The job of the PR professional is to be an agent of change, helping your clients or company update and evolve its approach, message, programs, etc. so that they can leverage the change that swirls around them. It’s not easy and requires dedicated time and effort from senior members of the team. Often at agencies, this work is left to junior team members that might not have the experience to understand the changes, or appreciate how they might impact a client or company. It’s a learning curve that everyone goes through, so agencies and in-house PR teams need to ensure they have the processes in place to ensure junior team members understand the who, what, where, when and why of a successful media interaction plan.
Of course, it goes beyond staying on top of who is covering what at any given publication. It’s keeping on top of the market drivers that are changing within your client or company’s industry. This presents opportunities to engage with reporters, bloggers and other influencers that might not otherwise be interested in your company, and could lead to more detailed or specific coverage of your company.
A recent example is the changes in the HIPAA requirements
that were announced last fall. We had a client that had just launched a product
for this market a few months prior. That meant that they were not well-known to
the reporters covering Healthcare IT, so while some had expressed interest when
the product first launched, interviews didn’t always translate into coverage.
We followed up with our target list in advance of the ruling going into effect
and offered our client as a background resource to explain what these changes
meant to companies working in the field. The uptake was much higher as we’d set
up our client as an expert on a topic that reporters knew they’d be writing on.
These interactions lead to several key stories in both the healthcare IT
vertical, but also several in higher level tech and business press. This all
came with the added bonus that our client is now a trusted resource for these
editors and our agency is known as one that doesn’t just pitch client news.
It’s also important to make sure that the broader market
understands any changes or shifts your clients or company makes as they evolve
and grow. The last thing a company needs as it makes a change is for the
industry pundits to misunderstand, misinterpret or misconstrue a change for
something that it is not, especially if the change is dramatic, such as a
product redesign or executive departure.
Bottom line, your job is to help your company through any
change or transition it might go through. And when you do, stay calm (see Tip
1!)
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While it may be true that journalists may change, messages may change and so also the priorities may shift. But the underlined rationale of these factors never changes. Relationships built with journalists may not come handy straightaway but the fact remains that you have successfully built a relationship with a journo which will be useful in some other context. Similarly, messages and markets may also change. So what? The basic exercise undertaken for constructing messages would continue to be helpful in tweaking old messages to make them suit changed circumstances.
ReplyDeletei wholly agree with the author that rule 1 remains constant, i.e. keep your cool and stay calm during periods of transition!
Thanks for your comment Nadkumar. Appreciate your time, interest and insight.
ReplyDelete