It used to be relatively easy. PR that is. You would look at the product, service or idea you wanted to pitch and identify the few kingmakers who, if they bought the pitch, made you golden. These towering figures in journalism-often writing for The Times, The Journal, Time, and The New Yorker- held millions of readers in their grasp. Under their spell. People believed in them, had faith in them, the way they did in Uncle Walter Cronkite. A story on a new health regimen touted by Jane Brody would cause the product associated with it to fly off the shelf. And when Jack Anderson took aim at anything or anyone, the prey would run for cover or wind up in jail.

Yes, it’s still a coup to land a story in a kingmaker’s column. Plant an idea with Thomas Freidman and it will soar around the world. But these journalistic stars have lost much of their power to the galaxy of relatively unknown “experts” in cyber sphere hosting millions of blogs and websites and podcasts, and tossing widgets, and VLOGs and emails to more people than Bob Novak ever reached in his most popular column.

Today, finding who to target for your story is far more complex because there is an exponent over the media hit list you need to target. And not only are there more forces out there who can breathe life into your story, the cast changes almost daily and the process through which the magic happens is often bewildering. An amateur photographer captures an extraordinary war between lions, water buffalo and an alligator on the African Sahara and the same day half the world sees it! How did this fireball get into the system? Who hurled it into You Tube? And why and how did it spread in a viral fever?

Therein lies the blessing and the curse of the exponent.

Of the fact that as a PR pro you have exponentially more targets for your story who can take it live to hundreds of millions of people within seconds. The curse, if you choose to look at it that way - I advise you don’t - is that you have to find the hidden powerbrokers. The few bloggers and VLOGers and websites and podcasters without brand names but with the street cred in their cyber communities to serve as catalysts, tossing a match on your jet fuel of the idea/story you are planting and igniting the viral blaze. If you are determined to do it the tried and true way, working and reworking the tired old list of once powerful journalists, the exponent is a curse. But if you are willing not only to create a great pitch but to spend more time figuring out who’s behind the curtain, in a tiny home office or a college dorm, can be your spark on the gas jet, you will experience a kind of magic the best of the kingmakers could never provide.

Don’t hide from the storm. Ride it.

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When I was 21 I started a syndicated column, Small Business. The idea for it struck me as I was working for Texaco, a bloated bureaucracy of a place that had long forgotten it was once a small business.

Anyway, I had endless free time on my hands -no one there really worked- so I approached Newsday about the column idea, they liked it and I was off to the races. And surprise, surprise, the column worked and it was, just like that, appearing in dozens of newspapers. In a small way to the world, but an important way to me, I was THE media.
Given my column’s appearance in all of those newspapers every week, PR people circled. They wanted me to quote their clients. To highlight their products. To provide a channel for their philosophies.

And I ignored most of them. Why? Their arrows failed to hit the bull’s eye. In that case, the bulls eye what I was interested in writing about.
In learning about.

Yes, I was a representative of traditional media. But that was the only kind of media there was at the time. And surprise again, it is still the only kind of media there is. Digital journalists are still journalists.
The good ones don’t care about your agenda. They are focused on their own.

So the more things change, the more they stay the same. In digpr, the fundamental rule survives: there are too many arrows and too few bulls’ eyes. The gifted PR people put down their goals for a minute and think of the digital journalists’. What do they want? Each one individually. That’s the key.

When I wrote Small Business, of the 500 PR people who pitched me weekly, about 10 appeared in my column over and over again. The only agenda I ever saw on their parts was to land their arrows where I wanted them. And they did the research to know precisely where that was. And it was straight line to bull’s eye time. And it still is!

Mark Stevens
CEO

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I have to admit I did something a bit sketchy recently (for the first time, I swear….well maybe the second).

I met a woman at a party and the small talk turned to vocations and I (what a cliché) asked her what she does for a living.

Woman At The Party: I’m in PR.

MS: PR? (of course, I knew what she meant).

Woman: Public Relations.

MS: I have heard that term a hundred times but never really know what it means (I told you I was being sketchy, but hey, I have a blog to write).

Woman: Well, to make it simple (this is where she wanted to call me Rain Man), I place my clients’ stories in the media.

MS: stories? The media? Do you mean you spread viral messages on Facebook?

Woman: I have heard of Face Book, but what is it?

MS: It’s THE media.

Ok, so here’s the problem.

Well, I will leave the conversation now. Instead, I will tell you a brief story. A few weeks ago, USA Today ran a story about an issue I have had with the billboard ad giant Clear Channel. A big story. It was a PR dream. But in what would be a surprise to my party lady, the real dream occurred online. On http://www.usatoday.com/. That’s where a national debate ensued about the story. Where people left their real names. Where the passion lived. And the business opportunity thrived.

So, Murdoch is taking over the Wall Street Journal. And he promises he won’t change it. But he has to and he knows it and the family who used to own it knows it. Because it is yesterday’s fish. Dead and smelly and not edible. People cry about change–that it won’t be the same. That’s the point. People always say they don’t want to change, but in the end are better off for it. Civil rights in America, making Hawaii a state and yes, even changing the size of the WSJ –all were bemoaned at the outset, but made better by those changes in the end.

So party ladies and gentlemen, PR pros all, we have to know, we have to admit, what the people read. And what they will read tomorrow. And that’s the essence of digpr. Actually, soon, now, of PR.

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