Flack's Revenge

Floyd Norris had a nice article in the NY Times last Friday about the state of the so called “death tax” New Life for the Death Tax.   Unfortunately he (probably quite unintentionally) took a broadside at the PR profession in the process.

He wrote: “Perhaps the greatest public relations coup of this decade was the persuasion of millions of Americans that repealing the estate tax was a populist cause.”

So here we find ourselves again (see my earlier post: PR Wars and other Problems).  PR and its practitioners by association are positioned as devious instruments of persuasion.  Why not call it a policy coup, or ideological win for the right?  Although there may well have been PR people in the mix there somewhere, there were also politicians, political advisers, and other enablers (yes even some journalists) who probably ran with “death tax” versus “estate tax,” thus framing the issue in a way that sounded populist.

In fact it was the right wing wordsmith and consultant Frank Luntz who coined the phrase “death tax” – not some PR firm or consultant in the traditional sense.

For those who think I am being too sensitive, please remember that one of the missions of this blog is to encourage better PR for the PR profession.  I wave the banner for PR, educate and help defend it when needed.   It is not called Flack’s Revenge for nothing.  And, as I have written before, PR gets knocked through association with wars, coups and problems.

Floyd Norris is in good company, I don’t mean to pick on him.   I thought I’d try a little exercise and search a periodicals database (Factiva, in this case) to determine how often the following offending phrases were used in the media over the past year:

PR coup: 674
PR problem: 501
PR war: 372

I haven’t read through each article  (I do have a day job), but I would venture to say that in none of the cases was any blood actually spilled, or governments toppled.  And probably precious few problems that were caused solely by PR.

I have said that the PR pitch is dead.  As I explained in that post, the lumbering, one size fits all mass blast is an anachronism.  Further, the mindless flogging of information has no place today (not that it ever did, but it was tolerated back in the day).   Today, journalists are under the gun and neither they nor bloggers suffer fools (or doe-eyed PR newbies, who have blessed little understanding of the areas they are promoting) gladly.

But pitches as approaches designed to draw interest are very much alive.  They are, however evolving (or should be).  Let’s take a moment and re-examine relevant trends:

• Retrenchment of traditional media means fewer reporters covering more beats, meaning it is harder for your news to qualify as “hard news.”
• The growth in voices and online clamor means it is harder to get attention for your information.  People you are pitching want to write that headline that pops and soft news angles just don’t cut it.  What does is the scoop, the intriguing rumor, and again the undeniably hard news.
• These same trends means less time and space are devoted to thoughtful analysis.  Articles and magazines are tacking shorter.  This increases the pressure to to get your story across in the fewest possible words.  People are not going to take a lot of time to understand it or devote a lot of space to explaining it.
• More information coming at everyone at a faster clip and competition for eyeballs mean shorter shelf life for news and stories.
• At Fusion PR, we covered some of these trends in our survey of the impact of social media on tech journalism.
• Millions of blogging soapboxes and many people discussing their work and personal lives in social networks means there are precious few secrets and it is harder than ever to control the release of information.   This means that exclusives and embargoes are more challenging to pull off.
• Finally,  the way information is consumed and delivered is changing.  Reporters get information from blogs, micro blogs, social networks and other channels.  Your pitch could be delivered in these channels, be a comment on their blogs,  etc.
• Their are new websites for delivering pitches and news.  See NewsVetter, PRX Builder and PitchEngine (all inactive).

The fact is that it is harder to break through the noise these days challenges those wishing to get attention for their ideas, information, products, and spokespeople.  On the other hand, as I wrote in my post about User Generated PR, there are more places than ever to get your content posted.

What this boils down to is that objective for your next campaign might not be to snag that briefing, series or briefings, or exclusive.  In rethinking the PR pitch and campaign you need to ask yourself several questions:

What is the potential market for our news?
Who is most likely to care or do something with it? Is it a seller’s market (really hot information or hard news) or a buyers’ market (everything else)?  The only way to understand this is to have a good sense of the the market you work in, competitive lay of the land, what has already been written / announced, and a sense of how your news relates.

What content, assets, etc. do we have or can we assemble that supports the story?
Self explanatory.

What key gatekeepers or influencers can make a difference in our campaign?
Who do we need to educate and convince that what we have is significant?  What audiences do they reach and what is their reputation with these audiences?

I blogged last week about the PR and branding connection, and the importance of weaving the facts that describe your product or service into a good story.

Last week I also described a client type who seemingly has no interest in brand building but wants to use PR exclusively to keep the sales pipeline flush.   Inevitably it is the people infected by this type of thinking who are irked when their company or product is not mentioned in roundups of their spaces.

“When reporters are writing about our space and mentioning our competitors, we need to be there too,” they say.  Then they want us to go out there and make that happen by putting pressure on the media, often with little precious “air cover” from their side.

My response is that it takes more than your agency keeping after the media to ensure inclusion in roundups.   The media is under no obligation to mention every competitor in a given market segment when they write about it.   Bloggers have even more latitude to write whatever they want, as they generally don’t make claims to fairness and journalistic integrity.

