We won't blame the pandemic or supply chain issues. We'll blame our partners, who come first above our own marketing!
It's December 2023 and our new site is finally here!
As we refine it, it will include some great articles on the state of the PR industry, answering many questions brands have regarding PR, media relations, and affiliate marketing. Among them, what can a public relations team guarantee a client, what questions to ask before agreeing to a PR program, and the flags you should look for in selecting a PR firm or consultant.
In the meantime, if you want more insight into our PR expertise, check out some of the most recent thought-leadership pieces we've been a part of.
he industry experts at Muck Rack regularly ask us to weigh in on media trends and offer advice on what it takes to secure editorial in the evolving media climate.
To ensure success, we develop our programs using a media-first perspective. To learn what that is, click the link.
We've posted before about what journalists want from PR people here.
PRNewser recently published a great post on the topic and we thought we'd share, without any commentary (which is very hard for PR people to do ;-).Want More tips? Give us a call or drop us a line at PRCheckup@Remedypr.com
It's always nice when an industry expert asks us our opinion on public relations.
There's a reason we're called Remedy. We built the firm to solve the issues we were hearing about from friends and partners who were disappointed in what their current PR teams were delivering. Sometimes they did receive exactly what they should be getting. Sometimes they were expecting too much, and often, the agency over-promised.
To begin, look at what they've done for similar brands.
And trust their expertise. You may have launched PR campaigns before, but if you're not in the trenches, what you want may not match the reality of modern media.
Check out what agency director, Bill Byrne, and other notables, had to say in this article by Meltwater and PR guru, Michelle Garrett (follow her on Twitter, she's awesome).
We're very excited to announce that Remedy Public Relations' managing director, Bill Byrne, has been asked to speak on a panel about best practices for brands and PR people to engage with emerging media as part of a live group panel discussion through the NYC Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America.
The Pod Bless America event will be co-produced by the media heavyweights at Muck Rack, along with the NY PRSA, and focus on the best way to engage with podcast outlets and other emerging media. You can register for the event here , and more information can be found here.
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The entire team is excited to share that we won one of the highest honors in the public relations industry for a project we put together with SPY eyewear.
Not only did we come home with a Bulldog PR gold medal, but we did so in the Best Consumer Product Launch category, ahead of household names such as Volvo.
You can see the full press release on Sporting Goods Business by clicking here.
There are a few things that really make this award special for us. The first is that the campaign leveraged smart, creative thinking, and a candid approach to dealing with the media. Not a massive budget spend or flashy stunt.
The product we focused on combined our expertise in both consumer lifestyle PR, and consumer tech, two areas our team is deeply entrenched. Lastly, both Oakley, one of the biggest brands in this space, and Electric Visual, were launching similar products at the same time as SPY was during the Outdoor Retailer trade show (the largest event of its kind to date - the outdoor industry's equivalent of CES combined with MacWorld). Oakley is known for producing pretty extravagant stunts and media events. Their display at the OR Show for their version of this product was definitely eye-catching.
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Ragan Communications asked us to weigh in on how you can tell if your PR campaign is a stinker. We were happy to oblige!
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How can you tell if your PR campaign is worthwhile? San Diego Public Relations And Social media
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The Two Reasons Journalists Don't Like PR People
Dear Journalist Friends,
We're sorry. We hope this is enlightening as to why some PR people act the way they do.
Dear Friends At Brands,
If you don’t know what we're talking about, you need to read this.
A quick search of Facebook groups, industry scripture, along with Twitter and assorted other forums, will turn up instances where our colleagues, and possibly even ourselves (but doubtful ;-), have rubbed a few of you the wrong way.
Let’s get back to our media industry clickbait-esque headline.
Journalists, do you know the reason you hate (some of) us?
If we had to read your mind, it would be the nauseating amount of irrelevant pitches you receive and the annoying follow-up calls that come five minutes after we send them are likely culprits.
But do you know why we actually do this?
There are two main reasons PR people push too hard, often in the wrong direction, when it comes to dealing with journalists. It’s a systemic issue that many firms won’t want to address.
