Goodbye 2012 and helloooo 2013. What’s been going on and what can we expect to see over the next 12 months? NettResults takes a look back of 2012 in the world of media and what we can expect in 2013.
When corporate communication professionals (or their PR agency) propose a particular story (e.g. in the form of a press release) to a journalist, they engage in two separate but related processes.
First, they are soliciting interest in the story.
Second, they are making sure that the story is framed in a way that is consistent with the organization’s preferred framing (i.e. how the organization would like that story to be told).
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There are possibly many learnings from the heavily armed gunman attacked an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater early Friday, that terrified audiences, killed 12 and wounded 38... but how will Warner Bros manage the inevitable PR before their $250 million project sales are effected?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.