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

 

Bigger is often not better in PR. How do you measure the results of a PR campaign?

Number of placements? Impression numbers? If that's not how we measure the effectiveness of an ad, why do we translate advertising equivalencies to public relations campaigns?

One of our agency directors was just featured by Bulldog Reporter in an article on the dicey topic of measurement.

You can read all about it here.

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Technology has really made it easy for many to "do PR" and at the same time, it's made it that much more difficult for brands with good stories to tell to break through the clutter created by brands what simply want to talk about themselves. Some stats to consider below and more advice elsewhere on our blog here.

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Pivot Vs Planning: Are You Calling Too Many Football Audibles In Your Marketing?

The word "pivot" is thrown a lot these days in marketing and in business in general. We're sure you've heard it before... it means you changed direction, usually relatively quickly. You shifted focus.

Typically, people are pretty happy to discuss the success they've had when they pivot. What's not discussed is the wear and tear it can take on your team if you're constantly shifting versus following through on the plan you designed.

Bill Byrne, one of the agency directors here at Remedy Communications, wrote about this in his latest column in BoxPro Magazine. Want to read it? Click this link or right click and download the image below!

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Not too long ago we executed a NASCAR®-related product PR campaign for a client. This was a first for us.

While successful, it solidified a few things we already preach regarding public relations, with one overarching theme…

Executing a PR / media relations campaign in one industry is the same as executing a public relations campaign in any other.

The publications and channels may change, but their basic needs and rules remain the same. Here’s what they are:

1. The More Time You Give, The Better
Believe it or not, journalists are not waiting around for PR people to contact them with story ideas. They have their own deadlines and content obligations in terms of the number of stories they need to publish or want to publish.

As great as your story may be for your brand, that doesn’t mean you can simply expect an outlet to make room for it or that a journalist will want to make time for it.

2. There Has To Be A Fit And If There Isn’t, You Bend
It’s a widely held belief that NASCAR fans fully support the brands their favorite drivers endorse.

While that may be true, the NASCAR related media outlets themselves don’t cover new product launches or brand news in the same way we think of general consumer and business publications as doing. Their focus tends to be on track drama, fines, equipment changes and paint scheme changes.

Some early, and later, extensive research into their media channels brought this to light. Along with extreme disappointment because we thought this would be a layup of a pitch.

So did we abandon the campaign? No. As the entrepreneurs and ‘influencers’ of today are fond of saying, we decided to pivot.

In addition to traditional media, we targeted people with large and engaged social media followings (we’re hesitant to every say someone with a lot of followers is an actual 'influencer') to secure coverage. While most of the popular accounts were owned by drivers and their pit crews who had  competing endorsement deals, there were many other people we could target, ranging from on-air broadcast talent to super fans.

3. The Easier You Make Their Job, The Better
Journalists, like the rest of us, are busy. Having all the details and assets ready and at your fingertips can go a long way in helping secure interest for a story.

Speed is a big component of grabbing the checkered flag on race day and in PR.

4. All Media Want The Same Thing
They want a compelling story for their audience that at the end of the day, will drive page views, clicks, increase ratings, increase their street cred, etc.

It’s that simple.

When that isn’t available, sometimes cash works. Advertising, sponsorships, etc. Old school PR professionals shudder at this notion, but it’s the reality of our industry today. Thankfully, we didn’t need to go this route.

When planning any PR campaign, keep these four tips in mind. They won’t guarantee success – as nothing can in PR – but they’re good steps to take to help prevent failure.

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We've been published in AdWeek before on our thoughts that too many brands put out press releases when the news just isn't there to promote. It's all about the channel and audience. Sometimes you can say 1,000 words with an Instagram photo and sometimes, you can have your CEO issue an open letter that clearly states your position and forgo any follow-up interviews, calls, etc.

That's exactly what Apple did with their most recent customer letter involving the FBI and cyber security. Although it's billed as a an 'open letter to its customers', in reality, it's a press release for a global audience of journalists, fans and anyone else who happens to be checking Facebook on February 17, 2016.

Here are the highlights from a PR/marketing perspective:

We added the red... this is a message to everyone, not just Apple's customers. BUT, it was smart of Apple to position it otherwise.

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This is what Apple says the issue is.

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Essentially, the FBI may be saying this is easy to do and fix, but according to Apple, it's far from the case. 

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From a public relations / media relations standpoint, this was very well done. Now it's the government's turn to respond.

