Seven solid press release ideas

All too often, when there is an annual PR program put in place, it dictates how many press releases have to go out.  That’s fine, but inevitably you get to about two months in and expected press releases are not ready to be released for unexpected reasons and now the whole team is determined to meet an (often irrelevant) KPI. 

Result: you are left with a burning desire to release something, with nothing to say.

Of course, all good PR pros will tell you not to waste your (and the media’s) time on anything unless it is 110% news worthy. 

Well, even when it looks like dire, consider that all companies have news – you just need to find it.  Now, some is going to be more relevant and news worthy than others. For example, when was the last time you saw an announcement of a company’s new web site?  Yeah, well that used to be page 5 business fodder 12 years ago!

Here (with a little help from PRWeb) are some of the most common release topics that might spark some ideas:

Announcing a new product or feature

Product launches are fundamental to fueling your company’s growth. Generate maximum visibility for your next product launch with preliminary PR support (to set the market) and at-launch PR support to stimulate interest.

Winning an award

Awards give your company credibility with your customers—and sending out a news release is a great way to get the attention your award deserves. Whether you are a local restaurant celebrating your Zagat Rating or your company has been voted best place to work—let the world know.

Hosting a fundraising dinner or technology summit

Successful events need publicity—and what better way than to announce your event online, where millions of people can learn how they can participate in or support your event. Whether you are hosting a fundraising dinner, or launching a technical summit, keep your prospects up to date while driving traffic to your web site by promoting your event.

Announcing an employee change

Employee promotions and new hires can be newsworthy. And sharing that news with the world shows that your business is growing and that you value your team.

Launching a new partnership

Sharing news about your business partnerships is one of the best ways to promote your success, highlight your company’s growth, build credibility for your company and your partner’s company, and potentially lead to new customers for both organizations.

Sharing survey results

Market research is an effective tool to build credibility and awareness for your key initiatives—especially when the information is broadly communicated. Whether you’re using survey data to identify industry trends or to build support for a key program, share that information.

International Expansion

The more successful your organization, the more news worthy.  And nothing says 'success' more than expansion into new international markets.  If you start hiring or setting up an office in a new country (or continent) then share that with both your target and home media - both have interests for slightly different reasons.

What other good ideas do you use for press releases?

Marketers with power

Great insight today from Seth Godin - who just gets it:

I know that I have to fill out this form before the doctor will see me, but the way you behave when you design the form and the way you ask me to fill it out will change the way I think about everything else you'd like me to do.

I know that I have to go to that meeting or pay that tax or listen to this lecture, but, right here, in this moment when you have power, you are going to to establish the way I feel about your entire organization.

If a marketer works hard to provide a positive experience when the customer has no choice, the benefit of the doubt that's earned is worth far more than it costs.

Redesign that form, change your attitude, adjust your fees and bend over backwards to be grateful. It'll be rewarded.

....

Thanks Seth!

When we think PR, this is often the starting block of the race for a customer.  It is the first a new customer knows, learns and then interacts with you.  So get it right.  Get the PR right.  Make sure that message holds the power and right brnd for your organization.

Taking a Stakeholders Approach to Public Relations

Who’s your target?  A vitally important question, and not asked nearly enough in the world of PR strategy.  Sure, we often find out their geographical target, languages spoken, what industry they are in, job position or even social-economic indicators, but there is another, possibly more beneficial, way to view this.

According to the classic writings of Edward Freeman, Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach, there are three types of stakes:

1. Equity stakes: have a direct ‘ownership’ in the company, such as shareholders, directors or minority interest owners.
2. Economic (or market) stakes: held by those who have economic (but not ownership) interest in the organization, including employees, customers, suppliers and competitors.
3. Influencer stakes: from various groups (economic or moral in nature) for example, consumer advocates, environmental groups, trade organizations and government agencies.

Right from the offset it is clear for any PR pro to see that these different stakeholders require different, often specialized, public relations (such as internal communications or public affairs).

At NettResults we like to consider a simple stakeholder analysis (or reflection) to make communications more efficient:

1. Who are the organization’s stakeholders?
2. What are their stakes?
3. What opportunities and challenges are presented to the organization in relation to these stakeholders?
4. What responsibilities (economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic) does the organization have to all its stakeholders?
5. In what way can the organization best communicate with and respond to these stakeholders and address these stakeholder challenges and opportunities.

Next, to aid tactical priority, we look at the stakeholder salience. In other words, how visible or prominent a stakeholder is to the organization based upon the stakeholder possessing one or more of three attributes:

1. Power: the power of the stakeholder group upon the organization.
2. Legitimacy: the legitimacy of the claim laid upon the organization.
3. Urgency: the degree to which stakeholder claims call for immediate action.

