Why I Ignored a PR Pitch

Posted on March 13, 2013 
Filed Under Media Relations | 5 Comments

Last week I got a pitch from a PR person related to the magazine industry. (I’m also general manager of Min and Folio:, brands that serve that market).

I’m kind of embarrassed to admit this, but the pitch was a followup from one the day before, and that one was a followup from one sent two weeks earlier, which I didn’t respond to.

But there was a reason I ignored those e-mails, and perhaps there’s a lesson for PR professionals in an exploration of that reason.

The e-mail was a press release announcing how a supplier to the magazine industry that serves a narrow and declining niche had deployed a new software solution. Essentially it was a commercial.

The writer was very cordial, even after my first two non-responses. So far so good. I know how difficult it is to not get replies, and how you can sometimes get irritable when people don’t acknowledge your work at all. But there were larger challenges. The pitch was for a “case study.” Then it became a suggestion for a “post.”

Those suggestions for format demonstrated a lack of understanding of the mission of my magazine-industry brands. That is usually a non-starter for a journalist. It’s cognitive dissonance. Apples and oranges. Square peg in a round hole. Folio: is about case studies of how media-company operators run their businesses in new and innovative ways. Min is about the people and the community around consumer-magazine publishing.

Neither brand is remotely likely to do a case study or a blog post on how a vendor rolled out a new software capability. For busy journalists, it’s kind of a non-starter. Even if it was a good story and not a commercial for a supplier, it’s hard for the journalist (remember, the mission is to find innovative publishers and write about what they’re doing) to take that press release and think through how it might morph into a story.

It would have been much more effective—though not necessarily successful—for the PR communicator to pitch me with a case study of one of the vendor’s clients, demonstrating how the use of this new software tool helped the publisher doe one of three things: Generate revenue, reduce costs, or work smarter and faster.

My advice to the writer of the e-mail? Help me understand why the press release is a story for me. Read my brands in advance of your pitch. Understand my mission. Be creative in showing me how it’s a story for my brand.

That’s the clearest and smoothest path to publishing your press release. Otherwise, suggest it as a “vendor briefs” item, which is what it was. Unfortunately, neither Folio: nor Min have vendor briefs columns.

By Tony Silber

Half-Baked Digital Ideas Will Leave Your Customers With a Really Bad Taste

Posted on March 1, 2013 
Filed Under General | 1 Comment

While nearly every brand is online  – be it with a Web site, email marketing programs, social media, apps  – many brands make the mistake of going a bit too far by not going far enough. I’m not talking about chasing the next shiny object. I’m referring to some basic digital communication strategies. Let me share with you a few experiences to illustrate the point that if you can’t do it right, don’t do it at all:

My first short story is about my favorite local hair salon, which created an app to allow customers to schedule appointments without having to call.  Simple enough so I tried it.  Three hours later I received a voice mail message from the receptionist saying I needed to call them back to verify the appointment. If I didn’t call back within 24 hours, the appointment will be voided. That seemed a bit stringent, not to mention antithetical to the app scheduler concept.  Good thing I had a phone.

Switching gears to my dentist,  one of the few people I see often whom I hate to see often, he began offering text messaging to verify your appointment, similar to the hair salon but only on appointments already made. Cool – one less call-back I had to make.  You know where I’m going with this: I got the message on my phone to text “Yes” to confirm the appointment. An hour later the receptionist calls me to confirm my appointment.  I ignored her message since I already texted Yes.  The next day she called again and because I didn’t want to lose out on some deep gum cleaning, I answered. I asked what the point of the text messaging service was if she had to call me anyway. She said she didn’t know from such things.

One last story illustrates the perils of personalized email marketing. Several years ago I sent flowers to an ailing aunt. I used one of the top national flower delivery services and gave them my email address, thinking I’d unsubscribe after the delivery was confirmed.  Too busy making hair and dentist appointments, I forgot to opt out of their email promotions.  So roughly every quarter I receive promotions from them to send my aunt flowers. Let’s say her name is Aunt Marie (not her real name, but used to protect the innocent and the deceased). Aunt Marie passed away almost two years ago. This flower company sends me quarterly emails with the subject line: “Don’t forget Aunt Marie this Mother’s Day,” or “Take $100 off on Your Bouquet to Aunt Marie.” I am at once flabbergasted and fascinated, so I have chosen not to opt out of those emails. In a strange way, it keeps Aunt Marie top of mind. But for this flower company it keeps them bottom of the list of retailers I’d choose for my next delivery.

