2012 – Top Ten Reasons to Embrace Honesty in PR and Pitching

Over the course of my career, I’ve met a lot of charlatans. You know the type, entrepreneurs or big company marketing types that spout numbers and stats over breakfast, claim market leadership over lunch and are deep into revolutionizing industries by the time last call is rung as they tell their story one final time over a final dirty martini at 2 am. And while I admire their enthusiasm, support their idealism and in general, am as easily charmed by them as are most others, I typically don’t believe a word they say.

So what got me started on this topic? I read a really interesting blog post today on ReadWriteWeb by Rieva Lesonski called “How to Get Bloggers to Write about Your Startup: Insiders Advice.” She provides solid advice about relevance, using supporting stats, presenting your pitching using lists (see – I’ve embraced that recommendation in this post!) and ensuring you are reaching out to people that care about your industry. I thought, however, that the blog post failed to mention a key element that is probably more important today than ever before: honesty.  

There are two reasons why honesty is so critical in today’s 24/7 news cycle: first is that honesty equates to authenticity, and is a critical element for building long-term relationships; and as Rieva points out, the Internet’s insatiable appetite for news and information creates the ability for bloggers, journalists and media organizations to fact check stats and figures easier than ever before. Many times, however, given the rapid pace of today’s news cycle, fact checking has been sacrificed on the altar of speed and unique page views, so the reporters want and need to trust you. The good news is that reporters and bloggers are rational, inquisitive people that are often skeptical in nature, so they can tell when someone is blowing too much smoke with no evidence of a fire. But they are really busy, their organizations are understaffed, and they are required to cover multiple beats that push the limits of what they can possibly have deep, first-hand knowledge of in all the markets they cover.

To be clear, honesty is what keeps the reporter engaged. Sure, numbers to back up your honesty is great, as is the ability to tie your truth into market trends, but ultimately it comes down to a reporter’s willingness to believe what you tell them and then convince their readers that they haven’t been duped.

So to stay true to my headline, my Top Ten Reasons to Embrace Honesty in PR and Pitching:

10.   Relationships are built on trust

9.       The time and intelligence of the blogger/reporter needs to be respected

8.       Pinocchio couldn’t pull it off and neither can you

7.       Integrity is something that is very hard to get back

6.       There is always someone out there waiting to call you out

5.       Long-term planning (for your company or your career) cannot be based on hype

4.       No one likes to have their pants on fire

3.       Spin is fine, spinning a web is not

2.       Authenticity is memorable

1.       Truth will always win out

It’s never easy to play the role of bad cop to clients when the excitement they are trying to generate is based a little too much on fiction and not enough on fact. I have had to counsel clients in the past that if they over reach in their messaging, they will permanently damage their reputations (and ability to succeed) and ours. As you can imagine, that doesn’t always engender my firm, or me, to certain clients. But, as I said above, the truth will always win out, and authenticity and honesty will always get you further than fiction. I would rather be a few-client, honest broker than a have a portfolio of companies that prefer fiction to fact.

2012 – Reaffirming the P in Public Relations

A story recently ran in Wired by Steve Levy about Narrative Science, a Chicago-based company that has invented a computer algorithm that can write news stories. On the phone the other day, I was talking with a leading editor from one of IT’s biggest magazines, and he told me that one of the companies he covers no longer reaches out to reporters about news. They simply post their news to their company’s blog sites and expect reporters to read them and then contact them with questions. 

Maybe in the rush to capture SEO dominance, these approaches provide some limited value, but I fail tosee how they help establish real relationships with the media or with readers. Stories written by robots can’t have the flair, opinion or color that a real person would include. Just look at the latest piece from your favorite columnist or reporter to prove it’s true.  And I get that some items that a company might consider news will hold zero interest for reporters so the “news” is written in a story format and published as companies look to connect directly with readers. But all news?

As a person that spends a lot of time with reporters and analysts, and with the companies that want to help reach customers through their stories, I find that both have interesting viewpoints that make for a good read. Without the experience, opinions, impressions of both, you’re only getting one side of the story.

