What PR Can Learn from the Tea Party

Contributed by Beth Monaghan

There is a lot we can learn from the Tea Party outside of election politics, but I will come back to this in a few paragraphs. A few months ago, I was honored when Business Insider asked me contribute posts from  blog. A number of my posts have been syndicated now and one thing is true for all of them – my headlines always get changed. I don’t mind because as a PR person, I appreciate the value of a good headline. Inevitably, theirs are a bit more sensational and I believe that they have helped me get more readers than I would have otherwise. I’ll give you one example:

·       Mine: “Make Hay While the Sun Shines”

·       Business Insider’s: “10 Lessons I’ve Learned Since Quitting My Paying Job”

I’ve written here before on the topic of creative and compelling headlines and believe strongly in their value. As Twitter becomes a veritable news aggregator for many of us, the importance of headlines has never been greater. Recently, @MrMediaTraining (Brad Phillips of Phillips Media Relations) tweeted this: “Why You Should Never Return a Reporter's Call By His/Her Deadline.” I immediately clicked on it because it sounded like bad advice. However, after reading the post I learned that he was advocating for spokespeople to call reporters back well before their deadlines so that they could play a part in shaping the story. Great advice and great headline – it worked.

This got me thinking about the nature of news consumption. In an age of 140 characters, smartphones, iPads and RSS feeds, have headlines begun to skew our perspectives on what is news? And on what is important and pervasive? You might read 100 headlines for every two the three full-length articles.

During this past mid-term election, I could not get away from coverage about the Tea Party (no one could), but was the news coverage proportionate to the party’s prominence? I cannot imagine it was. In a November 3 article, Brian Stelter of The New York Times wrote, “The rapid rise of the Tea Party also gave networks an overarching theme for election night coverage. Television oftentimes favors colorful characters over substantive issues, and thanks in no small part to the conservative movement, a new cast filled TV screens and Web sites on Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning.”

The Tea Party just understood a fundamental PR principle – controversy breeds interest. This is an important lesson for companies looking to raise their visibility. To rise above the din, you must say something contrarian, controversial or extraordinarily interesting. Controversy is certainly not the proper path for every company, but an exercise in identifying the things that make you different in ways that actually matter is critical if you want your target audiences to pay attention.

Conversation with Scott Kirsner, Part 2: Is the press release dead?

Contributed by Beth Monaghan

In part two of my series following a conversation with Scott Kirsner, the Innovation Economy columnist and blogger for the Boston Globe and Ross Levanto, SVP at Schwartz Communications, we talk about the future of the press release. Last week Ross posted a piece of that conversation about targeting your audience, which I encourage you to read. 

The topic of the fate of the press release comes up often, most frequently from those who have embraced social media and view it as a relic from the past. Many of these entrepreneurs, CEOs and marketers are looking to use their blogs as the mouthpiece for their news.

Scott said that he comes across younger, more entrepreneurial companies that think they are old school. He said, “They’ll announce interesting things on their blogs and via Twitter, which is great because you feel like that stuff is coming off the CEO’s cuff, but I do wonder about breaking news via your blog or Twitter feed that you may have been able to get the Globe, the Economist or Wall Street Journal to write about.”

The latter point is a critical one. If you are Twitter or Facebook, yes, you can announce news on your blog and everyone will see it. But if you are a startup, it is not enough. If you build it, they might not necessarily come until you convince them it will be worthwhile. You should absolutely use Twitter, your blog and other social outlets to push out your news, but they should be part of a broader strategy to disseminate it to the right audiences through the right channels. While we in the technology community live and breath social media, not all of your customers (business or consumer) do.

So where does that leave the press release? It’s never been more important and should be used as one of a number of tools for a news announcement. Consider that:

·       Many bloggers simply repackage press releases verbatim, which means that your message is getting out there in its truest form. This trend is on the rise as bloggers are under pressure to post news within minutes of it breaking.

·       By issuing press release over wire services like PR Newswire, BusinessWire or MarketWire you are fueling SEO for your site, if you select your key words properly in your headlines.

·       The press release remains an important tool for reporters at top tier outlets who need to evaluate the newsworthiness of a topic before they decide to write a story. This negotiating process almost always happens before the news has been published because it ensures that the news is not stale. Posting it on your blog instantly makes it old news.

As far as the future of the press release and breaking news via social media, this exchange between Ross and Scott was particularly informative:

·       Ross: Do you think we’re moving toward some sort of reality where breaking news is aggregated from a mess of Twitter feeds looking for specific tags and then your roles is to identify trends and look at the bigger picture?

·       Scott: Maybe, but there is still a role for good old-fashioned reporting. We’re here at the Charles Hotel and virtually every time I have breakfast here, there’s some bit of news I get by chatting with someone I run into. Since General Catalyst is here, I just got a tip a week or two ago that they are moving some people out to Palo Alto and opening and office. That wasn’t something that came through a Twitter feed.

My takeaway? Social media provides an amazing complement to public relations initiatives. While we should certainly adapt traditional practices (as we’ve seen with emergence of the “social media press release”), they still serve an important purpose for communicating news to reporters like Scott, and to bloggers who use them as fodder for their own posts.

