Medical IT vendor Emmi Solutions enlisted Ritz Communications to help gain positive media exposure for the brand (read related story). The PR agency implemented a strategy of using client champions as authors, which hinged on finding eager candidates with appropriate credentials for the audience they hoped to reach. Ritz’s Patty Keiler shares specific ways they approached author candidates:

• Author comes first. “ It can’t be Emmi, Emmi, Emmi; we need, we need, we need,” says Keiler. “It has to be helping everyone to understand what each person can bring to the table and then glean from it.”

• Get their buy-in early. “We couldn’t come to [potential authors] saying, ‘we wrote an article that we would like to put your name on and place in this publication.’ It’s really talking to them about what kind of story they would like to write. What kind of story would they like to tell? Where would they like to see it placed? And, working with them from the very beginning of the process,” Keiler says.

• Find your right voice. “A key lesson we learned was a reminder that the company executive often isn’t the right person to tell the company’s story,” says Keiler. “It can be much stronger coming from someone else.”

• Leverage PR departments. “ We’re starting to target more consumer media and working with hospital PR departments. And we’ve learned to go in there with the attitude, ‘How can we work together to share this story?’ We gain their support rather than trying to drive it all ourselves,” Keiler says.

Read the related case study for more information on this campaign: "Healthcare Communications Co. Reaches Media Through Client-produced Articles."