Company: National Private Duty Association
Agency: corecubed
Timeframe: October 2004 to September 2005
A successful PR effort doesn't always require scores of hits in high-visibility media. Here's a Case Study that smacked a grand slam with a single placement in a 12,000-
circulation trade journal. Even more unusual is the nature of the hit - it was created by a PR professional pretending to be someone she wasn't, writing about a subject that she
only became familiar with a few months earlier.
Tirza Wibel is not a stranger to writing. She holds a degree in communications and print media from Oregon State University and was on the editorial team at Student
Travels Magazine before moving into advertising and then public relations. Since 2002, she has been at corecubed, a Silverton, OR, agency where she has the title of
account director.
However, Wibel had never written articles relating to nursing and home healthcare. That lack of experience needed to be addressed when she took on a new client in the fall of
2004: The National Private Duty Association (NPDA), a trade organization for private-pay homecare providers.
"I had to totally immerse myself into that industry," recalls Wibel. "I subscribed to every industry publication in order to become an expert in that topic."
Wibel also interviewed members of the NPDA board to get their insight on the private care industry. Within three months of intensive reading and in-depth Q&As, she felt
ready to communicate fluently on the subject.
Listen To The Nurse
As part of her odyssey into the subject, Wibel quickly realized the importance of the nursing industry within NPDA's activities. Many nurses work part-time in home healthcare,
but eventually they have to return to their hospital duties when the critical nursing period is over and the caretaker duties can be handed to non-nurse providers.
"It would be important to educate nurses on the different types of private-paid caregivers," she continues. "Since nurses are a prime source of referrals, we wanted to
encourage the NPDA as their source."
Focusing on a nursing audience, Wibel narrowed her target aim to trade media serving this field. She highlighted Home Healthcare News, a monthly publication with a
12,000 circulation. While the publication did not have the highest quantity of readers within the nursing trade media sector, it had the highest quality of readers for Wibel and
her NPDA client.
"Home Healthcare News encompassed the nurses doing what we wanted," she recalls. "Other nursing publications went into other areas not relating to referring people to
private-paid providers."
Wibel reviewed the Home Healthcare News editorial calendar and discovered the publication took bylined articles from industry professionals. She contacted editor
Carolyn Humphrey in January 2005 for a proposed article to be authored by NPDA officers.
"I sent an e-mail pitch that was very short and right to the point," says Wibel. "I worked with the editor during the course of that month to finalize the topic and idea and
secure her interest."
Ghostwriter In Disguise
The article took the title "Private Pay Home Care Referrals: Issues and Challenges." The author credit was to be shared by Sheila McMackin, the NPDA president, and Allen
Hager, a board member. In reality, Wibel was the ghostwriter on the article.
"They had very little input," recalls Wibel of the "authors" of the article. "I was fluent enough with the topic that I did not need to interview them. They trusted me to do
this and they didn't have a lot of changes."
During February 2005, Wibel submitted a first draft of the article to Humphrey and the two worked together to polish it. But as luck would have it, Humphrey left Home
Healthcare News before the article was finalized and Wibel needed to do a new round of outreach to Humphrey's replacement as editor, Tina Marrelli - who was not aware of the
article and the work going on between Wibel and Humphrey.
Fortunately, Marrelli and Wibel hit it off and the 2,000-word article ran in the September 2005 edition. The article covered four pages and prominently featured the NPDA's
contact data.
While they were authors in name only, McMakin and Hager were proud of "their" writing debut. "They were ecstatic about it," says Wibel, noting that McMakin, in her role as
NPDA president, saw a boost in her visibility that resulted in speaking engagements, interviews with nursing and healthcare media, and even more requests for articles.
As for the organization itself, the single Home Healthcare News placement resulted in a spike of inquiries to the NPDA via telephone and the Net, and it sparked an
increase in NPDA membership for private-paid care agencies from the pre-article 500 to the current number of 675.
Even Wibel enjoyed a bounty - her new relationship with the publication's editor enabled her to place articles in Home Healthcare News on behalf of other clients. Her
writing and placement skills resulted in additional NPDA ghosted articles placed in vertical media; by the end of 2005, there were more than two-dozen NPDA "authored" feature
articles.
And in June 2006, Wibel's Home Healthcare News placement was honored by the Public Relations Society of America with a Bronze Anvil Award in the Feature Stories
category.
CONTACT: Tirza Wibel, [email protected].
Lessons Learned: Giving Up The Ghost
If you find yourself in an assignment that involves ghostwriting (either for an article or a speech), here are some tips to ensure a successful bit of ectoplasmic PR:
*Stay in the voice of the "author." If your writing style veers along the lines of William F. Buckley Jr. and the person you are ghosting for is strictly monosyllabic,
there will be a distinctive piscine aroma from your ghosted pieces if your vocabulary and word play takes precedent. Ghostwriting involves adapting one's style to the particular
personality of the client or senior manager who is going to take credit for the piece. You literally have to talk their talk, so take the time to get a sense of how they
communicate.
*Recognize the potential bounty of a well-placed hit. This week's Case Study had a grand payoff, with speaking engagements and radio interviews for Tirza Wibel's
client. However, make sure your client is ready, willing and able to reap the harvest of your PR work. Some executives would just as soon put their name on an article without
going on the road for speaking engagements or going on the air with interviews. Make sure you have an advance game plan on what your ghostwriting efforts are going to
produce.
*Get a good photo to go with the ghostwritten article. Think visually and make sure that your "author" has a high-quality, high-resolution photograph that can go with
the article. Many publications run author photographs, so make sure your "author" looks like a million bucks. In fact, why not spend a few bucks on a professional photographer?
The results will be infinitely superior to a D.I.Y. snapshot, even on a digital camera.