Listen to audio from this portion of the conversation here (thanks to Scott Montminy for the editing): 



Scott Kirsner also posted the entire audio file from our chat here: http://innoeco.com/MP3/PRchat.mp3

How to Get the Attention of Broadcast Producers – A Lesson from a Seal Proposal

Contributed by Ericka Stachura

I was watching the local news yesterday and saw a bizarre story that made me think 1) it must have been a really slow news day in Boston and 2) what is it about this story that made it worthy of two minutes of TV coverage? The segment featured a couple who got engaged at the New England Aquarium with the help of a ring-bearing seal. We are in the business of pitching hard news to TV producers on a regular basis so when a fluff piece shows up, it serves as a good reminder of what ultimately gets the attention of the assignment desks. After watching the segment back a few times, here is my best guess at how this story made it into the lineup.

• The Cute Factor. Let’s face it – seals are cute. Even if the news producer doesn’t think so, I am willing to bet about 90 percent of their viewers think seals are cute and will watch any segment that shows their fuzzy little faces. Add a love story about a camera-friendly couple getting engaged and you just upped the cute factor by about a hundred.

• Visuals. The story had video from the actual engagement – from the seal swimming over with the (dummy) ring… to the guy on bended knee… to the bride-to-be’s reaction. The story would not have worked without it. The station then sent a camera to the couple’s home for an interview about what happened to round out the story and give the viewer the inside scoop.

• Timeliness. Sure the couple became engaged earlier that day, but many more couples will be getting engaged over the holiday season. This adds newsworthiness to the topic of engagements/weddings and makes the segment more relatable to viewers.

• Luck? Even the best story pitches need a little bit of luck. If a camera wasn’t available to go interview the couple that afternoon, the story probably never would have happened. If it wasn’t a slow news day, the camera would not have been available. A slow news day is a rare event and any PR person that gets one on a day he or she is pitching news is lucky.

So what does this mean for businesses trying to get in front of the TV cameras? While you can’t always control what other news you are competing with, you can give yourself a leg up by doing your due diligence and thinking like a producer. Here are some do’s and don’ts to consider when pitching the assignment desks:

• Don’t hold an event on the same day a bigger news event is scheduled (e.g. if you are a tech company, don’t make an announcement on the same day the newest iPhone is hitting shelves). Exception – if your news ties into the bigger news event and can add value to the story, piggy-backing on the bigger story may work.

• Do assess the cute or cool factor of your story. Put yourself in the viewers’ shoes and imagine what you’d say after seeing the segment. If it doesn’t make an impression on you, the story isn’t there yet.

• Don’t expect to get TV coverage without a great visual story. Think about what assets you have to offer a producer in terms of footage and tell them when you pitch. If your visuals can’t compete with a ring-bearing seal, keep digging!

A cute headline never hurts for TV either. So, what do you think “SEALed the Deal” for this story?

Does Google have Bing envy?

So today when I went to go do my usual Google search, I was greeted with an ugly background (ugly, IMHO anyway) on the Google homepage. Google gave me the option of changing the background but all I could think is "I want my old Google page back." Apparently I was not alone. Twitter and Google were trending with queries as to why Google would do this and how do you change it back. Like me, many people were thinking "WHY is Google copying Bing"? Is it possible that Google has such deep Bing envy that they would actually copy the search engine latecomer?

Anyway, Google listened and the old white, minimalist Google homepage to which we have all grown accustom is back. But the PR lesson remains: Copying your would-be competitors makes you look nervous and desperate -- and, worst of all, foolish.

iPhone 4G leak: honest mistake or PR stunt? *Update

*Update: It appears that this strange set of circumstances was not an orchestrated PR move after all. This story is definitely far from over!

The big story this week is undoubtedly the leak of the iPhone 4G, which was reported on Monday by Gizmodo. As the story goes, an Apple software engineer brought an iPhone 4G prototype into a bar disguised in a case to appear like a regular old iPhone 3G (sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, no?). The engineer, who was celebrating his birthday, had a bit too much to drink and left the phone at the bar without realizing it. This is where things get weird. The person that came upon the phone somehow noticed something unusual about it and sold the phone to Nick Denton, CEO of Gawker Media, parent company of tech blog Gizmodo. Denton, who had previously put up an offer of $100,000 for an advance look at the iPad, apparently paid just $5,000 for this iPhone 4G prototype.

What are the odds?

The real story here is how Gizmodo came to possess this next generation iPhone in the first place. Apple is notorious for almost conspiratorial levels of secrecy around new product launches, and has not even confirmed the existence of an iPhone 4G model despite media musings around the phone’s development. So it is more than just a small mix-up when one of their engineers drunkenly leaves a carefully disguised test model of the phone in a bar. Certainly, this could be a particularly unfortunate case of carelessness on the part of a young engineer whose days at Apple could now be numbered. But it could also be that the phone was leaked by Apple intentionally to drum up some major publicity and gauge consumer reactions to the new release.

As more details emerge, it is beginning to look more and more that the leak was a true result of human error, and not a sly move on the part of Apple’s PR machine. Gizmodo reportedly received a letter from Apple attorneys requesting the immediate return of the phone, and Gizmodo has complied. With this strange tale at its apparent end, there is one thing that is clear. Whether or not the leak was intentional, this entire saga has left Apple fans clamoring for more details about the phone’s release, and has only served to enhance the cloak and dagger mystique that the marketing geniuses at Apple have cultivated for so long. And I think we all know that you can’t buy that kind of publicity.