Archive for the ‘pr marketing’ Category
Dick Grove
The Long Tale of PR
11.13.11
I hope we’d all agree that the most effective communications programs in today’s Internet dependent world are those that incorporate and fuse all the different elements and platforms available to the modern PR practitioner. In a recent interview of a top executive at Weber Shandwick this point was again well stated…
“Through the rapid rise of social media, Weber Shandwick has helped clients tell stories in multiple formats (text, graphics, photography, audio and video) and to insert those formats into multiple vehicles (blog posts, news releases, FAQs, slideshows, whitepapers, videos, rss feeds, emails, etc.) and to drive those vehicles into multiple destinations (Facebook, websites, blogs, Twitter, events, seminars, YouTube, Slideshare, Scribd, etc.). Obviously, not every story requires video or needs to be tweeted or otherwise splintered. But a lot of them can be brought to many more lives than in the past, when we lived in a media world of words and pictures to and from a handful of sources.”
I couldn’t agree more and woe be to that PR firm or client who ignores the possibilities and benefits of a completely integrated communications approach. Who, as my old coach used to say, “is stupid enough to go into tough game with half of your best players sitting on the bench?” Who indeed. But my concern is not with how a client’s story is conveyed and what formats and social media vehicles are put on the field to do so, which I believe we can all agree upon…but rather the content of the story itself. Too many times in this business, and more so now than ever, we fall in love with the shiny new vehicle and frankly forget that it still requires fuel. That fuel is the story itself. This WS executive points out that “that having a good story and telling it well are a big part of their job.” Is this new?
I am reminded again of how even the largest global PR firms continue to rediscover as if for the first time that which has been obvious to those of us who have labored for years in the non-traditional world of “pay-for-performance” PR. Typical of the behemoth PR firms, they’ve given this revelation a catchy corporate title, “Content Fusion.” Nice name and pretty succinctly covers the subject. But is this just another case of the large agency blowing its own horn by stating the obvious and driving up its own hourly fees with its own corporate speak? I hope not. The WS executive goes on to say, “– A company talking about itself must say something new, preferably fresh and not in a way that’s rote, bland, or inane.” That would indeed be revolutionary…not to the hard working PR types that get paid on actual results, but certainly to the media on the receiving end of all those previous “rote, bland or inane” press releases that this firm and others have been mass distributing for years.
Good story telling isn’t just a part of a PR pro’s job…it is the most important part, and has been since the first publicist reached out and tried to grab the media’s attention. There is nothing like a good tale to draw us into a story and make us want to continue to know more. The media…traditional, blog posts, video, online content distribution in various channels … is no different. They’re people just like the rest of us, and all love and respond to a good tale. An interesting and provoking beginning transitioning into a journey of discovery winding eventually to a satisfying ending…good or bad. Sound familiar? And all wrapped around something truly newsworthy and aimed at audiences eager to read, watch and become engaged. This may not be new, but it is smart.
That’s my opinion…what’s yours?
Categories: Grove Report, pr marketing, pr news, Social Media Marketing
Dick Grove
Press Releases are as Outdated as the Paper They’re Written On
10.31.11
It’s time for all of us in the public relations profession to fess up to very basic fact…press releases are a lousy inefficient means to garner the media’s attention. And if you’re a company or an individual with little to no media profile…as are most…they’re worse than inefficient, they’re a stupid waste of time.
Let me be clear…I am not talking about disseminating information for purposes of self promotion or legal compliance. What I am talking about is landing media coverage and in the process making a positive impression on the media, and possibly even a detailed news story for yourself or a client. Real news coverage on the editorial side is a product of news, timeliness, verifiable facts, hard work, opportunity, and yes, luck…not PR puffery, long-winded descriptions of a company or its product attributes, industry jibber jabber, and last but not least, legalisms…i.e., the average corporate press release.
I’m not sure where exactly the origins of the misunderstandings came from, or how long there’s been a belief that press releases actually work. It’s probably been as long as the first press agent took pen to paper and stuck it in the local newspaper editor’s cubbyhole. And it’s been propagated over the years by traditional PR practitioners and PR educators, not because they’re effective but because they’re easy and the time put against writing them is usually fully billable. But unless the subject already is familiar to the media…a high profile company like Apple or IBM or tied to the latest and greatest “news cause de celeb”…they find the trash can, real or electronic, faster than you can say “delete.” I once had a group VP of one of the big three PR firms brag to me that his New York staff was annually billing out $1.2 million on writing press releases alone for a client. When I asked him if it was productive for the client…did it produce a million dollars in news coverage?… his answer, “who knows.”
Pay-for-performance PR firms understand the fallacy of the press release. They know because their revenue stream depends solely on producing actual editorial news coverage for clients, not billable hours churning out releases. Hours are expended all right, but against researching the individual target media and creating a credible pitch to an individual reporter, editor, blogger or producer. The result, hopefully a billable client story, not billable hours or one more release finding the bottom of the wastebasket.
