Archive for the ‘media relations’ Category

A Dark Future For Journalism – The Editorial/Ad Wall Is Down

10.04.05

Several weeks ago we received a presentation from a major Canadian newspaper publisher entitled “New Approach to Media Relations for PR Consultants.” In it, the presenter outlined a new process available for PR folks pitching their clients’ work. While I couldn’t attend at the time, I obtained a copy of the deck and got a thorough debrief from the people who were in the room. I’m glad I did, as what I learned horrified me.

Worried businessmanI waited for a while before writing this post, as I let the implications of what I learned sink in and decide if I was over-reacting. I found myself back where I started, though – in a state of something approaching despair about the state of the mainstream media and what it means for public relations as we know it.

The bottom line: the newspaper publisher was directly pitching us the promise of editorial coverage paired with advertising. Quoting their presentation:

“We can help your clients marry their PR message with their Advertising message to strengthen their brand.”

The Old Media Relations Process

As it stands, you can simplify the basic existing process down to three steps once an initiative is underway (yes, this is dramatically over-simplified but it covers the basics):

  1. Develop a news release or pitch
  2. Send the release over the wire/pitch it to journalists
  3. Hope for the best

The Emerging Process

The new approach to media relations, according to the publisher:

  1. Call your “friendly” contact and tell them about:
    • The product
    • The key message
    • Target audience
    • Target markets
  2. Provide publisher with:
    • Editorial themes to complement your key message
    • When you want it in market
    • Where you want it in market
  3. “Open the newspaper(s) and view the editorial content inspired by you and your client with their brand ad exclusively displayed on that page.”

Sounds like a PR person’s dream, right? It might be, if it weren’t for six words in that last bullet. Six words which undermine the entire premise of earned media:

“…with their brand ad exclusively displayed…”

That’s right – they’ll even guarantee exclusivity for your brand on a page, as your ads will make up the rest of the page.

What this means

I get it. The benefits are clear for both sides here. For newspapers, they gain additional revenue while requiring fewer resources to produce the editorial content required to fill their publication.
From an agency perspective, the benefits again are clear - they get the one thing they've always lacked with earned media: control. Control over the message, over the content, over the target audience for coverage. What’s more, they get exclusivity on the page – jackpot.

On the flip side, it seems the church and state divide in media – the editorial/advertising divide – has completely crumbled. Buy ads in their papers, and they’ll even consider your target audience when they write what they still insist is “100% editorial.” My ethical alarm bells are sounding loud and clear here.

An end to credibility?

While only a naive person would suggest that the advertising/editorial line was ever completely steadfast, the credibility that came with independent coverage is what lent “earned media” its title and its value – you had to earn your coverage.

While the presenter insisted that this was only the case for certain sections of their publications, and that the front section was separate to this, it’s a very slippery slope when these companies are desperate for revenue.

This also raises the question of influence on other sections of the paper. Will an editor really run a positively-toned, on-message story for an advertiser against an investigative or negatively-toned piece in another section?

All of these questions further undermine the credibility of the publication. With credibility gone, where does this leave traditional earned media?

(Photo: Shutterstock)

Posted in: media relations, pitching, pr, public relations

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Do The Old Timing Rules Still Apply For Media Relations?

10.02.10

When I first got into media relations, a few pitching best practices were hammered into my head on a regular basis. For example:

  • Know who you’re pitching and what they’re after
  • Tailor your pitch
  • Don’t bcc a “mailing list” of pitch recipients (pitchees?)
  • Don’t pitch journalists when they’re on deadline

When it came to print journalists, that last bullet translated to “don’t pitch journalists after around 2:30 or so.” I’ve stuck to that as much as possible since that time (of course, it varies for radio and television depending on when the show runs, and hence when people are around). However, a conversation I had recently with my colleague Karen Nussbaum has got me rethinking that approach.

New rules for timing pitches?

Photograph of a newspaperHere’s the theory:

The idea of print journalists’ deadlines has always centred around the 24hr news cycle, where stories were assigned in the morning, researched and drafted during the day and which culminated in a deadline for the story to be filed mid-afternoon. Trying to call a reporter anywhere near that deadline would result in you getting ignored or (sometimes) told off for not respecting their time.