The more salient or prominent stakeholders have priority and therefore need to be actively communicated with.  Smaller or hardly salient stakeholders have less priority and it is less important for an organization to communicate with them on an ongoing basis.

Without getting all MBA’ish on you and drawing out a Venn diagram (remember those three overlapping circles?), it’s probably evident that with three saliency variables there are seven different types of stakeholders – the stakeholder that falls in the center which has power, legitimacy and urgency is clearly the priority and where the PR effort should be focused.

Target your stakeholder.

PR Multiplying or Dividing?

There was an interesting story we tweeted about a few days ago originally written by our friends at PR Newswire that suggested there is some disagreement about the skill set PR pros need to succeed in today’s environment, and there are three points of view emerging:

• The traditionalist, who values the ability to write, build relationships, isolate and convey key messages and build publicity strategy above all else.
• The digital enthusiast, who values social media acuity, digital content production and editing and coding skills highly.
• The quant, which focuses on data, analytics and how PR integrates with business processes.

At NettResults we like to think of it as multiplying and dividing.

If you have a list of 1,000 subscribers or 5,000 fans or 10,000 supporters in a social media world, you have a choice to make. You can create stories and options and benefits that naturally spread from this group to their friends, and your core group can multiply, with 5,000 growing to 10,000 and then 100,000.

Or you can put the group through a sales funnel, weed out the free riders and monetize the rest. A 5% conversion rate means you just turned 5,000 interested people into 250 paying customers.

Multiplying scales. Dividing helps you make this quarter's numbers.

So it is with PR.  You want to ever increase your sphere of influence, or put another way, you want to increase the number of journalist you can call up.  At the same time you want to concentrate your time on the 5% (or is it another 80/20 rule?) that don’t just passively receive your news stories, but actively read into them, converse with you and find the story they can report on.

This is why an intellectual rivalry between traditional PR pros and digital enthusiast PR pros is a loose/loose battle.  To be good at PR in today’s rapidly evolving media market, you need to be both a traditionalist and a digital enthusiast.  Gone are the days when having one Millennial digital evangelist in your PR agency’s office was enough – today each of your teams need to be made up digi-traditionalists.

Oh, and they better be able to measure that success. Results are king.

Why PR is Easy

As Jeremy Porter wrote in Journalistics, “If you work in media relations today, and you’re having a hard time getting coverage for your news, you’re doing something wrong. Journalists exist to write about news.  If you have a legitimate news story, you shouldn’t have a hard time getting coverage.”

‘Straight from the horses mouth’ as they say from where I come from (OK half my family made their living as journalist – the others as bookmakers).

If a journalist can tell you that they want to cover news, why are so many companies not getting the coverage they want?

Basically it comes down to two things: either your story isn’t actually newsworthy or you are not speaking to the right journalist. Here’s a little help:

1 - Speak to the right journalist. 

OK, this is the back-office stuff that needs to be right.  To sum it up, do your research. 

Who covers your news? Which reporters write the most about the topics related to what you do? You should know who they are off the top of your head.

Then you actually need to read what these journalists are publishing.

Next up – get to know these people.  You can do this through regular communication and networking. Don’t just contact a journalist when you’re pitching a story. Provide them with tips throughout the year when you come across information that’s of interest to them – even if, especially if, it’s not related to your organization.

They’ll quickly start to value you as a source – and they just might call you the next time they’re working on a story. The trick is to get yourself inserted into their Rolodex or whatever “trusted source” file they use.

OK, so I’ll admit, in the world of cross boarder, multi-language communications, this is far simpler if you have a professional PR team compared to one person trying to hold all the relationships.

So, that was easy right?  Now on to the second, and possibly the more complex element.

2 - Make your story newsworthy

First up – not everything is newsworthy.  Whether you take directions from a client or from a CEO, not everything they think is going to be newsworthy is actually newsworthy, so one important talent is managing expectations.

What makes a good news story? Your topic should be timely and relevant for the audience of the outlet you’re pitching. Even if your story is timely and relevant to the outlet you’re pitching, it might not be a fit for the reporter you think writes about that stuff. Sometimes newsworthiness is merely a factor of how you package the news in your pitch. You have to adapt the pitch to each journalist and outlet.

To help you adapt your pitch to the right journalist or outlet, NettResults offers seven golden tips for refining your pitches:

Localize – is your story not a fit for national news, but a good fit locally? Get strong local coverage in the outlet with the widest coverage. If your company is hiring 20 new employees this year, it’s not a fit for The Wall Street Journal. If you’re hiring 2,000 employees this year due to a big contract you just landed, it might be. Find local angles and see your placement success go up. And more often than not we’re looking at not local and national newsworthiness, but also country and regional newsworthiness.

