Dick Grove

PR is not “free advertising” …but the value can be even greater

01.30.12

 

Enough of this nonsense!  Public relations is not and never has been “free advertising.” First and foremost, the term, free advertising, is an oxymoron ironically propagated not only by the non-PR world, but also by ourselves in the profession.  We don’t quickly correct clients’ or acquaintances’ misuse of the term in conversations and in presentations and sometimes use it ourselves for expediency.  And, because of the drive to give monetary value to what most in the PR profession pass off as billable work, comparable advertising rates are often used to determine hourly rates.

But let’s be clear…advertising is not free.  Neither is PR the last I checked.  But PR is not advertising…free or not.  And the confusion can be a real thorn in client relationships.

Advertising, by strict definition, is promotion through paid media, i.e., a commercial message published or broadcast by the media in return for a fee.  True…sometimes this fee may be in the form of barter but usually in the form of cash remuneration.  I often tell clients that if you wish to guarantee to have absolute control over your message, the space allotted, its positioning within the medium, its exact timing and frequency, and even a hyperlink or 800-number included…purchase an ad or commercial.  But here’s where a little tough love comes in for clients…telling them that none of that control comes with PR.  In spite of what we may infer to the contrary, strictly speaking with the final story as produced in and by the media, we have no control over the wording of the message, the length, or when it might appear.  And we definitely can’t control whether there’s a hyperlink or 800-number included.

So where’s the value in PR?  Why not just run ads or commercials?  The answer of course is credibility… the credibility of having an unbiased third party tell your client’s story within an editorial context.  Advertising is a great way to make a splash, raise instant awareness, present the facts as the client wishes them presented…but it suffers from the simple fact that the medium carrying the message is paid to do so.  PR on the other hand is convincing the medium’s discerning and often skeptical editorial journalists/producers that your client’s story or product or message is just about the coolest most interesting thing they’ve heard about all day, all week or all month…and their audience needs this information…and needs it now.  No media payment involved…just thoughtful presentation and salesmanship…and sometimes a little luck. The result is a client mention or story that can compliment or replace those expensive ads with absolute credibility…and sometimes even a hyperlink.  Is this coverage free…no.  Clients pay us for our skill and experience to deliver this third party credibility.  It’s called good PR not “free advertising.”

 

That’s my opinion…what’s yours?

 

Categories: Behind INK, Grove Report, pr marketing, pr news

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Dick Grove

Client Expectations

01.24.12

Never have so many demanded so much for so little.

 In my forty-plus years in the public relations profession I have never ever heard a client not say, “I have the greatest story that has never been told.”  That the media is clamoring to tell it if it is simply revealed to them.  And while this bit of hyperbole might well be true in a few rare circumstances, in most cases it is but wishful thinking on the client’s part. This is not necessarily a bad thing…a little naïve perhaps…but not without its strengths.  Clients need to have passion for their (company, product, service, cause, etc.) and must be able to convey this passion in all their communications…even to their PR firms.  If a client doesn’t feel passionate about what they’re selling, how can we as their official conduit expect to be less so?

However herein often lies the conundrum.  We are supposed to be the PR pros…media experts…not just flacks or mouthpieces for the clients that pay us.  Our job should not be to fall lockstep behind the “company line,” to be “yes-men or women,” nor to “drink the kool-aid” with out questioning the content or purpose.  Our job should not be to simply rephrase this “story” into a legally approved press release or two, sent over the wire…or worse yet, emailed to a list of influential editors or bloggers.  Our job, if we’re the professionals we profess to be, is to listen to what the client is saying, analyze it against credible facts and even speculative rumor, and judiciously review it as both timely and truly newsworthy within the real media world the client wishes to carry its message.  But most importantly of all…be honest with the client when their all-important story…the very reason you as the PR person has been hired…falls short of being “the greatest story never been told…” as it surely will.

What then?  If you’re in a traditional PR firm, this is when you get to really earn those big dollars you’re charging that client by actually demonstrating that you can work with the client to first get them to understand what the media believes is newsworthy and then translate that understanding into a workable strategy that respects the media’s needs, processes, and deadlines.  If you successfully accomplish this, the result can and should be (no guarantees here…) real media coverage for your client…and of course a few more hours to bill.

If you’re a pay-for-performance PR firm like us, you have no choice but to be completely honest and up-front with clients in telling them how to get maximum press coverage, “it’s not just what you think of yourself or your products, etc., but whether it’s timely and newsworthy…period.” Passion is great but hyperbole doesn’t gain traction or get published…and if it doesn’t get published, we don’t get paid.

Managing client expectations isn’t taught in PR schools or covered in most training programs, but it’s vital if you’re going to be a real PR pro.  And, being honest with an excited and passionate new client about the process of news coverage and what it really takes to get it isn’t always easy and can put your relationship at risk.  But far better than the “kool-aid” alternative.

That’s my opinion…what’s yours?

Categories: Behind INK, Grove Report, pr marketing, pr news

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Dick Grove

Starting the New Year Off Right…Listening to your clients.

01.15.12

I'm all ears, literally

  Sometimes they are right…sometimes not.

With my apologizes to Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein… “Clients….say the word and it’s almost like praying….”

Ok, ok…so relating clients to the beautiful soliloquy in West Side Story is a stretch; but most of us in the PR business have both prayed for more clients…and also prayed to have them leave us alone.  Or at the very least we’ve secretly admonished them for a level of ridiculous expectations or for “not getting it, i.e., understanding the process.”