What I think is getting lost in today’s SEO-driven media market is the “personal” or “professional” aspect in PR – the “other P” so to speak. The inherent value in PR is having a personal relationship (the “R”) with reporters and execs that enable the PR person, as the bridge, to help both entities get what they want – a meaningful story about a company/product/person/trend that a magazine’s readers want to read. Those relationships -- forged over a long period of time and grown through trust -- can never be reproduced by any machine or replaced by a website blog post.

2012 – Pause and Take a Breath

In a 365 day, 24/7 news cycle, it’s hard to take a breath these days. Add to this frenzy the fast news cycles of online media and the opinion-driven style of today’s blogs and twitter feeds, it’s sometimes difficult to understand when enough is enough. PR teams feel the pressure to be a part of every story, on every news outlet and have teams ready to respond to any negative tweet or post. While I am not suggesting that you don’t have to be vigilant to protect your company’s
brand and value, I am suggesting that we are sometimes victims of our own need
to be relevant.

This is why I’m recommending that when things happen, or fail to happen, it’s always best to pause, take a breath and evaluate what, if any, response or action is needed. There
are absolutely times when a response is warranted but many times, the crisis identified
is not a true crisis. It might be inconvenient, unfortunate or even embarrassing for a company or individual but it does not warrant the revving up of the corporate spin cycle. It is best to plan for the best and worst case scenarios, but a good PR company will have a standard plan in place that just needs to be followed with the pertinent details that are available.

There was a recent story in NC about the sitting Governor deciding not to run again. She didn’t give any reasons, just told reporters that she wasn’t going to seek re-election. The media had a field day examining why she wasn’t going to run. When it seemed like the story was winding down, one of the news outlets decided to interview local PR people to get their reaction to her decision to not explain her reasons. Every single one of them said she was in the wrong and that she should have explained her reasons to the media, that the public had a right to know and they would have counseled her to be more forthcoming. When I read those stories, my thought was “of course that’s what they would say, it’s their job to create news cycles.” And that’s just what they did, created an unnecessary news cycle about something they weren’t personally involved in on a subject that they had no insight into. The PR people were creating the news cycle for
their own benefit, not because they were adding any new information to the story.

News cycles like this spin up every day. It’s inevitable when the “always on” news media and a culture that believes we have a right to know everything about everyone that we find mildly interesting. We don’t and it’s important for PR people, and the companies they represent, to understand and appreciate this fact.

While I’m not advocating that companies adopt a “no comment” policy when something negative occurs, I am suggesting that they pause and think before they react and engage. The good thing about the current news cycle is that if you blink, the media is off chasing the next story, about the next issue or trend or dastardly act by someone else.

2012 – Fast Forward to the End

A friend of mine, Neil Rock (www.neilrockgroup.com) is a fantastic motivational speaker whose primary message is based on the simple principal that you have to visualize your goals, write them down and then physically post them somewhere visible so they can remind you every day of what you hope to accomplish.

As we start the 2012 planning process, it’s important to remember what the goal is for the year and put programs in place that make it accomplishable. The goal can be operational (demonstrate the value of a professional services organization), geographical (show relevance of products in new markets), financial (articulate revenue growth, vertical market relevance and/or channel development), leadership (ensure the market understands how the company is impacting the industry), or any one of a dozen other legitimate goals that a company, and its marketing department, might develop.

Many times, these goals are set within a company, shared internally and never spoken of again until December rolls around and executives want to see how the company performed against these goals.  It’s easy to get caught up in the next news release, trade show, conference or webinar and forget that all of these items should be vehicles to help your company achieve one or more of its objectives. 

For PR, the goals could be as simple as cultivating 10 new “champions” within the press and analyst community. To us, a champion is a press or analyst that follows the company regularly and understands what it’s trying to achieve and, at some level, believes your company will be able to achieve these goals. They understand how all the pieces of your company fit together and how each part plays a role in your company’s ability to win. These are reporters and analysts that don’t just write about your company when you have announcements, but also include you in stories they create about market trends and they view your company as an influencer in the industry.