Timeliness – if your story has a time element to it, you need to be able to act fast. If the world is talking about unemployment figures and you represent the company that is about to open a new office and hire 1,000 new staff how can you capitalize on news coverage? To capitalize on current events like this, you need to have the right reporters on speed dial.

Numbers – Journalists love numbers. Pretty numbers are even better – which is exactly what a good infographic offers. You’re probably sitting on a bunch of recent facts and statistics about your industry you could package as an infographic to support your news. Not only will the infographic help you break through the clutter of competing pitches, but it also provides the journalist with a potential visual to use with their story. We often work with clients to develop their ‘top 10’.  So, for example, an anti-virus company may know the top 10 viruses this month, which could be interesting.  Then, as you delve deeper, start comparing month-to-month and individual penetration rates to quickly produce stories.

Seasonality – What seasonal events create PR opportunities for you? Right now, we’re in the midst of spring. Which means Valentine’s is done with, Easter is right on us, a plethora of mother/father days and soon enough the school holidays will be here. Considering that a lot of these days are locally/regionally/nationally specific. You need to build out a years calendar of relevant days. Next you need to back out about 6 to 8 weeks so you can actually pitch the right seasonal news story when the journalist is writing it (and not when it is about to be read).  Yes, I’m sure there are journalists working on 2012 Christmas issues right now…

Bounce-backs – What do you do when a reporter writes a great story about your industry and leaves your company out? Do you ignore it and take the abuse from your superiors? Do you write a scathing letter, lambasting the reporter – asking them how they could have possibly overlooked you? No, you educate them on your organization and the value you could bring to the table on future stories. Start by acknowledging that the story they wrote was on-target – in some cases, it might be appropriate to highlight some elements that you felt were left out. Journalists like to get reader feedback in most cases. It’s okay to share your side of the story. Even if it doesn’t get you in this article, they’ll think of you next time around if you’re polite and professional.

Name-drop - if your story is related to well-known organizations or people, get that stuff in the first paragraph of your pitch. While it’s not a guarantee for coverage, the better known the players are in your news story, the more likely you will break through the filters. Look, about 1% of the world’s brands, companies, organizations and celebrities actually get 90% of the world’s coverage… so be aware of who’s in the news and use that.

Copy Success – Look at the coverage in the target publications you are going after. If you start to analyze the news, you can start to identify the formula for how coverage happens with each outlet – and each reporter. From there, you can develop strategic approaches to getting your organization or experts included in the mix.

A lot of the tips above will seem old-school to seasoned PR pros, but you know what, while many things in the world of PR are changing quickly, the ability to pitch well hasn’t changed much in years.

12 Crisis Communication Interview Tips

Our good friends at Beuerman Miller Fitzgerald put out a great newsletter this week.  As they say:

One thing we hear a lot from clients with potentially hostile or dramatic media challenges is that "media interviews are a losing proposition." "They are a 'no win' because reporters are out to get us."  "No matter what I say they'll make me look bad."  For these reasons and many more, some clients make a potentially bad situation even worse by making interviews far more difficult and complex than they should be.
 
12 quick tips to help clear the clutter and focus on those things that really matter in an interview:   

1. Interview the interviewer.  How much do they know?  Who else are they talking to? What, specifically are they looking for?  Interviews are a two-way street.  Communication should flow both ways.
2. Put yourself in the reporter's shoes?  If you were them, what would you ask?
3. Place time limits on your interview right up front.
4. Place topical limits on the interview as needed: "I can talk about several of these issues but I'm not at liberty to discuss X at this time."
5. Be conversational.  Treat the interview as a guarded, cautious conversation, not an inquisition.
6. Keep the pre- and post-interview chit chat at a minimum.  The reporter is always listening and the camera is always on.
7. Rehearse your key comments with a colleague as much as possible in advance.
8. Know your strengths but also know your vulnerabilities and how you'll deal with them.
9. Be brief.  Make your point and STOP!  Interviews are like a tennis match. Their turn...your turn. Their turn...your turn.
10. Practice "framing" your most important points so the reporter has no choice but to recognize that they're key.  "Here's what's most important...."  "What I really want you to understand is...."  "If I could stress one key point it would be...."
11. Don't speculate and don't ever say or confirm anything you're not fully certain of.  There's nothing wrong with: "I don't have that information" or "I'm not certain of that and can't comment on it."
12. After the interview ends, make a quick, graceful exit.  Do not hang around.

