Public Relations

When I started my career in public relations, I swore from the onset I wouldn’t do events – I didn’t sign up to be a glorified party coordinator after all.

That was a foolish oath blatantly revealing my naiveté about life (never say never) and the many layers of PR (it’s not just pitching, stupid).

The inevitable role of any good public relations practitioner is, in part, the art of creating, managing and staffing events you and your client can be proud of. This is no small task. Think of the last time you organized a birthday party for a friend or planned your own celebration. Who will cater? Who do you invite? Will they show up? Unlike your typical affair, who attends, who they talk to, what is discussed and what they do with the information after they leave is everything.

In PR we don’t throw parties to show off our savvy people skills (but they do come in handy!). We strategically assemble the right people in the ideal environment on a key date and time to accomplish specific goals that at the end of the day show a return on the investment. Most often, we want targeted media to attend and we need illustrious spokespersons that will tout key messages and toe the party line, so to speak.

Make a date

Think carefully about the date – does it coincide with a significant regional or national event that can outshine yours? Does it coincide with a holiday or other commemoration that can nicely compliment your efforts? Consider the time of day. If TV stations and print reporters are important to you (as they typically ought to be), consider their on-air schedules and run dates. Are they likely to give up their evenings for a 7pm event? Is it on a Saturday? Are there crews that will come out on the weekend? Remember that stations are severely understaffed on weekends. On the other hand, news is slow on weekends and your event could be just the ticket.

Location, location, location

Consider the size of your event and the length of the guest list. Bigger is most definitely not always better. I’d prefer a space that is overflowing with attendees than an excessively spacious one where people tend to gravitate to the side or corner with a bare center, leaving the impression there were a lot of no-shows. Outdoor locations are great for health or fitness related activities or musical events, but if you’re planning on some place where rain anytime is possible, have a Plan B firmly in place. Indoor or out, know there will be a lot of city government, union and venue restrictions; know them all well in advance so there are no surprises. Describe the event flow to the venue representative so you can negotiate what’s allowable and what isn’t every step of the way.

Oh, and develop a comprehensive, step-by-step event flow of the day’s activities – be meticulous and thoughtful about every detail. This becomes your team and the client’s bible for what to do, when, how and where in timeline form.

Talking heads

Identifying and securing the right spokespersons – from niche experts to high-profile celebrities – is a skill in itself, often underestimated. Give the discussion and analysis with your team and the client the time and energy it deserves. Know your limitations. If you’re not up to speed on celebrity causes or interests that match your client’s, bring in third party experts to help identify options and to secure the talent. This process should begin a good several months before the event. You will likely not secure your first choice, or even your third. Anyone who has dealt with managers, agents and lawyers knows that there’s a lot of blood, sweat and tears before contracts are signed and the working relationship begins.

Parting words

The best advice I can give is to do an audit before you make a significant financial investment. Ask your media friends if they would cover your event on the date and location you’re considering. Ask your own friends if they’d attend if you’re throwing a consumer event that hopes to attract the general public as well. What would they expect to see and receive? Most of all, ask your clients what their vision for success is. You’d be surprised that what they think a great event is might differ from your own.

Take a realistic look at your budget and manage your clients’ expectations. They can’t rent the ballroom at the Peninsula at a shoestring budget, or expect A-list talent to attend or play the role of spokesperson on the cheap or without clear incentive.

Got it all? Good, have a BLAST!

Not a day goes by where the topic of PR measurement doesn’t pop up in some conversation. It usually comes in the form of my colleagues spending hours plowing through print clips, looking up ad values on Bacon’s, and calling VMS for impressions. And at the end of the day, we deliver an impressive looking, nicely bound book of charts and clippings…and we all breathe a sigh of relief and wait for the client to be impressed with the shear volume of his company’s mentions in hundreds of newspapers. Now, my issue with this is that most companies don’t truly understand PR (heck, I have to explain it to my parents at least twice a week) and when we explain its intricacies, they realize just how complex the PR machine can be. Yet, knowing the complexity, they somehow think that simple charts with numbers and clips are an effective way to measure the value of PR.