You can read the full letter here: www.apple.com/customer-letter/

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Do Super Bowl Ads Work? A Lesson in Public Relations, Advertising, Creativity And Consistency

This has nothing to do with our personal politics, so please send your hate emails elsewhere 😉

Recently we heard Kevin Robillard on the This Morning With Gordan Deal podcast the other day talking about Trump’s prominence in the race to the White House.

Love him or hate him, The Donald is dominating the media. Why?

He’s disruptive. His message is very different and the way he communicates compared to his competitor’s political brands stands out.

It’s that simple.

Trump is harsh compared to what we’re typically seeing from political candidates. He’s loud. He gets aggressive and isn’t afraid to take risks.

Will this help The Donald become the next U.S. president? I have no idea…

BUT, his message is so different, often so outlandish, that it’s resonating with many people across the country. If elected, can he do what he says he’ll do? Again… no idea. In most cases our government is a pretty slow moving machine

That said, even if Donald Trump doesn’t make it any further in the political race, he’s left an impression, raised his awareness and inspired many to await his next move in business, entertainment or in politics.

Sounds like a marketing win to us.

Questions about the health of your PR or marketing campaign? Drop us a line at PRCheckup@remedypr.com. A consultation is always free!

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Do Super Bowl Ads Work? A Lesson in Public Relations, Advertising, Creativity And Consistency

Name five Super Bowl ads from last year and describe what they were about. If you can’t, do it from any year… and the Apple ‘1984’ spot doesn’t count. Or anything with Clydesdales 😉

Of those five (or less) how many of them led you to buy those products or use that brand’s services?

If the ad didn’t cause you to go out and act, does that mean the ad is worthless?

Definitely not. Here is the reality of advertising (or PR/media relations and marketing in general).

It often takes time and repetition for the message to sink in. I didn’t see the Apple ‘1984’ add live, but I know about it because it’s so regularly highlighted over the years. And its content was very different.

Think about GoDaddy’s ads. The ones with the women having wardrobe malfunctions. Regardless of your personal taste, they also are (were?) different enough to get attention and have people talking about them.

Creatively, both of these ads were different than the norm at the time. That’s an important thing to keep in mind.

Creativity is incredibly important in marketing. It helps cut through the clutter.

Because of advertising, and our love of 'The Walking Dead' a lot of us here have a pretty strong awareness of Mazda as an automotive brand. They seem to consistently have spots airing during ‘The Walking Dead’ that look pretty good and catch our attention when we forget to reach for the DVR's remote. That said, no one in our office has a Mazda. Does that mean the ads weren’t effective?

No. As an example, the last person to buy the car in our office wanted an all-wheel drive sedan. Mazda didn’t make one at the time, so their ads, while they were memorable, were for products that we just didn’t need.

However, Mazda consistently runs ads during a show we watch and because of that, we were am pretty aware of of some of the cars they’re selling. Budweiser usually does something with Clydesdales.

Consistency, or repetition of message, are almost as important as creativity, if you want to boost awareness, and later sales.

‘Consistency’ and ‘creatively’ should be the words you dwell on here.

We hear all the time from friends and colleagues – at both big brands and small – that advertising didn’t work for them. Or PR didn’t work for them. Why? Because they didn’t see sales. When I ask how they measured awareness, I tend to get blank stares. When I ask if they directed their agency partners or let them lead, I get uncomfortable silence.

What is almost always missing when a marketing program falls short is some sort of creativity or consistency in activity. Vanilla tastes good, but it doesn’t stand out. One and done is rarely enough.

Sales come from awareness, as well as availability. Marketers can’t control availability, but they can help build awareness, which will lead to sales if done right.

Despite what case study you read, marketing success comes from creativity and consistency/repetition of message. There are exceptions to the rule, but if you're going to play the odds, are you going to put your money on the 99 percent favored to win or the long shot?

BTW - If you're interested in the creative background of that Apple '1984' ad, check out this piece from Bloomberg.

Questions about the health of your PR or marketing campaign? Drop us a line at PRCheckup@remedypr.com. A consultation is always free!

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Do Super Bowl Ads Work? A Lesson in Public Relations, Advertising, Creativity And Consistency

More than 20 years ago, The Boss showed that he was able to do more than just strum a guitar and write great rock & roll songs. It turns out that one of New Jersey’s most notable musical exports also had a good handle on the future of media.

Right now, we’re seeing many brands scrambling to provide content for their various social and traditional media channels, and then become disappointed when that content doesn’t generate the amount of likes, shares, comments, etc., that they feel would make the production of that content a success.

The issue? We haven't been telling the whole truth.