In today’s media environment, stories are filed for the web throughout the day. Often they’re filed multiple times, with information being added as stories develop. As a result, the afternoon deadline has turned into constant pressure and ever-looming deadlines. For the media relations folks, that means:

  1. Journalists are always pressed for time (as one said to me a little while back when I asked if it was a good time to talk, “it’s never a good time – I’m always busy”).
  2. Afternoon pitching is no worse than morning pitching. In fact, it may be better as they’ve had a chance to clear out their inbox from the morning… and if everyone else is calling in the morning, you may have a better chance of getting through in the afternoon.

What’s more, the emergence of email as a pitching tool means initial outreach can be asynchronous- if journalists are busy they can read them later.

Is it time to re-think the old rules around when to pitch print journalists?

Public relations pros: does this picture fit with your recent experience?

Journalists: does this ring true for you?

(This is a re-post of a piece I wrote for the Marketing Profs Daily Fix. To check out the original and my other posts there, check out mpdailyfix.com)

Posted in: best practices, media relations, pr, public relations

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More Journalists Prefer Bulk Email Than Personalized? Huh?

10.02.03

Last week saw the launch of a campaign entitled “An Inconvenient PR Truth,” aimed at trying to weed-out some of the black sheep in the PR family.

Many of us in the profession have been arguing for similar practices to those advocated there for a while. While the campaign’s approach raised my hackles somewhat, the motives stated seem reasonable on the face of things.

This post isn’t about the broader campaign though.

Buried deep in a slide deck supporting the campaign was a slide about the way journalists prefer to receive “press release emails” (a term that has me tasting bile somewhat, but moving on…).

Preference for how press release emails are addressed

Let’s set aside for a second the advisability of using a sample of 100 respondents to generalize about an entire worldwide industry (although, with the ever-shrinking number of journalists out there nowadays, it might actually be representative…). I’d like to focus for a second on the specific assertion of this slide.

I quote:

“Three quarters of Recipients are happy to receive press release emails on a bulk email basis (or have no preference either way).”

This slide says that 75% of journalists are ok with receiving untailored bulk pitches.

Say whaaaaat?!

To me, this goes against every instinct I have when it comes to pitching. It essentially says that spam is ok. Note that while the first thing the “Inconvenient PR Truth” campaign asks for is for PR pros to ask permission to pitch journalists, that’s not tied in any way to this question in the survey. Without any mention of permission-based pitching, it offers data suggesting that three quarters of journalists are ok with spam pitches.

Time and time again, journalists and PR practitioners alike have railed against the prevalence of untailored spam pitches. I’ve written about spam pitches plenty of times here (in fact given the rapidly increasing number of pitches I receive, I have even posted tips for people pitching me). I have to call “BS” on any claim that only 25% of journalists want pitches tailored to them.

This data seems wrong to me. In fact, it’s even contrary to the goals of the campaign. It also makes me question the accuracy of other potentially useful data in the survey (for example the information on the types of releases journalists prefer not to receive).

Does this seem right to you?

Posted in: media relations, pr, public relations

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The Volume/Personalization Trade-Off

09.06.29

The trade-off between volume and personalization is an ever-present dilemma in public relations. If, as I do, you subscribe to the notion that one of the best ways to build loyalty is to develop a relationship with people, then you’ve likely hit the point where you have to make a trade-off between the number of people you can engage with and the quality of those interactions.

A couple of weeks ago I received a pitch about the upcoming launch of Gary Vaynerchuk‘s first book. The pitch wasn’t fantastic, but as I’ve followed Gary’s activities for a while and it was well enough targeted, I replied and moved on. Fast forward to this weekend, when I read an interesting post by John Cass about a similar (not identical) pitch that he received. Reading the comments (those on the original post and the re-post on Social Media Today are all worth reading), I started to really think about the optimum point along the scale/personalization continuum when it comes to pitching.