Let’s take a look at that goal and break down how it can be achieved.

·         Identify 15 press/analysts that you’d like to convert from passive to active followers of your company.

·         Create a matrix of their recent coverage to understand what they cover specifically and how they treat information about your type of products and/or services within their coverage.

·         Invite them for a deep dive or “lunch and learn” where they get access to company executives (CEO, CTO, COO) that normally aren’t part of your briefing team.

·         Create pitches that are relevant to what they are writing about, not just their beat.

·         When pitching or briefing, reference recent articles to show that you’re paying attention to their work.

·         Create a six month story arch that gives them unique access into how your company thinks and how it plans to win in the marketplace, and then update them as you achieve these metrics.

·         Offer to become a technical resource on issues they are covering, even if this potentially means interviews conducted don’t result in immediate coverage.

·         Check in with them regularly to ask what they are working on and make suggestions about topics they haven’t covered yet that apply to their beat.

When identifying the 15 prospects, you’ll need to understand which companies they are currently covering and if they have any existing biases or favorites among your competitors. If they do, go ahead and include them, but realize this is a harder objective to achieve but often much more rewarding.

At the end of 2012, review how this program went and make adjustments with certain press/analysts that you weren’t able to cultivate. If some just aren’t interested, then pick others that you can begin to work with during the following six months.

It’s important to remember that at the core of any press or analyst relationship is trust. That they trust you to give them honest, relevant information and that you’re willing to help them do their jobs more effectively and efficiently. Break that trust and you can lose these relationships forever.

No matter what category your 2012 goals lie in, developing a step-by-step plan to actually achieve them is critical. Successful PR programs require constant attention – once you’ve visualized where you want to be, remember to actively revisit and evolve the track you’ve put in place to get there and you’ll be closing a successful 2012 before you know it.

What's the Plan, Stan?

As you start your 2012 planning, the first thing most companies do is map out what they want to announce and when.  There are road map considerations, revenue to recognize and industry trade shows to consider as decisions are made and schedules finalized.  These product and feature announcements are the backbone of most company’s announcement strategy for the year.  Add in a few customer announcements and a partner or two and companies think they have a well-rounded, complete plan for the New Year.

But do they really?  Using the model above, the company is setting out to talk about what they make and who they sell to.  That’s clearly important, but is it enough?  That depends on what the company wants to be over the next 12 – 18 months.  If they want to only be a product or technology company, than this is probably an okay strategy to leverage.

If the company wants to be seen as more than just a collection of products and more as a strategic asset to their customers, a viable partner to other vendors and a leader in their industry, then that plan isn’t strong enough to help them achieve these goals.

The issue is that companies are comprised of more than the products they make or the technologies they leverage.  To grow, they need to demonstrate they are good partners and have strong prospects for growth over time.  Companies need to showcase how their products fit into over market trends and provide comment on how their team is the right one to make thing happen.  Companies need to demonstrate the value it presents (as a company and with their products) as part of a wider industry solution and articulate their long-term strategy for market expansion.  Successful companies are a combination of all these things.  As PR people, it’s our job to help them find ways to tell these stories.

The easy answer is to use press releases.  This can be particularly effective when you weave elements of multiple threads into the fabric of the press release story.  Blending these threads into quotes for partners, company executives and analysts is a good way to go as it provides the human context to explain why a company is doing something.

The goal is to move beyond the press release and into the interview itself.  This is where a strong media trainer can help.  It’s one thing to approve a press release quote when reading it but another to practice it.  It’s easy for a spokesperson to fall back into the trap of discussing product features and “speeds and feeds” during an interview and forget to put these product attributes into context.  While your company is proud of what its accomplished, without context the importance of your announcement can be lost or simply relegated to a three paragraph story that simply regurgitates the facts.  The challenge for PR people is to help their spokespeople understand the proper context by announcement, news outlet and reporter.  More about this in the next blog.