So the question becomes – how do we measure PR?

The more traditional methods of measurement involve circulation, impressions, ad value equivalency and PR value. And, as an industry, we’ve somehow decided to apply arbitrary formulas in order to determine impressions (circulation x 2.5 or 3.1) and PR value (ad value x 3). But what exactly do these types of measurements prove? That maybe, best case scenario, our client was mentioned in 2.2 million printed copies of USA Today and possibly – but not likely – seen by 5.5 million readers. Or that it maybe would have cost $30,000 for our client to purchase equivalent ad space? Ok, but what does that mean?

As a side note before I continue, PR’s effectiveness cannot be directly compared to advertising effectiveness. The two forms of communication are drastically different. Advertising messages are very controlled whereas most PR messages are not (which is why they’re seen as more credible and valuable).

The newer methods of measurement suggest a look at quality over quantity. So this means when our client is covered in a newspaper, we rate the story and the quality of the outlet. Was it positive, negative or neutral towards our client? But the question is, once again, so what?

Did any of these measurements prove the value of PR? Sure, we got the client’s name out there (not to entirely discount brand awareness), but how does all of this affect their bottom line? After all, that’s ultimately what matters.

I’ll be the first to admit that sometimes I am more than thrilled to tell a client our PR efforts garnered 4.2 billion impressions. It sounds impressive, right? But the reality is that most of us PR professionals resort to these measurement tactics because we’re constantly pressured to justify PR dollars. PR is a fairly intangible communication strategy, so we feel the need to quantify its value in the hopes it makes it easier to digest. Companies don’t question the value of advertising – and they’re only too happy to spend five times the amount of PR on media buys.

The answer to how we measure PR is this – it’s a combination of tools. You can’t effectively measure a program by any one tool. You need to factor in the overall communications objectives and how those tie back to the company’s business goals. PR effectiveness can best be measured if a company’s key messages, target audience, and desired channels of communication are clearly identified before implementing a program. Second, the PR measurement process should never be carried out by focusing only on the PR components. It needs to be factored into the larger equation of how all programs – advertising, marketing, promotions, PR –are contributing to the bigger picture.

In closing, PR IS valuable. It has a far greater impact on a company’s brand than advertising. Sure, advertising has its place, but PR is one of the most effective branding tactics for a company. In the long term, PR can build, change or maintain a company’s brand reputation by shaping consumer attitudes and perceptions which ultimately lead to a healthier bottom line and consumer loyalty. Shouldn’t that be justification enough?

Attention all PR people!

Social media is not a panacea to all your company’s or client’s PR problems.  I repeat, if you employ social media programs, do not expect all the cool kids to come running, embrace your brand and evangelize about you and your products to anyone that will listen.  Infusing social media ideas into your PR plans also cannot help you find your one true love, cannot cure cancer and cannot even help you save a bundle on your car insurance.

Just because social media is out there for the taking (and it’s generally cheap to implement), it doesn’t mean you need to take it.  While it’s easy to watch new movies or brands like Nike and Burger King gain incredible traction with MySpace or Facebook, lightning in a bottle is just that – something that can’t easily be replicated for any old campaign, program or event.  Too often, we hear our clients ask what we can do with blogs and Twitter and Facebook and a million other trendy names, but just as we counsel clients on when and how to send a press release or announcement, it is imperative to help our clients understand when – if at all — it’s right to go with social media programs.

When an organization is overzealous, ignores common sense and refuses to take a step back in order to take a real, hard look at the online landscape, the results are never good.  Putting a MySpace page up just for the sake of it is asinine and dangerous.  A boring page about a boring product or company is worse than nothing at all; the only result is scorn, vitriol, laughter and maybe even worse — zero return on investment.  A good example is The Los Angeles Times’ Twitter page – it’s been updated nearly 2,000 times with breaking news since the account was created.  Too bad it only has an audience of 98 followers.  And you wonder why they say print is dead.