Volume/personalization extremes

Purists will tell you that you need to read 10-20 posts or stories from each person you pitch, and that you should completely tailor every pitch you issue. Meanwhile, some other people will argue that by reaching a large volume of people with your pitch, the law of averages says you will connect with enough people who do care that you will come out ahead.

I’d argue that there are downsides to both extreme, although I still favour one side over the other.

I’ve written before about some of the issues involved with personalized blogger relations. The primary one, of course, is time. Even if you take just a minute or two per post you read, that time adds up quickly. To then tailor personalized emails takes more time. When you work for an agency, the process can quickly chew through your client’s budget.

Once you get to the kind of numbers that Gary mentions in his comments on John’s post, you’re talking astronomical amounts of time. That limits this approach to a very small number of recipients.

This brings us to the other extreme – mass communications. This is the approach that relies on building a large list, emailing out a standard (or mail-merged) email to that list and letting the law of averages do its work. Sure, you may annoy some people but you’ll also hit other people who will take the action you’re after. This is the “email marketing” form of pitching – the collision of the two tactics.

Is the sweet spot in the middle ground?

In an ideal world, every company would take the former approach. Unfortunately, we don’t live in that wonderful place – time is tight, budgets are tighter and we need to deliver results for our clients and bosses with less resources than we would like to have.

I wonder if the ideal solution, as with so many dilemmas, is somewhere in the middle.

The chart above shows roughly how I view the dilemma. At the top-left of the curve, you have the idealists who say you should completely tailor every word of every pitch you send out. Small, highly-targeted outreach also fits into this part of the curve. At the opposite end of the chart, you have the spammers who pitch massive numbers of people with the same message. They’re easy to spot – they’re the ones where you’re bcc’d, with no salutation or a “Dear Blogger.” They often lead with the words “For Immediate Release.”

I’ve worked for clients where their only targets are one or two highly influential blogs, and in that case you can function over  at the top-left of the curve. However, unless your target audience is an extremely small number of sites (or their readers), you may need to make some compromises.

Still, I am strongly (and often vocally) against untargeted spam pitches that hit everyone with the same email. Note that the potential “sweet spot” I suggest sits closer to the tailored, low-volume end of the scale than the other. Critically, it sits above the tipping point where the volume reaches the point where significantly less personalization is possible.

The reality of the “sweet spot”

In this sweet spot, for a new client:

  • You research the targets of your pitches – you read their stories or their websites;
  • You create a pitch template covering the key points you wish to communicate;
  • You tailor that template for every person you pitch;
    • That personalization includes, but isn’t limited to:
      • The medium you use to pitch them (if that information is available)
      • Your greeting
      • Your opening paragraph
      • The points on which you choose to focus
      • The supporting collateral you offer – do they lean towards video? Images? Interviews?
  • You keep some less-critical parts of the email the same, to save time and budget.

Time changes things

I say “for a new client” above because, as time goes on, I believe the line in the chart moves up – as you get to know the market and the media in that market better, you can reach more of them more effectively in less time, meaning more personalization, less time required and better use of resources.

Having worked on some accounts for a while now, I can reel-off the names of key journalists, how they like to be contacted, when the best times are to reach them and the types of information they like, without even needing notes. That makes the pitching process more cost-effective as time goes on – meaning the line in the chart has moved way up the Y axis.

Your thoughts?

I’m curious as to your thoughts. Does this click with the challenges you face?

Let me know what you think – I’d love to hear your feedback.

Posted in: blogger relations, media relations, pitching, pr, public relations

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The Power of Pith

09.02.10

Media relations is a funny business. So often we talk about how we need to find serious, substantial stories to pitch to reporters, and it’s true. In general, you’re much more likely to generate interest with something newsworthy than with fluff.

Sometimes, though, fluff works.

Why?

Timing - There are certain times of the year – Christmas, Valentines, Mother’s Day, Back-to-School etc, when outlets are scrambling for content. Christmas is perhaps the biggest of these times – reporters are away for the holidays and readers have an appetite for lighter stories.

Relevance – If you target your pitches to the right audience at the right time, you could be in luck.

