Media Relations

Money can’t buy you love and it can’t buy you passionate employees, but it surely can buy you more resources. When posed with the question of “What would you do with a 15% increase in… Continued

Properly pitching journalists is a subtle art, especially in our rapidly changing media landscape. So how can communicators use these shifts to their advantage in their pitching strategy, instead of getting lost in the shuffle? Here are some tactics top communicators use to make sure journalists not only see their pitches, but want to write about their brands’ stories.

Communicators pointed to four major tactics that they have successfully implemented to earn trust, get their more difficult clients in the press, open their minds to spend, and change their opinions of the value that PR can bring to business.

On the surface, this effort to give Senator Warren’s claims factual support seemed like an artfully executed campaign. Later that day, though, it became clear that the DNA test had done more harm than good. Senator Warren’s gaffe amounts to lessons learned for communicators about timing, why mixing heritage into your outreach strategies can be a dangerous game, and how to take cultural stand without angering any constituency of people.

The idea that most Americans have lost the ability to speak civilly to each other in these uncertain times may not be Robert Reich’s alone, but he offered an imperative specific to the 2,500+ communicators at the international PRSA confab—in an age when people don’t know how to talk to each other, or how to listen, it’s communications pros who must act as stewards and promoters of civility. “You are people who set the tone very much for what we and how we communicate,” Reich says. “And there is now a vitriol, and anger in the system. We are not communicating.”

When people are driven to engage with each other on social media seeking community and consensus about healthcare issues, organizations need to make sure they are part of that engagement. As head of pharma health policy region Americas for Bayer AG Communications and Public Affairs, Dominick Kennerson engages in corporate diplomacy and has been key in adding gravitas to the company’s digital communication capacity. In this Q&A, he shares some of the biggest challenges to stakeholder engagement in the healthcare industry—and a few solutions Bayer is applying.

A good endorsement from the FDA could actually turn out to be bad PR for Apple, a company known to offer its newest proprietary tech at premium prices, as people who need the tech might not be able to afford it. The issue of life-saving resources that are unaffordable to many recalls several recent instances when pharmaceutical companies have made headlines for raising the price of their medications to such exorbitant numbers that those without insurance deemed the gouging to be a death sentence.

Colleen Young knows a thing or two about online patient communities. As online community director for Mayo Clinic, she is internationally known for building patient communities that thrive. At Mayo Clinic Connect, Young has orchestrated a virtual community connecting patients to each other and to Mayo Clinic medical expertise. Young will be participating in a session at the upcoming Healthcare Social Media Summit Oct. 23 in Baltimore. She previewed her panel in this recent Q&A.

We know change is difficult. And there are few professions where change has disrupted things more than journalism. A PR News study looks at how communicators have and have not changed their approach to pitching journalists. A Muck Rack/Zeno Group study examines how journalists have altered their approach to what they do each day.

It’s great when you’ve got a client who’s a leader in their market or whose product or service is a headline-grabber or springboard for social sharing. But what do you do with a smaller client who’s not a natural newsmaker and for whom PR may be at best, foreign and at worst, a distasteful chore?