The problem:  social media is really nothing more than a new venue to share news and communicate with key audiences.  This isn’t to say companies and organizations should avoid social media entirely.  To the contrary, there’s little doubt that social media will continue to integrate more and more into our daily consciousness.  From PR people to CEOs, it’s important to keep a vigilant eye on new developments. 

But it needs to be understood that the shotgun approach to social media – blasting everything in your arsenal against the wall and seeing what sticks – is simply not going to bear any PR fruits.  So the next time you’re in a meeting, brainstorm or casual conversation and someone starts bringing up all these brilliant ideas about how to use MySpace and Facebook, take a step back and ask if you have something new, unique and valuable to offer.  After all, you wouldn’t embarrass yourself, your company, or your client with a press release announcing you just scratched your butt.  Because social media can offer new frontiers, it doesn’t mean that butt scratching story is any fresher just because it’s distributed via brand-new Web 2.0 tools. 

There’s great promise in social media for the PR industry, but we need to embrace social media for what it is…and what it isn’t.

I’m a self-proclaimed bookworm—I love, love, love books.  I devour them.  I’ll dabble in different genres and will give every book a chance.  So, about 10 years ago, when I was at a dinner with a friend and his boss and interview questions came up, the president of his company mentioned he always asks people what the last thing they read was—now he didn’t really care what had been read, he just wanted to know the person had read something.  I remember thinking that I’d love to get that question, but when I thought about it further, I realized it’s actually a hard question because I’ve read so much.  But, I couldn’t turn away from it, so when I started thinking about what I might like to write for my company’s blog, books were a no-brainer.  We decided to limit it to three books and I’m going to steer away from the essentials everyone should have on his/her desk and go to the ones that have made a true impact on my life and that have stood the test of time. 

Note: if you DON’T have these two items on your desk, do not pass go, do not collect $200, just hope that nobody has noticed and rush to your closest book store and buy them immediately.  A dictionary—yes, a real hard copy dictionary—use it, open it, it will help you, and an AP Stylebook—trust me, few things tick off journalists or a boss more than someone who didn’t take the time to look it up.  Now onto my top three. 

Brand Gap by Marty Neumeier:  I love this book because it provides a simple explanation of branding—something every PR person needs to embrace.

A Carrot a Day: A Daily Dose of Recognition for Your Employees by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton – While this one says “for your employees,” I really think this book is beneficial for people at all levels because it reinforces the need for appreciation—which can be given to media, vendors, colleagues, etc. Always follow the “win more flies with honey” mantra

Random House Word Menu by Stephen D. Glazier.  This book was recommended to me by a writer friend a number of years ago and I’ve been eternally grateful for it.  It is hands down the best book for writer’s block as it categorizes words and terms. 

This list doesn’t contain the latest books, but I think they’re worth their cover price.  Bottom line: read what’s important to your manager, clients and yourself.

So tell me, what’s on your reading list?

Last fall, a friend and aspiring journalist at the Journal called me to proudly ask if I’d read his byline, which was published in that day’s paper. He provided the precise section and page number. My response? “Hold on, let me dig the paper out of the bird cage.” Now, CarryOn doesn’t really employ any birds… at least not literally… but I made my point. Today, newspapers may be more valuable as bird cage lining than as vehicles for delivering the news. Why would I trudge across the office to disturb the actual, physical print version of the paper that was so happily posing as placemat to some cup of joe in our communal kitchen?

To underscore my point, I have to plug my (favorite) client Symantec and the findings of the Norton Online Living Report (the most amazing PR campaign ever conceptualized!) that found Internet users worldwide read news online at nearly an equal rate as in traditional printed newspapers and magazines. Now, I’m one of those rare PR professionals who actually started her career before the days of the Internet, but I pride myself in keeping pace with the times. I embrace technology. I have to – as CarryOn’s Tech Practice Leader, it’s what I do for a living. Friends, I cuddle my Blackberry. So, for an Internet addict like me, the stat about reading news online is conservative. At best. Seriously, doesn’t everybody get their news from the Internet, where every report filed must be true, even if it’s posted on a site called “GoFugYourself”?

