Corporateinklings

Know Your Audience

Before I joined Corporate Ink, I thought PR was just about pushing out news-- creating a steady drumbeat of announcements, advisories, and releases.

Boy, was I wrong. The first lesson I learned here: PR is about audiences.  Know your audience when you write releases. Know an editor’s audience when you pitch a story.  Know who cares, why they care, and why your story matters to them. And know how, when and which channel is best for reaching them.

As soon as I embraced these guidelines, engaging with audiences became easier. I see where our clients’ stories and news fit and how it could make an impact. 

Just last week I had a perfect opportunity to test my new found skills. One of my clients has a flight tracking application for the Palm Pre, and I found a little chatter online about Palm’s migration from free to paid applications. Working with client, and keeping consumers’ needs in mind, we crafted a few brief communications – straight from the client to the thread. Giving the customer what they wanted – straight talk on how to manage the transition – resulted in a round of thanks and even one customer wondering out loud why the apps were ever free – that’s how valuable he found them.

It’s not easy – crafting communications with media, colleagues and even friends – with their views top in my mind. But I’m learning is that it’s the only way to communicate effectively, to keep a conversation alive, move things forward and ultimately achieve the goal for my clients and myself.

- By Kate Greenough

Part of the Pitch

Has anyone else been inundated with email from ‘Facebook’ or ‘The Facebook Team’ for the past week?

Over the past 4 days I’ve received 20 Facebook phishing emails – taking a variety of approaches to try to get me to open a file or click on a link to reset my password or update my account (I’m still getting them now as I write this blog post – increase the tally to 22). 

The first one that I got was late on the October 26^th.  By about mid-day on the 27^th I started to get really annoyed until I realized…this is a pitch!

I did a quick search online and sure enough, this was a story that was a perfect fit for one of our clients. Our team huddled and got a quick breaking news pitch out the door.

You never know where an opportunity will come from. Usually, we’re scouring the news morning, noon and night for the latest breach – but in this case it was right in front of my face. We take an incredibly aggressive approach to media relations, and finding creative ways to tie our clients into breaking news stories is one of our biggest differentiators.  Being a part of the pitch gave me a jumpstart on the news and at the end of the day we had some nice wins for the client.

  - By Dan Brennan

Trust Your Gut. It Works. Really.

Are you quick to make a decision?

On a daily basis, I pick up the phone and go to toe-to-toe with the industry’s best to talk technology and information security.  I have to think on my feet and engage quickly with the next question to find the perfect fit.  Sometimes these conversations lead to a surprising opportunity, where I need to decide in real-time if it’s something worth my client’s time and resources.

As a result, I’m learning to rely more and more on my gut than on analysis. My tried and true pros-and-cons approach doesn’t always account for the unknown:  an opportunity of great value that evolves through dialogue.

Tackling tasks that I’m unsure of no longer frightens me.  And at the end of day, I feel empowered – like I actually changed someone’s mind or found something no one else thought of.

Take it from me: Next time you find yourself holding back – take that leap of faith. You might surprise yourself and find something new, exciting and valuable.

  - By Amelia DeCesare

Taking Wednesdays Off

Earlier this year, I started taking off one afternoon a week. Why? After 20 years of running this business, which typically means 10-hour-plus days, with little time to stop, I found my spirit, and energy, flagging by Thursday.  That didn’t just have an impact on me; since culture starts at the top, and ‘the boss makes the weather’ – it was apparent to me that sustainability meant finding a way to sustain myself, too.

At first, I felt like a shirker, leaving mid-day. Often, I called in, checked email, let people know they could definitely reach me. Often, I didn’t take the time, and felt perversely proud of it. When I did take it, I sometimes felt squeamish, like I wasn’t using it wisely enough. The Wednesday afternoons I managed to leave though, were all I’d hoped them to be; unstructured, empty, open. The following morning was almost consistently high-energy, and I contributed a buzz that certainly took up the slack for anyone waiting for the weekend.

In truth, I don’t manage to take it every week, and some days, I barely get out an hour early. The guilt persists, too, especially when I see everyone else working so hard.

 It’s not fair, I suppose, when the boss gets bennies that the staff can’t share, especially in a small company. What would happen if we let everyone take an afternoon off? Would clients object? Would the team be more productive? Less? Is it still valuable if you have to get the same amount of work done?

Could we make it elective?

Is anyone else doing this?