Reason 1: PR plans are developed and pitched to clients by senior agency leadership teams who are out of touch
The senior ranks of many agencies are led by people who no longer engage directly in media relations, resulting in grossly inflated expectations stemming from plans based on archaic thinking. They haven’t reached out to a journalist in years. They’re not in the trenches regularly communicating with our friends on the editorial side.
As a result, plans are developed based on outdated knowledge and experience.
Touchdowns help to win football games, but the style of play has significantly evolved over the years. As an easy example, we're often told by clients and industry colleagues that <<brand / product / event>> would be perfect for Maxim. They’re usually right…if this were 2001. They haven’t opened the mag or looked at Maxim’s site or magazine in years. Its content has evolved. Are there avenues for the pitch they have in mind? Possibly, but the lack of direct media interaction and knowledge of the current media climate steers plan development in the wrong direction.
A good PR person pushes back on clients and internal stakeholders as appropriate. Despite being experts, when we do push back a bit, the response is often that we must not have strong enough relationships with the media we’re targeting. And if that’s the perception, we could lose the account or our jobs.
While good PR pros know that landing killer media coverage takes a lot more than strong relationships, none of us want to lose our jobs. So we push on and follow orders.
Reason 2: There is a lack of trust in PR teams and understanding of how long it can take for a journalist to show interest, let alone file a story.
That is our only explanation for the following, very common, scenario.
Sometimes agencies are expected to have boiler room-esqueoperations. In addition to update reports, PR firms are often asked by clients to provide call logs for review. This was asked of me at big agencies and later after co-founding Remedy PR. Detailed records of who we contacted, when and their response.
The result of that is intense pressure on the PR agency to tangibly show how our time is spent, even showing how our time is actually spent is not the best use of our time or the budget of our partners.
Do we keep logs? Yes, most agencies do. Some people keep pretty detailed notes. I can tell you where one editor’s significant other went to school, who refs hockey as a passion side-job, and who dislikes a certain feature on a certain type of product.
Our notes aren’t always appropriate to share with our partners, and sometimes we’ll reach out to a journalist about multiple brands, or maintain lists that are relevant to multiple client partners. When that’s the case, if a client wants a call log, we’re often spending extra time drafting something that is specific for them. Not the best use of our time.
And this doesn’t take into account the time spent researching media and refining pitches so they make sense to that Tier-A journalist you want to be interested in your story.
The misunderstanding of how much time things can take is where things take a major turn for the worse, not just for us on the PR side, but you, our friends on the editorial end.
PR people grossly outnumber journalists (6:1 according to some), and some receive hundreds of emails a day, a large part of them irrelevant. These stats get worse when the journalist writes for a high-profile media outlet or is an influencer (define that as you will). This makes it critical for those of us on our side of the desk to follow-up (sorry, we know you hate that) when we have a good pitch for you (we really do!) that may have buried in the previously mentioned hundreds of emails you’re receiving.
Giving a journalist time to get through their inbox and run something through the chain of command doesn’t make for a strong call log for our clients.
Again, the call log doesn’t account for the time we should be spending on strategy, or looking at a journalist’s coverage, tweets, etc., to get a handle for what they could be into in terms of potential story ideas.
We find it strange that many don’t grasp that even a response, let alone action, by a journalist, can take some time.
Most of us probably have friends and family members who may not to respond to a text message or email for days, if not weeks. If it’s not urgent and doesn’t require an immediate response, you probably don’t text someone every other day to check in. That would be annoying.
So why do we expect a journalist to get back to us right away?
Journalists aren't public servants. They’re not firefighters – waiting and obligated – to rush out when the call comes in.
Unfortunately, the pressure some of us receive to generate these logs is the reason for the incessant follow-up.
If you didn’t get back to us on Tuesday, we need to call you Thursday and email again the following Friday to ask if you received our last email and call. And then we send a DM on Instagram.
So we smile, and dial (or the modern equivalent of that), and log every call for review later.
What’s the fix?
There are ways we can around these issues in PR. There are paths we can take that will get brands and PR teams on the radar of the media, and strengthen the relationships between journalists, PR people, and the brands they represent.
We need to change our thinking a bit, and we’ll get into that soon.
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PR (actually all marketing) takes time. Even in today's ultra-quick Instagram world, it usually takes time to see traction from your public relations campaign.