But, due exclusively to the unrelenting persistence of my scoop-hunting and news-breaking friend, I gave in. I actually got up from my desk, left my office, caught a tram to the kitchen where the papers are stashed and dirtied my hands with ink (yes, dear Internet generation, papers really do leave you messed with ink… it ain’t purdy and don’t do it wearing white). My friend’s column on the “bantering Bancrofts” was witty, but what was really memorable was my renewed love affair with the paper – the actual, physical, hard-copy version of the paper.

I spent an hour flirting with the papers that morning. I read the Journal, the Gray Lady, the Pink Sheet, and even the entertainment rags. Actually, maybe read is an understatement. I devoured them (and my coffee). And I learned something. You can tell a lot about a paper by experiencing its physical manifestation. Having not picked up a paper in years, the first thing I noticed was how thin it had gotten. It lost weight. And not just a few pounds, but it shed entire pages. This gave me an insane dose of reality on how dire the traditional journalism industry is. Gone are the pages of colorful, clever ads, and with them, the credible, authoritative, expert journalism of yesteryear. Where has the reckless ad spending gone? Once you get beyond the initial shock and awe of the skeleton of a paper, you are quickly schooled on the publisher’s priorities. Just scan the headlines and look at the print layout. Consider how the stories are placed on the page. What’s above the fold. What’s below. What story was big enough to make it to A1. What stories were abandoned on the last page. What stories merited photography and original artwork. All of this gives you invaluable insight to how the media operates. As PR professionals, it allows us to better hone our pitches, appreciate the spoils of our hard work, and remind us how lucky we are to have a choice.

Is it advertising?  Marketing?  Public relations?  Is it something entirely different?  Personally I think there’s a case to be made that social media IS entirely different…  But that’s for another day.  For today the question of which traditional practice belongs in social media is increasingly germane as budgets are allocated to the elusive “social media” campaign and marketers, advertisers, and PR practitioners alike are jockeying for position.   

To begin somewhat cheekily let’s dissect the term, “social media.” Sounds sort of like a combination of “society” and the “media.”  In fact, it could very easily be reiterated as a combination of the “public” and the “media,” wouldn’t you say?  Makes me wonder, had the industry simply coined the Web 2.0 phenomenon “Public Media” rather than “Social Media,” would this three-legged race between PR, marketing, and advertising even exist?  Who would argue that a new iteration of the media (blogs, user reviews) and the public (social networking pages, user-generated content) was anything but public relations?  Assigning an ad agency to manage your Public Media campaign would be like aiming to get a spot on the Today Show and deciding that a billboard en route to NBC studios was the best method of attaining it. 

For a starting point let’s create a working definition for business’s role in social media.  How about: 

Fostering an organization’s ability to strategically listen to, appreciate, and respond to those persons whose mutually beneficial relationships with the organization are necessary if it is to achieve its missions and values. 

If that works for you as a definition for a business’ place in social media then read no further.  In actuality, that is the definition of public relations as set forth in Robert Heath’s Encyclopedia of Public Relations.  You’ve got to admit it bears a strong resemblance to what most organizations ought to be striving for in social media.  That said, it is true social media campaigns require skills commonly associated with advertising and marketing as well.  Who then is best suited to take ownership of the campaign at large? Wikipedia defines the three practices as follows: 

Advertising is a communication whose purpose is to inform potential customers about products and services and how to obtain and use them. Many advertisements are also designed to generate increased consumption of those products and services through the creation and reinforcement of brand image and brand loyalty. 

Marketing is a societal process which discerns consumers’ wants, focusing on a product or service to fulfill those wants, attempting to mold the consumers toward the products or services offered. Marketers are tasked with creating consumer awareness of products or services through marketing techniques. 

Public relations (PR) is the management of internal and external communication of an organization to create and maintain a positive image. Public relations involves popularizing successes, downplaying failures, announcing changes, and many other activities. 