   - By Amy Bermar

 

Saying "No" to Colbert

 
This week, we found ourselves counseling our clients to turn down national media. The first was The Colbert Report – a venue most of our clients can only dream about being on. The second was 60 Minutes.

Are we crazy for not wanting to reach a national audience – of influencers, no less? Are we nuts for saying no?

Actually, it didn’t even take much deliberation. We suspected from the outset that neither show would do right by our clients.  If you’re Steven Colbert – the point is to be funny. Our client is already finding that not all publicity is good publicity – and the risk of being the target of humor in an emotionally charged debate was too high. Sometimes – quite often, actually – saying no is the smarter approach.  How do you know? Consider the audience – is it a match? Consider the media contact – where does your story fit with theirs? Now consider your own agenda: Why do you want to say yes? How much of it is the pure, personal thrill of being able to say you were there?

That last point is at least 50% of what these producers count on. It’s why people say yes when the bookers call – and fly to New York to sit  in the green room of the Today Show, or the Tonight Show, for hours,  waiting for their 90 seconds in the limelight, even if it does nothing for their story, or their message, or their life.

So we said no, nicely. Because some day, we might want to be swapping laughs with Colbert.  For 90 seconds, anyhow.

(The 60 Minutes story is still in play.)

 - By Amy Bermar

What’s Your Word-of-Mouth Strategy?

Today’s coverage that PR spending is expected to grow 9 percent through 2013, most of it at the expense of advertising, didn’t really come as much of a surprise to me.  After all, I’ve built a career based on the belief that engaging in a conversation, exchanging valuable information and listening – as much as talking – to stakeholders is a helluva lot more effective than multi-million-dollar ad campaigns. 

What was enlightening was the call out on word-of-mouth campaigns, or more bluntly – getting customers to do your selling for you.  Awesome idea, but based on another bit of data I saw recently, there’s a lot of work to be done in B2B. According to the CMO Council, 76% of 500 marketing executives in tech companies said they weren’t using customers to their full advantage.  

Fixing that huge oversight is where the real opportunity lies – for people like me – and more importantly for anyone looking to sell a product.  After all, technology purchasing decisions are 47% more likely to be influenced by peer networks, than by any other source of information or referral. The good news is that getting started on a word-of-mouth strategy is surprisingly simple, with Net Promoter Score®.  It starts with a single question, and then ongoing conversations with customers around what they love most, and a commitment to working on what they want to be better.  It’s amazingly effective – much more than just about anything that marketing does – in driving sales, keeping customers and beating the pants of the competition.   If you’re ready to do any of that or just want to learn more about how it works, we’ve got some great research. Just e-mail me at sbassett AT Corporateink DOT com.

- By Susan Bassett

Hit-and-Run

So here’s a story of a good company that could have done the right thing, but didn’t.

The scene:                 Saturday morning, almost noon.  Traffic is a snarl in downtown Boston, and a well-timed paving project cuts Boylston Street from 3 lanes to one.

The action:                 A 20-ton white truck wants the open lane. And apparently doesn’t see the 1,500-pound red Honda hatchback 5 feet below it.

Visual:                        The world is a big white hulking thing, coming closer.

Sound effects:             Metal on metal. Mirror snaps.

More Action:              Truck driver takes off. Followed by a call to the company.

On the surface, Miller Pipeline does all the right things (after all, its driver could be cited for a hit-and-run.). The VP of ops calls back, expresses what seems like genuine concern, and promises to do the right thing. (Also swears that the driver will lose his job, which is absolutely not the goal, and certainly not the point of it all.)

But by Monday morning, the urgency is dead. No one calls when they say they would. The only person charged with contact is the guy in ‘claims’ who – give him credit – answers his phone.  He says they asked the driver, and he said he didn’t hit anything. (Q: How does a driver of a large and noisy truck ‘hear’ something that lasts 2 seconds if he didn’t see it in the first place?)

The outcome: When I told them to check his hubcap, they went radio-silent.  Of course, they handed to insurance; that’s what insurance is for. But how about the driver who bolted?

So, it’s costing me $500 to get the car fixed – and the likelihood of steeper premiums next year. That just feels wrong. And another ugly lesson in human nature: it’s easy enough to pay lip service to doing the right thing, but when the rubber meets the road – or in this case, the wheel meets the door – it’s just as easy to pass the buck.

Anyone listening over there at Miller Pipeline?  

And one disappointed customer, of course, tells 10 more. At least.