The next time you plan to roll out a customer-service program, be sure it’s fully baked and ready to be served.

 - Diane Schwartz

 @dianeschwartz

 

 

 

PR at the Bat: What Public Relations Pros Can Learn from Spring Training

Posted on February 21, 2013 
Filed Under Staffing and Management | 3 Comments

Major League Baseball’s Spring Training is in full swing.  It’s the start of a new baseball season, when ballplayers focus on getting in shape and every team, regardless of its payroll, has visions of playing in the World Series eight months from now.

Watching some of the coverage of spring training on ESPN it’s not too much of a stretch to think that—considering the constant newness in marketing communications—PR pros are forever in spring training, awaiting the next pitch, er, digital channel, technology or social network that they need to game.

With that in mind, here are a few PR lessons to gauge from MLB’s spring training:

> Singular focus:  With myriad new media platforms being batted around, not to mention the race for social-media supremacy, it’s easy for PR pros to get wrapped up in what the competition is doing. Sure, rivalries abound in any market but, as with spring training, the overriding goal for PR departments and agencies is to put the together the best possible team. Communications execs need to assemble a squad with players who complement one another; are leery of injuring the brand and know how to pace themselves for what truly is a never-ending season.

> Strength and conditioning:  In an increasingly social-media world, PR departments need to make sure that their social channels stay loose and flexible, but don’t suffer from any flab, or extraneous and/or unnecessary information that can drive eyeballs away from the channel as fast as screaming base hit down the third-base line.

> Deploying utility players: You see it all the time in baseball: A player is called in to pinch-hit or pinch-run or the outfield is reconfigured to adjust to a power hitter.  In a similar vein PR departments now must have their eyes peeled for specialized talent—videographers, analytics gurus, Web designers or media buyers—to bring into the fold and improve the overall prospects for the team.

What do you think? Are the other analogies between PR and baseball that I’m missing?

— Matthew Schwartz: @mpsjouro1 

BlackBerry’s PR Life Lessons

Posted on February 19, 2013 
Filed Under General | 1 Comment

A while back, prior to the launch of the new BlackBerry 10, LPP posted a blog offering three startup PR lessons from BlackBerry 10.

Lesson 1, the blog said, was to know when to pivot. That is, know when and whether the world has passed your solutions and products by, and adapt quickly.

Lesson 2 was to remember that you only launch once, so make that one moment critical.

And Lesson 3 was that perception is everything.

Let’s look at how BlackBerry has fared on those three counts. BlackBerry did not know when to pivot. Back in the day, 12 years ago or so, BlackBerry was the definition of cool in mobile devices. Pre BlackBerry, there were the flip phones, and the ever-smaller cell phones. There was even Palm’s Treo, which with its stylus was hot for a while. Then BlackBerry came along, with a QWERTY keyboard and seamless integration of phone, text and e-mail. For a long time, BlackBerry was THE phone. Then came the iPhone and the game changed. BlackBerry came up with a variety of responses, all of them lame and late. It remains to be seen if the new BlackBerry 10 can get the brand back into the game.

Which leads to Lesson 2. So far so good. Six months ago BlackBerry was a company for whom oblivion and “dead brand” were only a matter of time. I teased co-workers who still had BlackBerrys. But in the few weeks since the launch of the BlackBerry 10, the reviews have been very positive. The New York Times over the course of two days gave the new phone here and here the kinds of reviews that PR communicators would give anything for. Business Insider and others followed suite. The phone also looks cool.

So the Hail Mary pass is in the air. Whether it gets successfully caught in the end zone—and whether the early buzz is enough for skeptical buyers—remains to be seen. But at least the pass is in the air and BlackBerry didn’t get sacked with no time on the clock.