PR pros and journalists - conjoined twins that constantly squabble

Public relations and journalists have always had a love-hate relationship; simultaneously relying on each other for their professional livelihood while at the same time holding untold (and sometimes voiced) resentment.

They are like conjoined twins that constantly squabble.

Both professions are miss-understood by the general public, but well understood by the other.  Today, the facts are that there are becoming less professional journalist and more public relations professionals. And the trend is getting more dramatic.

In their book, The Death and Life of American Journalism Robert McChesney and John Nichols tracked the number of people working in journalism since 1980 and compared it to the numbers for public relations. Using data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, they found that the number of journalists has fallen drastically while public relations people have multiplied at an even faster rate. In 1980, there were about 45 PR workers per one hundred thousand population compared with 36 journalists. In 2008, there were 90 PR people per one hundred thousand compared to 25 journalists. That’s a ratio of more than three-to-one, better equipped, better financed.

Oh, and that was 2008 – in the USA.  One can only imagine how those stats have multiplied in the past 4 years taken at a global level.

The researcher who worked with McChesney and Nichols, R. Jamil Jonna, used census data to track revenues at public relations agencies between 1997 and 2007. He found that revenues went from $3.5 billion to $8.75 billion. Over the same period, paid employees at the agencies went from 38,735 to 50,499, a healthy 30 percent growth in jobs. And those figures include only independent public relations agencies—they don’t include PR people who work for big companies, lobbying outfits, advertising agencies, non-profits, or government.

Traditional journalism, of course, has been headed in the opposite direction. The Newspaper Association of America reported that newspaper advertising revenue dropped from an all-time high of $49 billion in 2000 to $22 billion in 2009. That’s right - more than half. A lot of that loss is due to the recession. But even the most upbeat news executive has to admit that many of those dollars are not coming back soon.

So, do PR folks and journalists even need to play friendly.  My father was a serious journalists having worked in several countries and eventually settling in the UK writing for The Times and The Sunday Times.  I’ve been involved in public relations (both client and agency side) for over 15 years, so maybe my view is bias, but even in the day of citizen journalism and hyper blogging, the scope of a PR pro and a professional journalist rely on the skills, contacts and reach of each other.

Assuming they have to play in the same sand box, how do PR and journalist folks reconcile the difference in number and budgets to hand?

Well, the number game is not so difficult.  With the ever-increasing efficiencies of technology, there is not only the ability to communicate with multiple people at once (it was only 15 years ago when the best way to do this was to print and envelope stuff your press release), but we can use these tools to understand and build stronger relationships.

One of the age-old truisms for a PR pro is to understand the media and the journalist’s contributions before pitching.  Only ten years ago a PR agency would have piles of newspapers and magazines going back at least a year.  Of course there in no reason for this any more.

So we can speak quicker, to more people, with more meaning and at a deeper level then ever before. This goes for PR pros and journalists equally.

What has caused the budget differences?  In other words why the increase in PR?  I think that is relatively simple.

1 – Globalization.  More companies are conducting business outside of their home city, so need to have a PR strategy in place to speak to their potential and existing customers.

2 – The cost to offer PR services has decreased.  Therefore more PR agencies can offer the service (it’s still a relatively low cost business to start) and more companies can afford to use these professionals (or carry the function in-house).  The fact that there are less traditional media outlets doesn’t really matter – the fact that are so many non-traditional media available just increases the requirement of the PR agency.

3 – Those larger companies that were already implementing an integrated marketing program have spent the past 10 years shifting their expenditure within the marketing functions – money coming from the advertising line item and flowing to the PR and social media line items.

4 – More media is now consumed by more people.  So what if there are less newspapers in existence? How many people did actually read multiple newspapers who were not directly involved in the industry? If you were the type of person who read a newspaper in yesteryear, there are still plenty to choose from. And the number of people logging in online to news / views from newspapers, blogs, twitter, facebook etc etc far exceeds newspaper subscription rates in the past. Oh, the fact that so much media is actually free to consumers doesn’t hurt either.

So yes, the PR pro needs the journalist, and for a journalist to act professionally and profitably (they are of course producing and writing more stories, quicker, than ever before) they need the PR pros.

The technology allows for greater communication and sharing of knowledge.

Now all we need to do it get the remaining children to stop squabbling in the name of better media for all. 

The Public Relations Control Center

There are a lot of things going on at a PR agency.  In the days of old (back when we actually put a physical press release in an envelope) there was the creative team and the account management team.  That model has clearly been outdated for some time.  Now, all account members need to have both skills.  Of course they need the skills to work with clients, build strategy, write, interact and influence the media, and show results.  So far this in not rocket science.