Fun! – It’s worth trying the occasional fun story. Sometimes it’s just the thing journalists are looking for to fill a few column inches or give a different angle on things.

This past Christmas our team pitched a light-hearted story for one of our clients. We targeted the story to the time of year, picked the journalists carefully, brought a different angle to the topic, and pitched it in a light-hearted way.

The results? Coast-to-coast coverage, largely pulled directly from the pitch; 20 million impressions, an MRRP score of over 90 and a cost per contact of $0.0002.

I should state, though, that I would strongly recommend against using this approach frequently. Substantial, news-worthy stories need to make up the vast majority of your media pitching or you’ll be at risk of burning all your bridges with journalists.

Still… sometimes, just sometimes, pithy can be powerful.

Posted in: media relations, pitching, pr, public relations

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Rethinking Blogger Relations

09.02.03

ROIIs blogger relations worth it? Is the ROI sufficient to justify the investment?

I’ve written a few times in the past about blogger relations, from a range of angles – from the tactic in general to the practicalities of pitching bloggers to the results from a blogger’s perspective. However, I recently got to thinking about it in a different way.

I think it’s important to continually question what we’re doing – it’s the only way we’ll continue to improve over time. With that in mind, I got to thinking about whether blogger relations is really worth the investment in time and money necessary to do it well.

A little context

Here’s the issue: most people in the social media fishbowl, including me, will advocate a take-it-slow approach to engaging in social media. My preferred approach has three broad steps:

  1. Listen
  2. Engage
  3. Develop

For this to work, you need to put in a substantial amount of time up-front. That time is spent monitoring what’s going on, identifying influencers, measuring and analyzing trends and getting to know peoples’ preferences.

From an agency perspective, that can be a considerable investment up-front before you even begin to engage.

When you do begin to engage, blogger relations best practices (take Todd Defren’s blogger relations bookmark for example) require continued time-intensive work in both pitching and engagement.

Is that investment worth it?

Sure there are the TechCrunches, the Mashables and the ReadWriteWebs. However, most bloggers don’t have those audiences. Most bloggers don’t have a tenth or even a hundredth of that audience.

Given those low audience numbers, does the investment in time required for good blogger relations give the necessary pay-off?

A few arguments

Even setting aside the impact of corporate culture, there are a few factors to consider:

  • Initial time: If you add up the time you need to invest to get to know a blogger, engage with them before pitching, then tailor a pitch to that blogger, you’re probably looking at least an hour or two per blogger, if not more. 
  • Future time: Of course, once you’ve done the groundwork, the incremental time investment will be lower for future pitches.
  • Relationships: Established relationships have greater value than immediate outreach – future issues management, for example.
  • Search engines: Online content with a positive tone can help build companies’ reputations through Google search results.
  • Long tail: Audience size can be much bigger than stated reader numbers – the long tail of online content can be large over time.
  • Research: If you offer a product or service where purchase is research-based and you’re not engaging, then people are making decisions on purchases based on everyone’s voice but your own.
  • More than pitching: Blogger relations encompases more than just proactive pitching – it can also include both reactive engagement with people who talk about your product, company or industry. I’ve argued before that customer service is public relations; nowhere is this more true than online.

Conclusion

My conclusion, perhaps unsurprisingly, is that it is worth the investment. 

One thing to remember is that traditional media relations takes time, too, if done right. Researching reporters, tailoring your pitch, etc takes time while reporters for mainstream outlets are, in my experience, less likely to write about the story than relevant bloggers may be. What’s more, the long-term effects of building relationships with relevant people (both online and offline) can be substantial.

So, yes – the time investment is substantial, but so are the benefits – better relationships, more coverage, better coverage, SEO, customer service improvements and more. Still, the required investment makes measurement and analysis of results all the more important, which is why we’re putting a lot of effort into that right now.

What do you think? Is the ROI on blogger relations worth it?

Posted in: blogger relations, blogging, media relations, public relations

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Utah Mine Collapse – A Communications Crisis

07.08.16

Unless you’ve had your head in a box recently, you know about the Utah mine collapse and the desperate search for six miners trapped inside.