And that leads to the third lesson, about perception. Most former BlackBerry users have pretty decent memories of their phones. It’s not that the BlackBerry was a bad product, it’s just that better solutions came along. So if BlackBerry can leverage that relatively large reservoir of goodwill by offering a next-generation product that’s better than Android and the iPhone, then there’s life for it yet.

What Message Do You Want to Send to the Hispanic Community?

Posted on February 14, 2013 
Filed Under General | Leave a Comment

When Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who delivered the GOP response to President Obama’s State of the Union on Tuesday night, flubbed a reach for a water bottle, he took to social media to manage the PR around the awkward moment.

During the speech, Rubio tried to sneak a sip of water from a bottle off camera, a move that made many observers cringe. But Rubio took it in stride, tweeting a photo of the water bottle after the speech.

And in doing so, Rubio demonstrated that he is social-media savvy. At the same time, perhaps, he reflected a larger trend toward the use of social media throughout the Hispanic community.

According to recent study conducted by NM Incite, 57% of Hispanics have turned to the social space to ask a question about a brand or report complaints/issues with products, compared with 47% of the general population.

What’s more, 19% of Hispanics turn to social care daily, and 30% weekly, the report said. Hispanics are 25% more likely to “prefer” social care to traditional customer service methods than the general population.

There are other indicators that illustrate the growing influence of Hispanics on business and the economy. For example, Hispanic spending power will grow to $1.5 trillion by 2015, or 11% of total U.S. buying power, according to the Selig Center for Economic Growth.

By 2050, Hispanics are expected to make up one-third of the population, or 133 million people, per the U.S. Census Bureau.

These are consumer-trend lines that communication executives ignore at their own peril.

With Hispanics now ensconced in the mainstream, PR pros at both the corporate and agency levels will need to create campaigns that fully embrace the Hispanic community, as opposed to putting Latinos in a neat, little box that doesn’t command constant attention.

Like most every audience, there are some aspects to the Latino community that are more niche than broad.

Still, PR departments can no longer be able put Latino messaging on the margins of a campaign. When it comes to how to deploy effective communications, Hispanics are increasingly at the center of the conversation.

-     Matthew Schwartz: mpsjourno1

Battle Facebook Fatigue with Compelling Content

Posted on February 11, 2013 
Filed Under General | Leave a Comment

While Facebook continues to be the social platform of choice for many brands, a couple of interesting studies released last week could trip an alarm for communications pros.

A Pew study found that the majority of the 1,000-plus people surveyed said they have taken breaks from Facebook at some point, and those breaks can be long: 61% took extended, weeks-long breaks from social network.

Those that took shorter sabbaticals cited these reasons: too busy (21%), lost interest (10%) and a waste of time (10%).

In and of itself, this study shouldn’t prompt brands to move exclusively to Google+. But couple this with other findings released last week: Just 4% of Americans ages 15 to 25 think that a brand page on Facebook is a credible source of information about the product, according to InSites Consulting.

What is their idea of credible brand sources? Consumers’ feedback on online forums and blogs (22%), what they are told by their friends about a brand or product (14%) and the opinion of other brand users (20%).

As these Millennials age, there’s nothing to indicate they’ll head back to Facebook for enlightenment by brands.

What can PR pros do to get a busy, bored or disillusioned public glued to a brand’s Facebook page?  I recently  spoke with content marketing experts for a story to appear in the today’s premium edition of PR News. In a nutshell, their suggestion for deeper engagement across all platforms was the creation of regular, compelling content devoid of marketing-speak that will keep fans coming back.

Building a “content factory” might seem daunting to communicators with limited resources, but as social platforms mature, but it’s a good bet we’ll see more of the same findings with other social platforms down the road.

Sot it’s time to identify your core audience, find out where their interests lie and provide them with content that will spark that interest—again and again.

Follow Scott Van Camp: @svancamp01

There’s Nothing Fishy About The Weather Channel’s #Nemo Hash Tag

Posted on February 10, 2013 
Filed Under General | 1 Comment

The tweet caught my eye: “Don’t support The Weather Channel by calling this storm Nemo.” But I liked that name, and so did thousands of tweeters who tucked #Nemo into their 140-character updates. While not intended as the cute Nemo fish of Disney/Pixar movie fame, the name lent some unintended levity to what was promising to be a historic storm, and #Nemo built community among those dealing with or watching the storm (“We may have found #Nemo,” tweeted one person, “Take that #Nemo!” tweeted another shoveling out of two feet of snow). For The Weather Channel, the flurry of support and displeasure with the #Nemo name was a PR win for the network.