Marketers and so-called social media experts have been preaching for years that ‘content is king’ and now with social media, making sure that you have a presence on every digital channel available. The reality is that’s not the entire truth. See our previous post on Meerkat for more insight on this one.

As social media matures, we’re seeing a cultural reset of how people use it and how they follow brands and individuals. Whereas people tended to be ok friending and liking hundreds of people and brands on Facebook, they’re curating who and what they follow on Instagram.

People have more options now and are less willing to waste their time.

Consumers have more options than ever before. It’s not enough to just to create content, it needs to be good content… content worth sharing and watching.

It doesn’t matter if you’re on 57 social media channels or just five. If you're your content isn’t endearing to your audience, they will find something else to watch.

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This is the biggest misconception people have when launching a PR or media relations campaign. It's common even among seasoned marketers.

But it's the truth.

Here's a tip: Journalists are not sitting around waiting to regurgitate what they’re sent by PR people. They are not parrots.

We were reminded about this we saw this Tweet linking to The Walking Deadline from Billy Brown, a journalist we work with fairly regularly.

Billy, like many journalists/bloggers/content creators/whatever you want to call them, is not a parrot. Also, Billy is not an idiot and can think for himself. Why is this important to keep in mind?

If we put in the headline of a press release or subject line of an email “This Is A Game Changer!” or "This Is The Best Thing Ever!" then it better be a game-changer, or else Billy will think twice before looking at our pitch next time around. Keep in mind that we can send things to Billy that aren’t game-changers, but before we do, we better be able to explain why it’s worth his time or else we're going to sour the relationship.

Simple enough? You'd think so, but time and again PR people are asked to push things to media that either aren't newsworthy or so overstated that they turn off the intended media targets.

Here’s what you need to keep in mind when trying to forge relationships with journalists and what you need to do to ensure your efforts are deemed newsworthy.

• For the most part, media outlets need make money: They accomplish this based on selling advertising in some shape or form, the rates for which are calculated from publication sales, website traffic, Nielsen ratings, headline clicks, etc. It’s the journalist’s job to create compelling stories, relevant to the media outlet’s specific audience, that will help with this.

• What may be a good story to you and/or about your brand may not help with the point above. You need to consider that. And while your pitch doesn’t have to be a game-changer to secure coverage, you do need to explain what value it has to offer.

Personally, when looking to hire consultants for our partners, we’ve found that the best PR people are those that can secure coverage for the brands that aren’t the leaders in their space. Our overused phrase in this instance is that anyone can pitch an iPhone to the media. Everyone wants to cover the next iPhone.

• Journalists are busy. They’re not waiting around for your news, regardless of their need to drive revenue for the media outlets they're working for. They’re most likely not going to drop what they’re doing unless what you’re offering is incredibly monumental in the total scope of their relevant news world. And the more time you can give them, the better.

Even that Instagram personality with 100k that you so desperately want to feature your brand using a VSCO picture may work days, if not weeks in advance. Local media have their own deadlines, as do journalists who write for magazines and websites.

• Everyone is your competition for media coverage. Every brand, regardless of newsworthiness, if they're engaging in PR, they're potentially blocking you from securing media coverage.

• Journalists have their own coverage areas and interests. This gets overlooked often. Some will cover a range of topics, others not so much. Some just don't like certain brands. It happens. A finance reporter at one publication may cover everything from credit cards to mortgages, but at another media outlet, those topics could be spread across multiple reporters. This leads us to our next point...

• You need to go to the right person at the right publication with the right pitch. At your own company, you don’t drop off a creative brief for a new logo design with the accounting department, do you? Sure, they may pass it onto the right people, but why would you ask them to do that? They’re busy handling accounting related tasks and your request, in addition to being annoying, may cause them to think twice about getting back to you in the future.

• Send your news at the right time. We can't stress that enough. This is going to vary by what sort of media you're targeting, but again, Billy and others like him aren't just waiting by their laptops for emails from their favorite PR people every minute of the day.

We'll close with this because potential clients often ask about media lists and networks.

Relationships matter,  but the story being pitched is more important.

Remedy has developed some incredible relationships and in our network of colleagues, it's fairly easy to connect to journalists we've never worked with before. The same goes for many other PR consultants and firms and a lot of them will agree that the relationship won’t matter if we don’t follow some simple points outlined above.

If you want to secure editorial coverage for your brand, you need to look at it from the reporter’s perspective and go from there. Give them a relevant story for their coverage area(s), presented in a way they want to see it and with time to consider it.

Need a second opinion on the topic? Check out this article on PRNewser for some similar examples to what we outlined above.

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