Bob MurrayThe owner of Crandall Canyon mine, Robert Murray, isn’t known for being shy, and this is no exception. The outspoken Murray has been front-and-center since this crisis began.

A lot of people have written about the troubling aspects of this story like Murray Energy Corp’s safety record or suspicion that mining techniques caused the collapse, rather than seismic tremors as the company has claimed. They’ve done it way better than I could.

I’m going to put all those topics, and my distaste for Bob Murray in general, to one side and focus on the way that he has handled the mainstream media. It seems to be a case study in how not to handle a crisis. Here are three examples:

  1. Putting out unsubstantiated statements: From the outset, Murray put himself out in front of the cameras. Ok, that part is fine. Trouble is, he started making statements without anything to back them up. Seems that while the rest of the world is trying to work out what caused the collapse, Bob Murray knows for sure that it wasn’t the mining techniques used.
  2. Going off-message: Murray did relatively well at the beginning. His compassionate, caring messages got a lot of pick-up. Briefly. Unfortunately, before too long, Murray went off message. Way off message. Attacking the media, slamming the fight against global warming and defending the coal industry aren’t the right way to get people on your side. You know it’s bad when federal officials ask to take over your press conferences.
  3. Getting emotional: Showing emotion in front of the camera isn’t always a bad thing. If it’s the right emotion, that is. In this case, compassion, caring, concern. Those were the right emotions to show, and Murray showed them initially. As time goes on though, anger seems to be the more prevalent emotion. Not cool.

This was never going to be a good news story for Murray Energy Corp. The best they could hope for was to minimize criticism. Unfortunately, Bob Murray has become a lightning rod for criticism, most of which is directed at his handling of the situation rather than any potential cause of the situation itself. Time to get out of the limelight.

Also check out this brief analysis from Kathy Kerchner.

If you want an example of good crisis management, check out Mattel.

Edit (8/16): I just read BL Ochman’s less-than-glowing review of Mattel’s video message about the product recall. She makes some good points about Mattel’s business practices, but I give them credit for using multiple media to get the message out. She’s right about posting it on YouTube, though!

Another Edit (8/17): Turns out, another tragic collapse occurred at the mine as I wrote this post. Two thoughts. First, my best wishes go out to the rescue workers, their families and anyone else affected. Second, Bob Murray was noticeably absent from today’s news coverage.

Posted in: crisis communications, media relations, pr, public relations

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Media Pitches – Tips From The Other Side

07.07.31

Media pitches are a big part of any significant announcements, but have you ever wondered if we’re doing them well? If we’re drawing journalists into our stories, or driving them away? If we could pitch more effectively?

If you have, check out this Inside PR podcast where the hosts, David Jones and Terry Fallis, interview two producers from Breakfast Television and get some tips on pitching stories for TV (if you don’t have an MP3 player, don’t worry, you can play the show through the website).

Here are a few tips I gleaned from the interview:

  1. Be honest. If it’s not a good story, don’t pretend it is. The producers will remember, and while you may get coverage this time, they’re less likely to cover your future story when it really matters
  2. If you can add some spice to smaller announcements, you’re more likely to be successful. Think visuals, experts (especially controversial ones) or the people-angle
  3. Build a relationship with your media contacts. It won’t help you get coverage on a weak story, but your effectiveness will rise considerably if you know how they like to be reached (phone? Email?) and when (for Breakfast Television, between 9am-1pm)
  4. Bottom line up front. Your email subject should be, “World’s biggest pizza maker comes to town,” not, “Great story for Breakfast Television.” Producers don’t have time to dig down to find the news
  5. Be flexible with your ideas. The producers may suggest a different approach, or push back and ask for something else. If you want to get on the show, you may need to compromise on your original pitch
  6. Don’t get too comfortable. You may have dealt with a producer before, but that doesn’t mean you know it all. Give them all the information and let them choose
  7. Remember: this is a two-way street. You want coverage of your announcement; they want interesting TV. If you do your job well, everyone wins and you’re more likely to be well received next time you pitch a story.

Posted in: media, media relations, podcast, pr, public relations

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