This last week for example, I had a client suggesting a new strategy involving serendipitously pitching a couple of key newspaper columnists about the weaknesses of a competitor while keeping the client’s involvement in the scheme completely anonymous.  Fortunately, it didn’t take much of a counter argument to demonstrate the weakness and the dangers of such a strategy.  I also had a new, different client hand me a list of all the reporters, columnists, and bloggers that should be “blackballed” from receiving any communications regarding this client. It seems these same journalists had all produced what the client thought of as “negative” stories over the last year and therefore weren’t to be trusted in the future.  Again fortunately, it only took a reasoned explanation of why it’s a better strategy to gain the good favor of skeptical journalists with new credible information than attempt to “punish” them by ignoring their potential influence.  Clients, it seems, do listen sometimes to reason and experience.

On the other side of the coin, it’s also a good idea to actually listen to the client…there might be method in their madness.  In another example, I recently thought it initially foolish to not take maximum advantage of a client CEO traveling in the UK for a valuable booking on CNBC.  The company is a global enterprise and listed on the London Exchange and had recently made an acquisition “over there.” It seemed to be a perfect fit for quick interview for the CEO traveling through the UK.  Our CNBC contact was due to be reassigned shortly and we wanted to take advantage of the fortuitous timing. We pushed particularly hard from the bottom up…the marketing/PR folks…until we received a push back from the top…the CEO. It seems that there are some very important financial matters in the process of being restructured that might have put the CEO in an awkward position of “non-committal” should they have been raised by a good, probing reporter.  Better to let these matters play out and pass on the interview.  We readily agreed and decided to listen more, talk less.

PR is not an easy business.  If we’re not complaining about our clients we’re complaining about the media. And if we’re not complaining about our clients or the media, we’re complaining that we don’t have enough of either…or we’re not being paid enough to deal with both of them.  But as we begin 2012, consider the alternative (it’s not pretty) and stay positive.

“Something’s coming…I can feel it…” Again my apologizes to Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein.

Categories: Grove Report, pr marketing, Social Media Marketing

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Dick Grove

Starting the New Year Off Right…

01.08.12

Some PR resolutions worth keeping.

 Two weeks into the new year…everyone holding to those New Year Resolutions?  Have you signed up at the gym…put down that final cigarette…made peace with the obnoxious neighbor…cut those credit cards into tiny pieces?  Right!   I’ve got a suggestion…try concentrating on resolutions that you actually might be able to keep and do you some professional good at the same time.  I’m going to focus my next few blog posts on some of these professional resolutions both for my own improvement…and maybe a reader or two.

First up, how about committing to making your media pitches more effective by actually listening and learning from those that you’re pitching?  A novel idea perhaps, and not terribly sexy or as healthy as stopping smoking but worth a try.  Perhaps a good place to begin would be some helpful hints I recently received from an executive producer and friend at a local television station as to how PR types could increase the likelihood of broadcast coverage…

1. Lead with the local angle…if there isn’t one, we’re probably not interested.

2. Make the pitch visual…both in its description and in how it can be presented.

3. If you do send out information to newsrooms, don’t use any material that has “media placement” on it.  Newsrooms don’t like to be “used” to get companies on TV.  

4.  If you think you’ve got a “story” – don’t “lead” with the service/product/company in the pitch.  As a news producer, I delete “commercials” from my email, before even getting to the content of the email.  Lead with the “news” part of what you’re pitching.  Perhaps it is convenience around the holidays … safer eating around the holidays … or even, “give the gift of convenience and health this holiday season – we’ll show you how, etc.”

5.  Don’t ever send media something where they have to do a lot of reading.  Media folk get tons of stuff and it only gets a cursory glance – we need it in small chunks because we make very quick decisions about what to cover, and won’t read long releases.

Next up…Listening to your clients.  Sometimes they are right.

 

Categories: Behind INK, Grove Report, pr marketing, pr news

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Dick Grove

Starting the New Year Off Like a Four-Year Old

01.02.12

It’s January first, two-thousand and twelve.  It’s once again the annual time of setting lofty goals for ourselves and our clients that morph all too quickly into unrealistic expectations brought to earth by the realities of the world we actually live in and not the world we wish we lived in.  To compound the difficulty of holding to our best intentions, it’s a presidential election year where not only do the politicians sink to the lowest common denomination, but the media becomes the carrier as well as the instigator of their messaging.  Not pretty.

However it took a visit to my grandson’s pre-school to give me an idea of how we might reset this cynicism and yes, even be optimistic that 2012 is going to be different.  There was a set of “Class Rules” pinned to the classroom wall that struck me as so basic in their simplicity and so targeted in their scope as to be meaningful to all of us as we open yet another year of opportunity to get it right.

 

All well and good, you say, if you’re four years old and don’t have to deal with the modern challenges of a soured economy, internal bureaucracies, response-challenged clients, and a thinned media short on news instincts and time but long on self-preservation…and that’s not even counting our own numerous short comings.  Really?  Not worth it? I know without much imagination these simple rules could be applied to those running for office as well those firmly entrenched in our government institutions.  But it shouldn’t take much creativity to see how “using nice words…or patiently waiting our turn…or at least cutting back on a harmless fib or two (let alone being completely disingenuous) might not greatly improve our daily business and personal lives.  And who knows, such an application might even improve cooperation and profitability.  If these same rules were posting on your office wall…(ok, “running in the class” may not be a problem given the shape of all of us except for the interns)…would they, could they be applied effectively with some imagination? Is it worth it to try to behave as well as we expect a four-year old to?….good question.

That’s my opinion…what’s yours?

Categories: Grove Report

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