Making the group –  the top three or four players who tend to get mentioned in roundups on a market space – takes hard work and time.

Consistent outreach, and regularly meeting and speaking with right reporters are the most basic components of this.  But calling and briefing reporters may not be sufficient to get coverage in their stories.  A drumbeat of news is a great way to demonstrate that clients are on the move and making progress in the marketplace.    The media needs to see that the client is doing great work and convinced that they are a leading vendor when they rattle off the top two or three names in the space.  Augmenting news outreach with a steady stream of story ideas in which you position the client in the context of the hot issues and trends helps towards this end as well.

So, proactive thematic outreach combined with routine contacts across the media list and promotion of news will help to build mind share and coverage and help your clients make that vaunted short list.

It is by no means a science.   It is more a matter of perceptions and brand.  You could have the strongest balance sheet and highest sales.   But if the media is not aware of the great work you are doing and what your brand stands for – if they don’t see you out there in the marketplace, with announcements that show traction and progress on technology, product and business fronts – then you have no right to expect them to mention you in related articles.

So it is more a matter of digging in for the long haul, not expecting to be annointed as a leader in the early stages of a program, creating a drumbeat of news, and making sure the story resontaes, and is breaking through and being heard, understood and appreciated.

The proliferation of various forms of media has created a land grab for attention that makes it more critical than ever to be able get your message across in the fewest possible words.  Whether someone is looking through their email inbox, headlines in their news reader, or scouring search engine results, the only thing standing between them and your message is the headline, subject line or other descriptive words wrapped around your content.

Further the growth of IM, text messaging, and micro-blogging technologies like Twitter mandate brevity.  Another challenge is that people are writing for two audiences: human and search engines.

The upshot is that  punchy, concise writing and sharp headlines – that are both people and search engine friendly – are now more important than ever.  This is particularly true, and particularly challenging in the world of tech PR.  It is not always easy to boil down highly complex technology to its compelling and provocative essence.

Here are a few simple tips for getting the most out of limited word count real estate:

• Get rid of spurious words like “announces”
• Avoid repetition
• Use the most impactful words right at the beginning (if it is a heads-up on important news, say so)
• Use shorter words
• Avoid gobbledy gook puke
• Read the headline out loud to make sure it flows
• Test headlines – use your colleagues, friends and families as mini-focus groups
• Where practical, do real tests – vary the subject lines of pitches to see which ones resonate
• Include keywords – these serve both human readers and search engines.  For human readers who might not be familiar with your company, keywords provide important descriptors. They also help search engines properly index your news, and alert people to your news via the persistent searches they set up.

I have often debated whether it is better to be witty or straightforward.  The latter argues that you need to be clear, and besides, the subtleties of word play are lost on search engines.  They simply do not “get” irony and puns.

The former says you need to be interesting.  If clear but boring text means fewer people will open it, then favor the more eye catching approach (however if it is too cryptic – meaning, if it doesn’t include descriptive key words – then fewer of the right people will see it because it will not place as highly in search engine rankings or trigger search engine alerts that are tuned to these key words).

Sometimes you can achieve both.

It is great if as many people as possible open and view your news.

It is even better to have the right people  – people who care, might write or be customer prospects – open and view your news.

So the ideal headline or subject line not only draws attention but the right kind of attention

Regardless of whether the headline or subject line is factual and straightforward or enticing and cryptic, you can still accomplish goals as long as you draw readers in.  Information is increasingly delivered in layers.  The headline or email subject line draws you in; the body text explains more, and includes links which provide additional information as well as some kind of call to action, or mechanism to register and/or request more information.

There is a flip side, and a potential pitfall to my post Turning PR into a Sales Lead Generating Machine. The post counseled that tough economic times mandate PR programs specifically designed to boost sales, and offered tips about PR tactics that can drive sales leads.

The counter argument occurred to me during a recent PR planning meeting. The client, a CEO with a sales and marketing bent, insisted on a fairly limited set of PR goals. “We don’t have the deep pockets of larger vendors to do brand building programs. We need to drive sales, and do this in a very targeted way.”

I can understand why budgetary constraints might limit a huge ad spend on image building, but PR can play a role in brand development as well, and PR budgets are usually much smaller than branding focused ad budgets.

What I should have brought up at the time – and want to emphasize here – is that branding happens, whether you intentionally set out to invest in brand building or not.

People will by themselves fill in the blanks you create when you don’t talk about your brand (assuming they have any awareness of your company and its products). Their perceptions will be drawn from and colored by a range of sources: peers, first-hand experience, articles, blog posts, analysts, etc.

Furthermore, it is undeniable that, in competitive sectors like the legal industry, establishing your very own brand identity is crucial. Above all, if you want people to choose your law firm to represent their interests, you need to market your services in a way that feels authentic.

Moreover, this is why it is so important to have an established presence online.

Don’t you want to have a say in this dialogue?

I still think PR needs to do its share of short term demand generation. However, I think most will find that using PR exclusively as a business development tool would be a mistake. PR can and should play a role in building brand and company valuation. It is more of a long term strategy, but should not be ignored or left out of the equation when implementing programs and calculating the ROI for PR.