Then the economy changed, and there were less people doing more.  Lean was mean and that meant profitability which lead to job security. Suddenly we were dealing with multiple countries, in multiple languages and over different time zones.  Soon technology was pulled to offer our knowledge workers better accessibility than the fixed line servers in our offices as these were superseded by other more efficient cloud solutions.

When it comes to managing PR across multiple teams - for a client or an agency - there really are not many solutions out there.  At NettResults we live and bread cross-boarder PR and were constantly frustrated by the online tools available.  We could find media databases and distribution/monitoring solutions and we could find project management solutions, but there was nothing that the PR industry could call their own.

If you can't find it, build it.  So we did.  We developed the Public Relations Control Center (PRCC) which is used across our organization, as well as with many clients and partner agencies that we work with.  This was recently showcased on Intranets Today.  To read that article - you can link here.  And if you'd like to have a demonstration of our system, please call us today.

PR Defined - the winner is...

In January, we told you all about the search for a new definition of PR.

On Friday the results were announced by the PRSA and covered in the New York Times.

So here it is:

Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.

The last definition was written in 1982.

Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.

So at least this is an improvement. But is is good enough?

OK - so they managed to get a definition that is just under 140 characters...

My problem is with the last word - publics.  I will admit that adding an apostrophe would considerably change this definition, so just to be sure I looked up what defines 'publics'.

According to Wikipedia, this is, "Publics are small groups of people who follow one or more particular issue very closely. They are well informed about the issue(s) and also have a very strong opinion on it/them. They tend to know more about politics than the average person, and, therefore, exert more influence, because these people care so deeply about their cause(s) that they donate much time and money."

Most dictionaries don't think this word exists except as the plural of pub.lic (Noun).

I think what the PRSA is hoping, is that the wider definition as on BusinessDictionary.com is applied: "Communities of people at large (whether or not organized as groups) that have a direct or indirect association with an organization: customers, employees, investors, media, students, etc"

Anyway, PR now has somewhere to hang its hat. What do you think?

6 Surefire Signs of Good Public Relations

There is good public relations and there’s bad. 

Let’s face it, some organizations, people and agencies are good at it, and some are not. 

But when you are in the thick of it, when you’re spending the money, how do you know?

Oh, that’s quite simple, you wait five months and then look at the coverage you achieved.  Wait a minute, did someone in the back utter that they move quicker than that and they don’t want to wait five months?  What, you actually want to know now if you are spending time and money wisely?  OK, well in that case, there are six sure fire signs of good public relations.

1 – First up, you better have a strategy.  A clear, concise strategy.  Can you (or the person/agency in charge) define in half a page:
- the target market that needs to be reached
- the media used to reach it
- the message that needs to be communicated
- the desired action of the target market
- the media tools that will be used to achieve that
- and when they will be used?

If you can’t then you’re running your PR strategy in an ad-hoc manner, which is not going to give you the results you need.  The number one tell-tail signs is inconsistency… in regards to when coverage is achieved, who it reaches or the messages it conveys.

2 – How are your relationships? It doesn’t matter how great your strategy is if your PR team doesn’t have the best media relationships to get it delivered.  This is where larger teams have the advantage. I’ve yet to meet one person who gets on with everyone.  So it stands to reason that if you have a one-person team or freelancer on your PR they can’t have relationships with all the core media.  It takes a diverse team of people at various seniority and experience level to be able to hold all the core relationships.

This is doubly important if your target includes multiple social-economic targets or possibly more than one language.  Look at the make up of the journalists and editors you are trying to reach and make sure your team are similar.

3 – Responsiveness and consistency rules.  PR is not a tap you can just turn on or off as you feel.  It’s more like a snowball pushed down a hill - once started it will keep on rolling and growing if you treat it right (and if you don’t treat it right it’s like putting a tree in front of the snowball). To keep that snowball rolling and growing you need to be ever responsive to the media (never leave a man hanging) and you need to ensure you fuel the media machine with consistent, newsworthy and relevant information. 

Tell-tail signs - if your PR team can’t respond to you within a coupe of hours, then they are not responding to the media quickly either.  And if you don’t have a constant funnel of news and ideas being worked on, then it’s akin to your snowball rolling over concrete.

4 – Reporting and feedback. At NettResults we make it simple for all our team members: for a successful client/agency relationship there are two things that drive success – media results need to be obtained and there needs to be constant reporting with the client.  A campaign that has great results, but there is little client/agency interaction or lack of reporting, will fail. 

Media relations is a constant feedback loop.  Multiple minds need to plan it out and everyone needs to be watching what is working and what is successful. This is the only way that momentum can be gained and we can drive a higher return on investment.