One of the biggest issues we’re seeing with brands that need marketing help, outside of properly budgeting for outside PR and marketing support, is poor budgeting when it comes to time.
Many times, the Remedy team has turned down potential work because the client came to us at the last minute with a project we feel they didn’t allow enough time to be successful.
We’re not the only ones who feel this way.
Take Axia PR in Jacksonville, who has worked with some very impressive brands, or Michael Shane, of www.freide.co, a "hybrid creative agency fusing media consulting and creative strategy," based in Bill's old stomping grounds of NYC. Now we don’t know Michael at all, but we’re a member of the same networking group on Facebook and he recently made this post lamenting a recent client that is just now seeing momentum right away.
This is only a small part of the discussion that occurred on Michael's post. And this happens all the time.
We’ve worked with brands under tight time constraints and had them on national media programs and major market daily newspapers overnight… but many times, it can take weeks, often months, to start seeing momentum, let alone an impact on measurable awareness or sales (assuming you're able to track this, to begin with).
So what’s the magic number for how long you should experiment with a good PR firm?
Tough to say, especially since the first month of the program should be spent outlining the full plan and you won’t be seeing media results during that period of time. Many will tell you six months is a good timeframe to consider, but that could scale up or down depending on if you’re working on a very timely event or working with a brand that has news coming out a few seasons after this one.
Please keep in mind that we're not saying that PR firms (consultants, marketing firms, ad agencies, etc.) don't fail to deliver. They do. It could be because they weren't clear about potential results, promised too much and in some cases, failed to manage expectations.
However, many times when a PR program fails, it's because there wasn't enough time allotted to see results or it's being compared to the 'guaranteed impressions' that come with buying an ad (which still don't guarantee sales though).
Enjoy this piece? Please consider sharing it on LinkedIn!
Again, special thanks to Michael Shane of http://www.freide.co/ for giving us permission to share his Facebook post.
It’s tax time and as our collective team prepares their own personal taxes, we wanted to share some strong similarities between planning for tax time and launching a public relations or social media campaign.
1. Choose the right tax provider based on your budget and situation.
Some people have straightforward taxes that can easily be prepared through one of the tax software tools available for purchase.
Perhaps you don’t need an outside PR resource. You may be fine purchasing a media list online, distributing it through one of the available free or paid newswires and then having your internal marketing team make follow-up calls on their own.
Or, you may need a team of two… or 20, to help you.
Look at your brand's individual needs and choose support accordingly. Don’t get hung-up on who a brand has worked with before so much as the results they’ve delivered for brands with a similar cache’ or budget close to yours.
Bill was interviewed on this topic recently, but in essence, ask yourself ‘is your brand the iPhone of your industry?’
Look for the firms that have worked with brands that have less media appeal than yours or have done more with fewer resources. Ask for examples of unique placements and executions that also fit within your budget.
If you show up at your accountant’s office on April 14 with a box of receipts and statements, well…
Your accountant may know you’ll be coming in that day, but without knowing all of your financial details from the last year, you’re leaving them in a very difficult situation. Things may get missed.
The same thing happens all the time to PR firms when being approached by potential clients. Public relations firms frequently receive requests for meetings or for custom proposals within a week’s time, usually without adequate documentation as to what it is they’re really looking for, an accurate timeline and estimated budget.
Providing details well in advance allows the PR firms you’re looking at will have ample time to put their best foot forward and you’ll have a chance to kick the tires on them as well.
Last minute requests tend to receive work that is often rushed and often flawed. If you tell a PR firm today you need a proposal for a six-month plan next week, what does that say about your own team’s internal planning?
Similarly, the sooner you start a project, the more time you have to adjust if things don’t go as expected.
If you think you can do your taxes better than a professional tax preparer, then why did you hire them in the first place?
Similarly, treat your public relations firm, consultant or that ‘marketing ninja’ you found on LinkedIn,as a part of your team and trust in their opinion. It’s their job to create programs and strategies that work for editorial coverage.
Would you like to chat about this more? Feel free to drop us a line or take our PR Check-up to gauge the health of your own brand’s marketing efforts.
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