2012 – The Year of Relevance

We’ve survived. The world continues to turn, businesses still exist and despite what some folks would like us to believe, the sun will come up tomorrow. So given that we’ll have a tomorrow to look forward to, I thought a look ahead to 2012 would be relevant.

But to look ahead, we have to examine what led us, and our companies to survive and in some instances thrive, is a very difficult market environment. From my perspective, that key ingredient was relevance.  Companies that did well managed to make whatever service or product they developed relevant to their target market. They tapped into the underlying value that their target customer had and made sure these folks understood how the product/service addressed that value.

This isn’t as easy as it seems.  Most companies tend to gaze toward their own navel when trying to express their products/services value and relevance. They try to communicate what they have done and expect the market to understand why these achievements or innovations are relevant. That’s a huge leap to expect the market to make, especially in a market that is highly competitive and you are dealing with a target audience that is attention challenged.

Think about the communications programs you are working on right now. Take a hard look at the way you are talking about the products/services your company is delivering. Is your material full of acronyms or buzz words that highlight how important you think the product/service is?  Does the content you’ve written in your releases and other material focus on the great things your company has products/developed instead of the problem it solves or opportunity it addresses? Finally, look at your material and count the number of times you tie the great things your company has done with a customer need or specific market trend that makes this product/service relevant. 

My personal view is that the benefit/trend to speed/feed ratio to should be at a minimum 2 to 1. If you can do this, think about how much easier it will be for reporters/customers/partners/prospects/investors to understand why your company, not just the product or service, is relevant. The easier you make it for them to understand, the more likely you are to motivate them to action.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog that talked about the finite attention span of target audiences. With this in mind, as we plan for 2012, companies that don’t adopt a culture of relevance in their communications programs will face a dwindling prospect for mind share and attention. The tough lesson learned in the down markets is that if information is not easy to consume and apply the benefit to someone’s personal or professional life, it is ignored. Ignored equals irrelevance and that is not a viable option in 2012.

Industry Leader of…None

I recently did a search on PRNewswire for certain key terms that I know drive reporters crazy. Companies love to use these terms and PR writers often fall back on them as a descriptor when nothing else is appropriate.  That’s where the problem lies – these words are used as filler when nothing else comes to mind to make a more contextual or interesting descriptor.  So, a company launching a new product becomes an “industry leader” and launching an interesting new product is instead launching a “breakthrough” “innovation” with “advanced” capabilities.

These words might sound good on paper but, in fact, these words have become so ubiquitous that they actually mean nothing.  In my recent research through PR Newswire, I searched for these words in press releases issued on a specific day. The date I choose doesn’t really matter but for records sake, it was October 31, 2011 at 10:54 am. Bear in mind that the search ran was just for releases issued that day before 10:54 AM EDT. These are the results:

• 1,253 “innovative”
• 903 “advanced”
• 202 “global leader”
• 123 “breakthrough” or “groundbreaking”

We all know that there weren’t 1,253 truly innovative products or services announced on October 31, 2011, by 10:54 AM EDT. There probably weren’t 1,253 truly innovative products announced in all of 2011. So what does that mean for PR writers? It means using the word “innovative” to describe your company’s (or client’s) products isn’t that innovative anymore.

Every industry is packed with vernacular and buzz words that mean something to someone. The problem is when these buzz words go mainstream, they lose the original context that help define the meaning. Writing for PR should be about context, not buzzwords. You need to craft a story that helps readers understand how the announcement fits into their industry, their needs and their lives.

Mark Twain once said, “Don’t say the old lady screamed-bring her on and let her scream.” Translate this into PR writing and you get: “Don’t say the product is innovative, bring it out and tell us how and why it’s innovative.”

This is harder said than done because, let’s face it, not everything that a company announces is as groundbreaking as the company likes to think. That doesn’t mean it’s not news, it just means that you have to work a little harder to make it newsworthy.