I’ve been accused over the years of being a press release bigot…of classifying all press releases as pointless and a waste of time. Not true. Some of my best friends are press releases…some do serve a very productive purpose. A few key words here or there and they can do wonders for your SEO…or keep you straight with the compliance folks at the SEC…or make a nice addition to a salesperson’s portfolio…and lastly give corporate lawyers a place to deposit all of their “whereas’s” and “therefore’s” and disclaimers to their hearts content. But it’s only when the press release gets uppity and tries to create real news that I have a problem. Does that make me a press release bigot…or just a smart PR practitioner?
That’s my opinion…what’s yours?
Categories: About INK, Grove Report, pr marketing
Dick Grove
Watching Public Relations Unwind…Hour by Hour
10.24.11
The public relations profession is getting caught in its own “Catch-22.”
I received an email from a twenty-year pro in the PR business…a vice president of a major national PR agency…this week saying she was being taken off of one her favorite and most productive clients because the client needed to trim their budget slightly and her agency felt her hourly rate was too high to keep her on the account….duh? What’s wrong with this picture? More to the point, what continues to be wrong with the traditional PR agency world that it would rather diminish the service provided its clients than rethink an unfair and outmoded compensation structure?
It was Albert Einstein that defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
We in this profession are supposedly creative and strategic in our advice and counsel to our business clients; and yet we can’t after sixty plus years figure a better way to charge our clients than does a baby sitter or a day laborer. Yes, I know…traditional PR pros charge considerably more than Mary Sue next door does for watching little Johnny on Friday nights, but the concept stays the same…the more the hours, the greater the pay. (And I agree an argument could be made that Mary Sue’s responsibility is considerably greater than most high priced PR types hammering out never-to-be-used press releases…but that’s fodder for another blog.)
And if it wasn’t time before, it certainly is in today’s client world of restricted budgets, to stop doing the same thing over and over again…hour after hour…invoice after invoice. There are lots of alternatives….pay-for-performance, performance bonuses, and incentive-based compensation programs. Clients aren’t stupid and more than ever they are far more interested in the value of the service rendered and even in their own internal self preservation than loyalty to a traditional “name agency” or an outdated compensation model. If a client has to trim their PR budget, do they really expect that their agency will eliminate the best and brightest…and the most experienced on their account…or rather the agency will do its best to creatively figure a way to keep service at a high level while working with them through a difficult time. Whoa! That’s neither realistic nor fair…the traditional PR firms cry. We have big-time overhead and salaries to cover and we can’t be expected to take a financial hit because of our clients. Really? Consider the alternative…the client ultimately leaves because of diminished service, that same high overhead must be pared (although sadly, this paring usually starts at the bottom) and new clients must be found and signed to take their place (all expensive in itself)…and new overhead (and salaries) must be added to service them. And here we go again…over and over again.
Call it PR’s own stupid “Catch-22”…or as Albert would say, “Insanity.”
That’s my opinion…what’s yours?
Categories: Grove Report, pr marketing, pr news
Dick Grove
Remembering the “Sixties”
10.16.11
I’ll take my hat off to that…what hat?
I knew the sixties. The sixties were friends of mine. And you, “Mad Men”, “Playboy Club”, and “Pan Am” are not the sixties. Oh, you’ve got a bit of the surface feel for the era; and just enough of a few details to con those born after the great baby boom into believing they’re witnessing history as it was. Or…is it history as a few Hollywood writers and producers believe it might have been. History filtered by youth and stories handed down by the books and the entertainment media of that era and propagated by a few that did actually experience the decade in the workplace, but are either too lazy to dispute the modern rendition or have bought into it because it’s more glamorous than their personal reality.
Even the term “sixties” is a misnomer. What is passed off as the sixties in today’s pop culture is mostly the latter part of the decade, much as we so often see presented as “fifties” is in reality from about 1957 through 1962…rock and roll, poodle skirts, etc. But what’s a few years when you’re having fun and only remembering the good stuff. But what’s with the hats? Did all the guys wear hats…no. Did a few guys wear hats…a dorky few. President Kennedy changed all that in 1961. Almost overnight the men’s hat industry went flat. Kennedy was cool to the young men of the era. He hated wearing a hat. Enough said.
What’s all this got to do with a blog on the media and the communications business today? For starters, in the sixties I worked in a big New York ad agency, I flew on Pan Am, and yes, I even stopped by a key club in Chicago and elsewhere. And I still have enough of my facilities to remember the experience in detail. I can still feel the emotions, the excitement of being in advertising and public relations when, although not embryonic, were still in their infancy when ads were comp’ed on tissue and commercials were 60 seconds and shot on film and we charged our PR clients by the column inch. Were they the good old days? Not necessarily. Was there a greater sense of individual effort and improvisation before computers, software, and special effects were invented to cover our ass, yes. Were there great stories and emotions being played out all around us…big and small…absolutely….but none of us wore hats!
I loved the sixties experience but I don’t want to turn back the clock. I do miss the entrepreneurial nature of the work in those days, but I love my iPhone and my word processing software and the styles today way too much. But is it asking too much to spend some of those production dollars on getting a few more details correct. We smoked everywhere (including on Pam Am) but few if any of us drank in the office (we saved it for lunch) nor had hair over our collars, and not every woman wore heavy eye make up that curled upward in the corner of her eyes.
Is it asking too much to fix the details…at least until those of us that know better are dead?
Categories: Grove Report, pr marketing
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