   - Posted by Amy Bermar

Lousy PR on a Sunday Afternoon

 You never know who’s doing your PR for you – but more often than you want to think, it’s the person who answers the phone. The other day, I had to call the American Repertory Theater to ask for a favor. I’d bought an extra ticket for my mother-in-law, but for the wrong date, and I wanted a refund. In case you’ve been asleep for the past year, companies – much less non-profits – aren’t too thrilled about giving money back. And the ART actually says that tickets are final sale.

But I figured this is the customer’s era, and why not ask? Besides, I’d been a subscriber for a long time, and even donated a couple of times. So maybe someone would understand the value of customer loyalty – not to mention positive word of mouth – and cut me a break.

Not so much.

Cut to Sunday noon, call to the box office. “No, we don’t give refunds.”  I explain all of the above, nicely. Box office: “We don’t give refunds.”

She didn’t ask my name. Didn’t get any details. Didn’t even punt it to a call-back from someone else, maybe next week, maybe never.

I could have blasted it on Twitter, which sometimes works. In this case, I emailed the management. Truthfully, I was expecting nothing. After all, I figured that lousy attitude came from the top. It gets better, though:  I got a call Monday at 9:30 a.m., along with an apology and a willing ‘let’s make an exception’ act of management savvy. And another email at 11:30 that night from one of the big kahunas.

The lesson? Every employee, anywhere, can screw up a customer relationship.  Just hope you’re lucky enough to hear about it.

The money here? I’m in for another year of subscribing, giving ART 10X the money they refunded.  Not to mention the price of goodwill gained. As for the person who botched the first call? As she might say, it’s not my problem.

   - Posted by Amy Bermar

Why We Do What Reporters Say They Hate

I spent my first decade as a reporter, officially scorning any and all PR.  What did I hate? Lousy pitches. Annoying follow-ups. And mostly, the feeling that I was doing a vendor’s bidding. It felt lazy, and somehow, beneath the unspoken standards of performance.

Now that I’m on the ‘other’ side – I smile, and recoil, when I read the I-Hate-PR-blogs that fed-up reporters use to vent their frustration (perhaps with the world, but certainly with flaks.) They hate the self-serving releases. The stupid calls. The ill-informed interns who don’t know the pub they are pitching, and somehow were never trained, or just don’t care enough, to do the homework to figure out what a reporter will actually be interested in hearing – and learning about.

Because that’s what reporters do; they learn. On the job, every day, often without enough time to do it as well as they’d like. Which is one reason why so many reporters and bloggers – including those with followings – are willing to take news and run with it.  For starters, real news gets covered. It’s also usually interesting.

Of course we follow up, with phone calls, or emails. And every day, it results in meaningful coverage, because it opens up conversations about new stories, and trends, that may be related to the news we sent over, or not.

So why do we do what reporters swear they hate? Sometimes, they simply didn’t see the news. Other times, the releases are so confused – too many editors, too focused on the company, burying the ‘real’ news – that it takes a phone call or an email pitch to put the real news value in capital letters.

Of course the best reporters want exclusives, at least some of the time. And the best stories are always driven by creative, enterprising pitches that dig up new data, new insights, and something fresh to say.

At the same time, you may be amazed (dismayed?) at how many Page 1 stories start out with a phone call from the agency…

   - Posted by Amy Bermar

Listen UP: Cut the crappy pitches

Show me a PR person who hasn’t written a lousy pitch, and I’ll show you a liar. I’ve certainly written my fare share of pitches that don’t make the fridge. 

But today, with publications folding left and right – there’s no room for bad pitches.    

The sad truth is that there are fewer publications out there today than last week, much less last year.  (Even some of the biggest dailies are now being shopped, and there are plenty of bets on which ones will go dark, maybe this year.) The ones remaining are slashing their print editions; the Boston Globe has eviscerated its travel section, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is about to give up its print edition altogether, making it the first major daily to abandon print for online.

The result?  PR still shows up in Page 1 stories – a lot more often than you might think – but there’s a lot less room for crappy pitches.

It’s amazing, that even in this market, reporters’ #1 beef is that PR people still don’t understand their publications and pitch the ‘wrong’ stories. Like asking Fortune if they run announcements of new hires.

So stop it. Get smart.  Read the darned thing. Follow the reporter. Give ‘em a news hook they can’t resist. Even in this lousy market, reporters are just looking for a good story.

And if you want to see some lousy pitches at a key health pub (one of the few markets still kicking), check this out from HealthLeaders “Say What?”

  - Posted by Lesley Cannata