. The authors attribute this phenomenon to the “promise of pleasure” — a brand like, say, Cartier evokes strong, positive emotional responses in consumers, and those good feelings can be easily transferred to stuff like furniture, cheese and even, yes, ketchup.

Expand Luxury Brand Portfolios

“The message for luxury brand sellers is to expand their brand portfolios to small extravagances. The availability of Coach keychains or Gucci flip-flops allows consumers who are cutting back to re-experience the pleasure of consuming luxury without paying a fortune. During a downturn, it’s easier to pay $10 for a nice bottle of ketchup than $60,000 for a sedan (although the ketchup doesn’t handle as well).

Don’t Overdo Luxury Brand Extensions

“There’s a danger in overdoing it, though. Pierre Cardin is the poster child for bad brand extension, according to the Harvard Business Review. “By 1988, it had granted more than 800 licenses in 94 countries, generating a $1 billion annual revenue stream — and profits plummeted,” the authors wrote in a 2005 article called “How Not To Extend Your Luxury Brand.”

Thanks to Time Magazine for the original article.

Time.com in partnership with CNN; By Sean Gregory, Aug 05, 2009

For this article in its entirety, see Luxury Brand.

What diversification opportunities do smaller brands have in this economy?

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For more resources, see our Library topics Marketing and Social Networking.

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ABOUT Lisa M. Chapman: With offices in Nashville Tennessee, but working virtually with international clients, Lisa M. Chapman serves her clients as a business and marketing coach, business planning consultant and social media consultant. As a Founder of iBrand Masters, a social media consulting firm, Lisa Chapman helps clients to establish and enhance their online brand, attract their target market, engage them in meaningful social media conversations, and convert online traffic into revenues. Email: Lisa @ LisaChapman.com

Looking for additional ways to get exposure for what you do? Consider writing an opinion or editorial essay — commonly known as an Op-Ed piece. Most business sections of the daily and weekly papers have such a space and welcome contributors who know what they are talking about. The trick is to provide insights into the industry in which you work without sounding like a self-promoting foghorn. In other words, keep the piece generally free of things that your company has done and focus more on an issue in the industry merits addressing, or something in the regular news that you can address in a meaningful and hopefully original way. You can make an aside or allude to something in your own experience but don’t dwell on it. Readers sniff out such puffery and are often put off by it.

For example, the principals of a financial staff augmentation firm were interested in looking at big-picture hiring trends — including what the advantages were for using temporary staff from both the corporate side and the consultant side.

After their PR pro did a few hours of research and put together the essay, the piece provided good insights into the developing trends in the economy and illustrated how the work force was rapidly changing, with more people wanting to work more flexible schedules, or even to work five months and take the next two off to go on a dream trip. Plus with downsizing, corporations wanted the flexibility that temps provided, too, since they could not afford top talent full time and did not have to pay benefits. The editors of the local business pages liked it too (“it’s got a lot good statistics and we love that in the business section!”) — and they did not hear any bellowing foghorn in the distance.

What did the client get out of it? A load of goodwill in the business community because many people commented to them about it and some new opportunities to discuss placing their consultants in key, but short-term, high-end financial and accounting positions. Such editorials can help position you as a leader, or “thought leader,” in your industry, and they provide great content to re-purpose to your website, to share in social networks and to use as marketing collateral (this particular company had the article reprinted and available to read in all of its meeting rooms for both potential consultants and clients to read while waiting for meetings to begin).

How does it work? Pretty easy. Find something you are passionate about in your business or industry, or that you have been giving a lot of thought to. Write a brief four-or five sentence summary of it with a catchy headline. Submit to the editor, perhaps with a link to your Bio, or a short statement about who you are and what you do. Email it. Follow up with a call a week later or so if you haven’t heard back. If you get the nod, the editor will usually give you a word count (do not exceed it, since if you make more work for him or her, they will be less inclined to take or publish another such piece). Not only do Op-Ed articles help build your credibility, they sometimes lead to the opportunity to become a regular contributor to a publication. If you get this offering, take it. You’ll be surprised how many people will read your “stuff” and maybe even call you to do business as a result.

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For more resources, see the Library topic Public and Media Relations.

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