Category: Sales & Marketing

In my PR career, I’ve heard some unbelievable things people have said about “The Media.” Things that made “The Media” out to be some kind of monolithic machine, the political equivalent of the Teabagger viewpoint about “The Government” (as if “The Government” were one entity. Seriously, are they mad at the Department of Agriculture, or The Business Transformation Office over at the Department of Defense?!)

Still, the big bad “Media” is there to report news and if you have bad news, it generally will be reported in some fashion. There are ways, however, to diffuse the fear or anxiety of dealing with “The Media.” Some of these true examples hopefully underscore my point:

1) “Are they going to look for skeletons?” asked one worried small business owner who was going to be profiled. If the business desk is assigning an Investigative Reporter to your story, yes. However General Assignment reporters are not there to dig up the dirt and look for bones, they simply want your story. They don’t have another agenda. Having a good media kit and key messages in place to hand off to someone in the media puts up guardrails to help focus your business or issues on what’s important and positive.

2) “Can I review the story before it’s written?” Hardly ever, although sometimes the rare reporter who gets really want to get it right, or is challenged by a complex issue about something your company does, or something you did, will let you review for accuracy but not content changes. That’s why media training in advance of interviews with “The Media” to stay on message is a good thing to do.

3) “I have an event on Friday night that I would love to get some coverage of before that, can it happen?” asked someone once in a cold call two days before the event. Unless you’ve got the president of the US or Leonardo DiCaprio at your shindig — or have truly invented a whizbang device that no one has ever seen before — chances are almost nil.

Even with a news cycle that turns over 10 times a day or more on the internet, sufficient lead times are important to adhere to. Give yourself — or your PR person a few weeks in advance of when you want your story “out there” to contact the right person in “The Media” (Note: Magazines are often working 4-6 months ahead of real time.) Breaking News is one thing that gets instant coverage, but that is usually a tragedy of some sort unfolding or a national or international incident (although these days, a celebrity marriage break up or drug bust, or even a car chase in Oklahoma, unfortunately qualify). Investor Relations is a whole other universe, and we won’t go there today.

4) “The Media” will make my company famous. Well, it could. Overall, a few stories well placed will increase your visibility, hopefully help drive sales and/or achieve some of the objectives you set forth once you engaged a PR company or put your PR strategy into motion.

But let’s be realistic. Most overnight success stories I know of took 10 years of hard work. PR — as a wise friend once described it — is like drip irrigation in the desert: Droplets of water falling on the plant eventually produce a bloom, and if you’re lucky, fruit.

5) “Can I get the photo/video/radio interview The Media?” Generally no. It becomes the intellectual property of the paper, television or radio station. You can get back copies or links of the paper you need for a price. And there are services to obtain DVD copies or links to something that ran on TV, or a radio interview. Usually all such copies come with legal guidelines about how the material may or may not be used. Always have your own photos on hand (sometimes “The Media” will request it — and maybe even your own b-roll — footage that tells your story in images as background, if appropriate).

Remember, dealing with “The Media” is like dealing with other human beings. Sure, people working in the profession hold a power to magnify what you do. But the last time I checked, those doing it were like you and me, 90% water.

What do the month of May, the 50^th anniversary of the Pill and a pending big bill for rental tuxedos and pretty dresses have in common?

If you guessed the Prom, you’re about half right — and, some would say, maybe a little morally jaded. But if you have a news announcement that can somehow be pegged to the season, or an event in history like The Pill after five decades, you have got a solid news hook to exploit. Maybe you have a similar birth control issue, or a clinic or hospital that does reproductive research of some kind. Maybe you work with an organization or individual that is against the Pill and has published something, or lectured about it.

In any event, the media loves to hang stories on anniversary dates, seasonal occasions and headline trends. The coming month of May is traditionally a big month for weddings. Got a new type of wedding gift or gadget, or maybe you’ve reinvented the perfect wedding ceremony? This is a good month to go to your local media, or if it’s a really hot story, national newspapers and broadcast. The big national magazines that cover this stuff will have already done their wedding and wedding-related stories a few months ago so that these magazines are on newsstands right at the end of April, staring out at you like forlorn single people in search of the perfect mate. But you could see if any of their writers are blogging.

Find your killer PR theme in the procession of seasons and in traditional month-based occasions like The Prom, weddings, and, of course, Mother’s Day. Your chances of coverage will improve greatly. Which reminds me, the bill for my kids’ rental of tuxes and dresses are due about the same time as Mother’s Day, since they’re all in our former babysitter’s big fat wedding. It’s the price one has to pay for the ties that bind.

There are awards for everything and you don’t have too look far to find them. Why just this week there were four award-related pieces of business on Media Savant’s radar. The first was a Media Alert drafted for the news about Token Media (http://www.token.com/shortfilms) and its film-making crew (that extends into the greater Twin Cities community) winning the national 48-Hour short film festival and having another film place first runner-up in the world (out of 3,000 entries). The second was a request from some ad agency pals at Morsekode (www.Moresekode.com) wanting their peeps to vote for them in the annual Webby Awards (come, on, help ‘em out by clicking on Healthcare Lane at: http://webby.aol.com/services/insurance !)

The third was drafting an award announcement for Creative Water Solutions, the coolest natural, greenest water conditioning/treatment company in the world (www.cwsnaturally.com). It recently won two awards for its game-changing use of sphagnum moss to dramatically reduce chemicals loads, maintenance times, and damage to pool and spa equipments and the irritating side effects to pool and spa users like burning eyes, dry scalp and hair, etc.

The fourth was by way of subscribed information from the brilliant and practical minds at Iconoculture (www.iconoculture.com), which sent this notice out along with other newsy, cultural trends and insights:

The AmeriStar competition is billed as the Oscars of the packaging industry by the Institute of Packaging Professionals, the nonprofit org that sponsors the contest. The clothes, hairstyles and gossip aren’t quite as over the top as a Hollywood affair, but the emotions displayed are authentic and the camaraderie among the guests can be inspiring.

The winners — people with titles like packaging engineer, graphic designer and R&D director — finally get recognized for all their hard work.

Should clients seek awards as a way of raising their visibility? It depends on how you leverage them. The entry process can be time-consuming for your PR person and you. Unless you have won a prestigious-plus award like The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, or a similar one, you probably won’t get a feature news story out of it but rather a few sentences in local media publications. So why do it?

A true client experience says it all. A few years ago, the founder and CEO of a leading remodeling company/client that had won literally 30 or 40 awards for its work, warily asked in a meeting if we should enter the XYZ awards again.

“Gee, we’ve won it so often I wonder if it even matters any more,” he sighed.

“How do you customers feel about awards? I asked.

“They like them, they like to see us win them even more.” And there was his answer.

Awards are often critical for building your credibility within your industry and in the public at large, and occasionally you also will get media exposure for it. Now… here are the forms for the next one, due in about three days. Better get crackin’ .