Like thousands of people, I preferred to use Nemo in references to the storm when family and friends were checking in because it’s good to put a name to an event, isn’t it? It makes you feel part of something bigger.  Kudos to The Weather Channel: from a social media communications standpoint, not having a hashtag associated with your big event is like writing a book and not giving it a title.

The Weather Channel giving the storm a name is more credible than, say, Starbucks or Zappo’s floating the #Nemo hashtag. The Weather Channel has some cred when it comes to, um, weather stuff.

And so what that the (government-run) National Weather Service had nothing to do with the storm naming and refused to use it? And so what that the true definition of Nemo for this storm is the Latin equivalent of “nobody” and in Greek means “from the valley”? This was neither a “nobody” snowstorm nor from the valley, but The Weather Channel’s social media department wanted to use Greek names –  and the letter “N” was the next one up.

Bryan Norcross, a meteorologist at The Weather Channel, told Bloomberg BusinessWeek that he and his team created a series of #hashtag names for upcoming storms because “Everything needs a hashtag to get noticed.” The Weather Channel definitely got noticed, and Disney’s “Finding Nemo” might even see a slight spike in DVD sales. I call that #Winning.

- Diane Schwartz

@dianeschwartz

 

 

Blaming it on PR: A Cautionary Tale

Posted on February 8, 2013 
Filed Under General | 1 Comment

“It’s PR’s fault.” This is what a reporter acquaintance for a daily publication recently told me, as she was lamenting the inability to set up a meeting with a top executive at a major trade show coming up. “They didn’t get back to me, and then the head of the company was mad that we didn’t interview him.  PR there sucks.”

There are a few things wrong with this story:

> First, it’s easy for reporters to place the blame on the PR department if an interview falls through or is never even set up.

> Second, the reporter refers to a PR professional as the profession itself: instead of Jane Smith or even “the PR representative,” this reporter sees the PR rep as the lump sum of Unhelpfulness.  PR’s just a department.

> Third, this reporter doesn’t truly understand the role of Public Relations and possibly (don’t tell her I said this!) her role as a reporter. If you really want to interview the head of this organization, find a way to do it. Make your pitch to the PR person compelling enough that he’ll call you back. Give the PR person enough time to set things up, too.

(Turns out, the reporter contacted the company PR department two days before a major event, and most of the company was either heading to the big conference or diverted with trade-show planning.)

Interestingly, the reporter didn’t know what she was going to interview this executive about; she just needed to get the interview. With newsrooms and media departments spread thin, it is increasingly less likely that the beat reporter will be getting specific guidance from her editor about coverage and story ideas. So it’s beholden on the reporters to figure it out, and for Public Relations professionals to be one of their guides.

I asked the reporter is she had a relationship with any of the PR people at this major company.  “Not really. I mean, they send me press releases, but that’s about it.”  Then she remembered they had invited her to product launch parties and have reached out for interview requests with their key execs, but she usually ignored the outreach. Why did she ignore them? You know the answer: because she didn’t need them at the time.

Media Relations is a two-way street.  In the past month, I had the pleasure of editing PR News’ latest Media Training Guidebook, and one of the themes was the difficulty of relationship-building in a too-much-information culture where it’s so much easier to just hide behind social media and email, and not develop substantive relationships.

And, as many of our guidebook contributors advised, if you have a good story to tell, your chances of getting covered by the media goes up exponentially. Maybe the story of my journalist friend and the PR rep would have ended better if it began with a good story. If the company was telling a new story about its brand, the reporter would be interested in learning more and would be more proactive in building a relationship with PR.

But somehow, it all got lost in translation: the reporter didn’t know what she was going to be writing about; the company didn’t have a story to tell and therefore didn’t care that much about getting coverage, and a cloud of indifference marred progress. So, unfortunately one of the stories to come out of this is a tale of media relations gone awry, told by one side.

Those in PR know this is an old story and it must be put to bed.