5 – Business acumen.  Look at it this way - there’s this funnel.  At the bottom of the funnel is PR, above that is marketing and above that is ‘the business’.  While I’ve had bosses that have said to me they can write a press release about anything, irrespective of whether they understand the subject, you can’t play in the PR space successfully unless you understand business.

Much as we would like to think that media and PR teams are the bees-knees – there is always a higher being that is driving the business. The PR team needs to be aware of this and have a true understanding and respect for when PR plans need to be modified due to a business requirement.  Tell-tail signs – have a conversation with your PR team about your business, not the latest PR news, but about the actual business.  Do they talk sense?

6 – Is there a level of trust?  What this all comes down to is trust.  A client needs to be able to trust that their team/agency is proactively working on their behalf.  There has to be bilateral trust between the PR team/agency and the media. 

More than most industries I have witnessed, trust is central to PR success.  Like all professional service business, we’re talking about a professional’s time.  How it’s being used and how efficient it is.  We’re talking about abstract terms.  We’re talking about things that people get emotional about.  Wrap that all up and the lubricant that keeps the cogs turning is trust.

These six simple concepts will give you good insight into how successful your results will look in five months.

Doing the right thing - a smart PR move

It’s always great to see when a sensible business gets their PR so right in a proactive manner.

For anyone that ever spent 5 minutes in a car in Southern California, they are (without doubt) bound to have heard the rather dodgy sounding radio commercial for 1-800-GET THIN and their revolutionary lap-band procedures that will have you dropping 125 lbs and whizzing around shopping malls in no time. Oh, and your insurance will cover it. But hurry – this offer won’t be around forever.

OK – so the commercial is really, really tacky and their jingle sounds no better when my 9 year old suddenly starts humming it.  You listen to this advert and you know, instinctively, that something is wrong. Somehow you visualize yourself walking into a very dirty and smelly waiting room and being helped by personal that don’t look qualified to take your temperature – let alone open your stomach up.

California has some very large people, and when you live in a city that chooses to wear sweat-pants and do yoga on the beach, you know you got to look good. It therefore stands to reason that there is some very serious amount of business here.  And as any savvy businessperson has probably already worked out, 1-800-GET-THIN is really only a marketing company – that in turn provides leads to independent clinics that in turn provide surgery using Allergan’s Lap-Band weight-loss device.

What do you do when you provide the devise that according to lawsuits is central to five Southern California patients whom have died since 2009 following Lap-Band surgeries at clinics affiliated with 1-800-GET-THIN?  You do the right thing.

Allergan today announce that they will no longer sell its Lap-Band weight-loss device to companies affiliated with the 1-800-GET-THIN marketing company. In a business where everyone is chasing the dollar and making their next quarterly goals for financial pundits, this is the right thing to do. From a business perspective, while it’s never easy to turn down sales, in this instance the PR team is handling what could be a PR crisis very well.

Good luck to Allergan Inc – smart PR move.

Now hopfully my 9-year-old can stop humming that stupidly anoying jingle.

SOPA, PIPA & PR

There has been a lot of noise around SOPA and PIPA in the past three weeks so lets break this down and see what this really means, as while there is a lot of noise, there seems to be little real understanding, of how that effects online users and those of us in the PR business.

The chief protagonists in the story that is SOPA and PIPA are getting a bit full of themselves. If you haven't been following this saga, these two bills, prompted Google, Wikipedia, and a bunch of other sites to black out their logos or temporarily shut down in protest January 18. SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act, the House version) and PIPA (Protect IP Act, the Senate version) are said to threaten free speech, the future of innovation, the technical infrastructure of the Internet, and the economic foundation of the global economy. Wrote one wag: "Big content is quite literally trying to foist its own version of the Great Firewall of China on to the American public."

For another example of the overwrought reactions, consider the public statement from blog site Boing Boing, which shut itself down on Jan. 18 to protest the two Congressional bills: "We could not ever link to another website unless we were sure that no links to anything that infringes copyright appeared on that site. So in order to link to a URL on LiveJournal or WordPress or Twitter or Blogspot, we'd have to first confirm that no one had ever made an infringing link, anywhere on that site. Making one link would require checking millions (even tens of millions) of pages, just to be sure that we weren't in some way impinging on the ability of five Hollywood studios, four multinational record labels, and six global publishers to maximize their profits."

For more background on the SOPA anti-piracy legislation, see SOPA: 10 Key Facts.

I'm not going to defend SOPA or PIPA. If, as their critics maintain, the bills effectively give ISPs, search engines, and payment services carte blanche to cut off foreign websites that U.S. movie, music, and other content creators merely claim are profiting from their stolen goods, then the legislation is outlandish. On the flip side, if the SOPA and PIPA language is so broad as to invite such flagrant abuses, then the bills' authors need to start again.