What makes social media interesting is that a successful campaign involves understanding consumers and molding them in a way that aligns with your product (marketing), managing communications to create and maintain a positive image (PR) and informing consumers about products or services (advertising).  Likewise the skill sets associated with practitioners of each – research/demographics (marketing), communications/messaging (public relations), and creatives/collateral (advertising) are all valuable in the social media realm. Let’s look at what each practice contributes to a social media campaign. 

Marketing: Understanding your audience and molding your consumer has historically been a complicated process.  Traditional focus groups, surveys and research were time consuming, expensive, and had the potential to be entirely misleading if not handled expertly…  That was of course before the web.  These days web analytics can tell us exactly who is visiting a website, with what frequency, which pages are most popular, what the site’s overall demographic is, where else they go online, what keywords they search for, which brands they have an affinity for, how much time they spend online,  etc. etc. etc.  The available information is akin to Best Buy taking a three-page survey of every single person who entered their store, regardless of whether they made a purchase or not, and cutting up the data a dozen different ways.  The marketer’s responsibility in defining the consumer and discerning his or her wants is significantly lessened thanks to technology. 

Advertising: Designing creatives and collateral that are visually compelling will always be an important part of communications.  In social media, that need is expanded because almost all aspects of a campaign require graphics, flash, and even video content. However, this is where the role of an advertiser is more a necessary evil than a central component of a social media campaign.  Social media revolves around UGC – User Generated Content (all of it altruistically branded, compelling and extremely viral of course), which extends far beyond the company’s resources to create itself.  Advertisers are limited to what I call BGC – Brand Generated Content.  This content has its place, but at the end of the day it is still content that is created by the brand (be it by the company or its agency) and pushed in front of consumers just like traditional advertisements.  Extremely well crafted ads can spawn spoof UGC content, but for the most part advertisements are a brief, self-serving announcement with little opportunity for interaction or sustainable engagement.  This is exemplified in Wikipedia’s definition of advertising:, “…informing potential consumers about products and services,” is a pervasive mentality in advertising that allows little room for dialogue.  If you haven’t seen the humorous YouTube video on “The Break Up” with advertising, check it out. 

Public Relations: Managing communications to create and maintain a positive image – the hallmark of PR professionals, is the strategy on which all good social media campaigns are based.  The influencers may have changed from journalists to bloggers or other social influencers, but the strategy is still to reach those influencers with a compelling message, have a dialogue, and foster a positive public image.  The promise of social media is dialogue with consumers – the advertiser’s role neglects this promise and the marketer’s role is lessened thanks to technology.  The PR practitioner’s role in crafting a message, building relationships with key influencers, and fostering a positive public image is the cornerstone of a successful social media campaign. 

To come full circle, admittedly social media campaigns do require aspects of all three traditional practices.  However, the strategy and campaign ownership needs to come from the public relations practitioner.  Still not convinced because you have a great viral video created by your Ad agency?  Fantastic!  Give it a shot; try posting it to YouTube without creating any dialogue or developing a communications strategy.  Next step?  Cross your fingers.  That’s about the best you can do.  If you want to reap the rewards of true engagement with consumers you need to leverage that content as part of a properly conceived dialogue with relevant influencers.  If you want to reach the end game of serving as a branded conduit for meaningful consumer-to-consumer dialogue that messaging strategy needs to be executed with perfection.  Brand Generated Content is great as a starter log, but communications managed by PR professionals is the match that has to touch all corners of the wood pile before you can really get a fire going.  For a list of other peoples’ position on the subject, check out the following: 

http://buddingpublicrelations.blogspot.com/2007/08/advertising-and-pr-in-social-media.html 

http://pr.typepad.com/pr_communications/2007/08/is-social-media.html 

http://www.livingstonbuzz.com/blog/2007/11/13/social-media-pr-advertising-or-none-of-the-above/ 

http://getgood.typepad.com/getgood_strategic_marketi/2007/10/the-lines-they-.html 

http://pop-pr.blogspot.com/2007/10/pr-will-lose-social-media-to.html