- Diane Schwartz

@dianeschwartz

20 Annoying Behaviors During Meetings

Posted on February 8, 2013 
Filed Under General | 1 Comment

Meetings are both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, great ideas and solutions abound when you bring people into a room, face to face.  People learn from one another and also get to know their colleagues better.  Ideas, concepts, hot-button issues can get lost in translation via email, phone or memo.  A great communicator who knows how to facilitate the discussion and keep the conversation flowing and productive can make or break a meeting.  Yet even with a leader who comes prepared, a meeting is only as good as the people in the room.  When meeting attendees misbehave, everyone and everything suffers: you are annoyed and feel your time is being wasted and the thing you came to discuss get short shrift.  We are all guilty of imperfect etiquette during a meeting, and in that vein I present to you 20 annoying or improper human behaviors during business meetings. I asked friends, colleagues and communications consultants to contribute their meeting pet peeves. Please add your ideas to this list:

  1. Talking over one another
  2. Interrupting a colleague, apologizing, then continuing to speak
  3. Checking email
  4. Answering email
  5. Whispering to a colleague
  6. Laughing at or chastising a colleague’s comment
  7. Arriving late
  8. Arriving really late
  9. Banging a pen, water bottle or other objects against the table
  10. Napping
  11. Not putting your phone on vibrate
  12. Doing other seemingly more important work on your laptop
  13. Shopping on your laptop
  14. Setting up your Powerpoint presentation in real-time (not beforehand) and troubleshooting while others watch
  15. Not participating
  16. Asking off-topic questions
  17. As the meeting organizer, not having an agenda with clear objectives, and starting late, ending late
  18. Taking copious notes rather than listening and jotting down key takeaways
  19. Texting
  20. Sexting (it must happen somewhere) – plus, it’s sometimes good to end a meeting or blog post on a light note.

What would you add?

- Diane Schwartz

 

 

 

 

Will PR now Become Part of Apple’s Core?

Posted on February 6, 2013 
Filed Under General | 2 Comments

It may not equal Jonas Salk discovering the polio vaccine or Albert Einstein discovering the theory of relativity, but Apple Inc.’s recent discovery of public relations is worth noting.

For years the technology and consumer-products giant was notorious for treating PR as a marginal asset, at best.

With its digital products having cornered the market on “cool,” a stock price hovering in the $440-range and a market capitalization of roughly $415 billion—not to mention the typically glowing articles in the media—the Apple brand has been the closest thing to a deity in the global economy.

Perhaps that deification was a function of Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, who during live events personally introduced Apple’s major products (iPhone, iPad), sprinkling the presentations with his own brand of showmanship.

The media ate it up and subsequently ran delicious stories about Apple. Nevertheless, the company has been a poster child for stingy communications.

It’s been nearly a year and a half since Jobs died, and Apple CEO Tim Cook appears to be taking a slightly different approach to public relations.

Last week the company issued a press release to announce it was upgrading its mobile operating system from iOS 6 to 6.1, according to The Wall Street Journal. “It was the first time Apple has issued an official press release for a non-major mobile software release unrelated to a new device since 2010,” the report said.

The report added that Apple’s PR team has started to ramp up the number of third-party reports about the company that it sends to reporters, such as a study that predicts Apple will be as accepted in the enterprise by 2014 as Microsoft is today.

The report in the Journal, as well as several other media outlets, stressed that Apple’s current PR strategy is likely a response to a spate of negative stories about Apple’s declining stock price, flattening profits and increasing competition.

It would be a disheartening if Apple’s current PR blitz turned out to be just a blip on the screen and the company reverted back to espousing secrecy as a communications strategy.

In a digital (and extremely fluid) era, that would be a mistake. Surely, there is now some young genius banging away at his or her computer keyboard or crafting a new algorithm that will eventually give today’s digital titans a run for their money. Apple needs to more communicative about its future prospects.

Right now Apple can afford to do as it pleases, PR or no PR. But, in the long run, thinking that the media laurels will last forever is a gamble. As it gets further into a post-Jobs era, Apple could do a lot worse than giving its PR crew more of an opportunity to shine.

-  Matthew Schwartz   @mpsjourno1

 

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