Question is, are they up to the task? An argument making the rounds among the digerati is that SOPA and PIPA are 20th century answers to a 21st century challenge, that the movie, music, and media industry lobbyists and their Congressional puppets just don't understand the dynamics of the Internet. If that's so (and maybe it is), then it's up to the Internet industry stalwarts opposing SOPA/PIPA to rally support for a meaningful, 21st century alternative to stopping online content piracy. Most of them pay lip service to the notion that such piracy is a serious problem. It's time for them to stop grandstanding--stop stomping their feet and holding their breath--and start showing the 20th century studios and record labels and media companies and their clueless lobbyists and Congressional supporters a much more effective way to address this issue.

To its credit Google, whose YouTube is a dumping ground for pirated material, is behind an alternative bill--The Online Protection & Enforcement of Digital Trade, or OPEN, Act and is seeking industry comment and collaboration. That collaboration must include movie, music, and media companies.

And from a PR point of view – why do we care?  Well, as with most discussions/arguments that prompt emotions in the public domain, it is PR that can fuel the fire or bring parties closer to find a resolution.  Inevitably one side or another has a stronger PR strategy and that often leads to the majority of media aligning.

We’ve said it a million times – we live in a new digital age… and that is somewhat upsetting the public domain apple cart.  With so much personal publishing (yes, I’m talking about the blogging and micro-blogging world) we see loose groupings (non-corporate) of individuals creating power. I’m thinking of the Occupy movements in cities round the U.S. and Spring Uprisings in the Middle East. So here’s the million-dollar question – how can these groups really integrate a coherent media relations program?

They don’t have the structure, resources or full time dedication of most organized businesses, charities or public offices, but they still have the power. They have a need to push public debate and while they are very good at using social media to do this, they need to work out how to use public relations to further develop their power and to reach those luddites that don’t spend 3 hours a day on social media platforms (apparently there is a massive population around the world that doesn’t – who knew?). Or maybe they don’t.  Maybe a successful PR agency will find a solution…

When advertising needs PR (yes it's Super Bowl)!

As far as the U.S. market is concerned, there's once a year when advertising and PR hold hands; or maybe more precisely advertising depends on media relations to make them successful (OK - so that has just pissed off a bunch of creatives, but hey, that's life). It's the Super Bowl.

Quickly approaching this coming weekend, the Super Bowl 2012 always promises to bring out TV adverts that entertain and delight.  While we don't have time to go over some really cool PR stories about ads from the past, we do have time now to give you a sneak peak of what is coming up this weekend.

Some of the adverts are available (or their previews are) here.

There is inevitably the actual media relations about how much money a 30 second spot actually costs. Then the best ads create great PR around them.  This year, look out for the companies which are using social media to get the anticipation glands going (Century 21 seem to have a strong strategy in place). Similarly look for hash tags that are quite prominent in the ads - not of the company/brand name, but around the campaign name/message.

Enjoy the ads and watch this space to see how PR will treat this year's ad-fest.

PR Defined

Can you really define something like the definition of PR through consensus?

Well at this point I would have defined consensious, but of course Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, is blacked out today (good for them).  Webster is my second go-to and they provided:

a : general agreement : unanimity <the consensus of their opinion, based on reports … from the border — John Hersey>  

b : the judgment arrived at by most of those concerned <the consensus was to go ahead>

Anyway, this is the long and seemingly very drawn out process the PRSA (Public Relations Society of America) is going through as witnessed here.

The Candidate Definitions (love that definition in itself) are:

1 - Public relations is the management function of researching, engaging, communicating, and collaborating with stakeholders in an ethical manner to build mutually beneficial relationships and achieve results.

Ummm... OK.  what makes it  management function? I can also think of plenty of unethical PR (aka Political PR) which much as I wouldn't want to be involved in it, should still be defined as PR.

2 - Public relations is a strategic communication process that develops and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their key publics.

Well... I can think of plenty of times when PR does not set up a 'mutually' beneficial relationship.  And can we really say that PR is always strategic?

3 - Public relations is the engagement between organizations and individuals to achieve mutual understanding and realize strategic goals.

As such... I'm not sure I can agree here either.  I don't think the process is always between organizations and individuals - but maybe I am reading too much into that.  And there is that word 'mutual' again.

Straight up - I do have an answer (and it's superb), but don't think for one moment I have the answer that everyone will agree with.  But as Margaret Thatcher said:

consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects.

Actually, the quote that is even more apt for this situation from old Mags is:

Consensus?  Consensus is the negation of leadership!

So is the PRSA trying to keep everyone happy (and in the process we know that will piss everyone off), or can they come back from the abbys and lead?

How to have a hugely successful PR campaign

Seth Godin blogged about it today.  One option is to struggle to be heard whenever you're in the room... Another is to be the sort of person who is missed when you're not.

The first involves making noise. The second involves making a difference.

And so it is with succssful public relations. We take the unusual step of saying to our clients (either during a pitch or after it is successful won) that frankly we don't care how many press releases we are asked to distribute.  All too many agencies seem to want to calculate their retainer or projects based on the number of press releases.  This doesn't make sense to us.  So long as each and every press release is newsworthy and relevant we don't mind working on one a day.  

Off course I've yet to meet a client that had that many newsworth releases... in fact back in 1999 I was speaking to a journalist who was compaining to me that Microsoft sent them a press release every two days.  They actually didn't care that the releases were every two days (they were allready clearing 100+ emails from their email of usless pitches), but they did care that 99% were irrelivent to the title they wrote on.  Of course it wasn't Micorsoft's fault - just the agency at the time that wanted to spam all journalists.

Successful PR campaigns and to add to that - campaigns with longevity - require a spokesperson that makes a difference - or to put it another way, one that will be missed if they are not commenting.

How is your spokesperson doing?

Social Media, Journalists and Public Relations Agencies

Our friends at Cision have just released their  2011 Cision-Newhouse School Digital Influencers Survey. It has some interesting findings and you can read the full research here.

Now, much as we love research and its findings, we do have to identify that Cision's research is often heavily skewed to the bias of selling media lists and the Cision services.  That said, we all benefit from understanding exactly how to use social media with the media.

The 2011 digital influencer survey shows that social platforms like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn (with the impact of Google+ soon to be felt) continue to revolutionize how those who create digital content do their jobs: how often they post content (“file stories”) and how they identify stories and trends, cultivate and qualify sources, and share information.

But – perhaps even more importantly – it is apparent that social media has empowered anyone with a voice that resonates with a community to build influence and vie for the same attention and audience as traditional media.

These “other content creators” may not be connected to an established news organization or blog, but their “social capital” is so significant that they have a direct impact on consumers and other influencers.

Those who define themselves as journalists tend to have very different (and less positive) perceptions about the usefulness and accuracy of social media.

Yet all respondents agree that social media is a superior way to share stories, connect with communities, and make their voices heard.

Bottom line - what does this mean to PR agencies and organizations that use agencies?  Well, PR agencies need to use social media tools to inform/converse with journalists and those writing materials that customers are reading.  But they can't rely on them - social media needs to be integrated into journalist outreach.

Power is nothing without Control

...according to the tire manufacturer Pirelli. And so it is with public relations. Gone are the days when an organization can fully control their corporate message to the media.

In days gone by, it was normal for an organization’s employee handbook to strictly dictate that no employee could speak to the media without prior approval and spokesperson media training. No problem.

Then a few years ago social media popped up. According to a recent piece of research by Altimeter, companies average an overwhelming number of corporate owned accounts – about 178. That is a bunch of people from different departments and around the globe that are speaking on social media platforms, that the media are seeing. And that’s before we count the personal SM accounts of employees who happen to mention their job. So what’s to be done?

NettResults recommends three levels of corporate communication development:

1 - Relinquish a mindset of control - instead ‘enable’. In business school we were taught to foster message control and encourage all corporate representatives to stay on message. Yet today, as multiple business units from support, sales, HR and beyond participate in social technologies, communication is spread to the edges of the company – not just from the PR department. As a result, PR groups have changed their mindset to safely enabling business units to communicate, based on pre-set parameters they put in place through governance, coordination, and workflow.

2 - Roll out enterprise workflows - education programs at four levels. We’ve found that savvy corporations have detailed workflows, including sample language in which employees should respond. Beyond creating these workflows, they must be distributed throughout the enterprise through education programs, and drilled. We’ve found savvy corporations have up to four types of education programs spanning: Executive team, social media team, business stakeholder teams, and finally all associates. Even if the mandate is for rank and file employees to not respond in social on behalf of the company, reinforcing education is still required.

3 - Run mock crises. Lastly, we’ve found a closer relationship with media relations, social media and crisis communications. Savvy corporations are working with agency partners such as NettResults to setup mock crisis drills where they approach a week-long crises in a number of hours in private. Not only does this test the mettle of the organization it provides useful training so companies can respond faster, in a more coordinated approach. We have already witnessed health organizations receiving ‘social-crises-ready’ compliance notices and we expect compliance programs to spread into other industries.

Get ready – take control.