Eric Yaverbaum, Robert Bly, Ilise Benun. Public Relations for Dummies, 2nd Edition

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Part I: PR: What It Is, How It Works

Where to find help

You want to hire a PR firm, ad agency, or free-

lancer, but you don’t know where to turn. The

following mini-directory of creative talent

should be of some assistance:

The Agency Databases,

published by Lexis

Nexis, 121 Chanlon Road, New Providence,

NJ 07974, Phone: 800-340-3244. www.

redbooks.com. Contains detailed pro-

files of nearly 14,000 U.S. and international

advertising agencies, including accounts

represented by each agency, fields of spe-

cialization, breakdown of gross billings by

media, contact information on agency per-

sonnel and much more. Available in most

libraries.

O’Dwyer Directory of Public Relations Firms,

271 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10016. Lists

2,900 PR firms. Available in most libraries.

Public Relations Tactics,

a monthly maga-

zine published by the Public Relations

Society of America, 845 Third Ave., New

York, NY 10022. Many PR agents offer their

services each month in the classified ads

section of this journal.

Also check your local Yellow Pages for listings

under “Advertising Agencies,” “Public Relations

Agencies,” “Graphic Design Studios,”

“Illustrators,” “Writers,” “Copywriters,” “Artists,”

and “Photographers.”

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Part II

Brainstorming

and Thinking

Creatively

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In this part . . .

R depends on creative ideas, and Part II equips

you to hatch those ideas by the truckload. The first

step is to set up your own PR program (Chapter 4). In

Chapter 5, you get a process for formulating creative

ideas, and Chapter 6 gives you some creative PR tactics

you can apply to your own campaigns.

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Chapter 4

Setting Up Your PR Department

and Program

In This Chapter

! Creating your PR department

! Defining your authority

! Putting PR together with the rest of your business

! Putting your resources in place

! Detailing your PR efforts

o win the Super Bowl, you don’t just show up that day, play, and hope for

the best. Long before you get there, you put together a team and a plan.

You also review your strategy, practice your moves, buy the equipment you

need, and train your players.

Winning in PR is similar — early preparation leads to lasting success. This

chapter covers the steps to follow whether you’re planning to do your own

PR campaigns in-house or manage the activities of an outside PR specialist or

agency you hire (as covered in Chapter 3).

Picking the PR Team

One person in your organization should be responsible for PR, serving as a

liaison between your company and your PR specialist or agency, as well as

coordinating communication between your firm and the press.

If you’re a self-employed professional or a small home-based business, the PR

coordinator or manager will probably be you. You probably can delegate a lot

of the administrative work to an assistant, and if he is bright, maybe he can

take on some strategic and creative responsibility as well.

Large corporations usually have a separate PR department or at least one or

more managers who have PR as a full-time job responsibility. They go under a

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variety of names, including PR manager, corporate communications director,

and media relations manager.

In mid-size firms, the sales manager, marketing manager, or advertising man-

ager may handle PR as part of the company’s overall marketing communica-

tions mix, which may also include trade shows, advertising, a Web site, and

direct marketing.

Whoever you select, that person — whether PR is a full-time responsibility or

just one of many responsibilities — is in charge of PR and is accountable for

getting programs done on budget, on time, and in synch with communica-

tions objectives.

Defining the Scope of Your Authority

Unless the PR manager is also the owner of the business, he may have the

responsibility for PR but probably does not have the final authority. That is,

the PR manager reports to someone else who has approval authority over all

major PR activities, including copy for press releases, decisions about event

planning or special promotions, and what to say to the press.

Because effective PR depends on being able to give the media a fast, accu-

rate, honest response when reporters have questions, the PR manager

cannot operate effectively if everything said in PR — in print, in person, and

on the phone — has to go to a half-dozen people to get approval. By the time

the response is approved, the story has grown cold and the media is alien-

ated. And it’s your competitors you will be reading about, I can promise.

To make PR efforts effective, the PR manager needs to be able to make deci-

sions quickly. That means a simplified chain of command. For approval on

major PR documents, the PR manager should have to circulate copy to no

more than two or three people — the product manager, a technical expert for

accuracy, and perhaps the CEO or marketing director. For media contact, the

appropriate spokespeople within the company, such as the CEO or marketing

manager, should be committed to giving priority to media response and to

understanding that the press can’t wait.

Integrating PR with the

Rest of Your Business

As I discuss in Chapter 1, PR is an essential element in an overall marketing

scheme, but remember that it’s only one component of many. PR should be

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part of an integrated marketing communications strategy. When deciding

when and how best to use it, consider the following:

! PR should be fully integrated into other forms of marketing when

launching a new product or service.

! PR should always be “in the loop.” Having a PR practitioner present

during strategic brainstorming is vitally important.

! PR should work synergistically with other components of the marketing

mix whenever possible — the more the better.

! PR should lead in a crisis situation (of course, the lawyers will disagree).

In a best-case scenario, the two disciplines — PR and the legal

department — work together. (See Chapter 21.)

In an organization large enough to have a PR manager or department, the

danger is that these PR specialists may operate in a vacuum and become

removed and remote from the day-to-day business. Ironically then, those

assigned the task of communicating company messages and information to

various outside audiences (the media, the public, shareholders, the commu-

nity) risk becoming the least informed.

Half the job of a full-time PR professional is disseminating information to the

media; the other half is understanding what the company is really doing.

Don’t sit at your desk all day. Get out and walk around the factory, the ware-

house, the shipping department, and the product managers’ offices. Ask people

what’s important, what’s interesting, and what messages they want to commu-

nicate to the outside world. Your job is then to understand these stories and

package them in a way that’s appealing to the media and their audiences.

Every PR manager, full time or part time, should do the following to keep up-

to-date with a company’s activities:

! Read industry trade journals.

! Attend major trade shows at which your company is exhibiting.

! Frequently review your own Web site to make sure that it’s current. (See

Chapter 16 for more on getting the most out of your own Web site.)

! Frequently visit competitors’ Web sites and see what they’re up to.

! Read all new sales literature that your company publishes.

! Respond to competitors’ ads in magazines and request their sales

literature.

! Talk with sales reps to see what customers are saying about your prod-

ucts versus the competition.

! Go with sales reps on actual sales calls to prospects.

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! Read the daily newspaper to follow journalists who may write about you

or your competitors.

To follow and track your competitors in the news, make sure to set up

news alerts on each of them. (Read more about this in Chapter 18.)

! Become a student of the media. Analyze your evening news from the per-

spective of the person being interviewed. How well is she getting her

message across? What could she be doing better? How could she be

clearer?

Before you start a flurry of PR activities, have a PR plan in place that clearly

defines audiences, objectives, and key messages you want to communicate.

The PR planning process is covered in detail in Chapter 2.

Setting Up the PR Command

and Control Center

To be an effective and efficient PR professional, you need to create a “PR

Command and Control Center” — a place in your business where you can,

from a single location, develop and implement all your PR campaigns.

Getting in gear

Fortunately, your workspace needn’t be elaborate or expensive; all you really

need is a desk, a phone, a computer with Internet access, a fax machine, a

good photocopier, a postage meter, and some reference directories. Here are

some suggestions to help you transform your own desk into a tiptop PR com-

mand and control center in short order:

! Invest in a set of media directories. If you do any sort of regular PR

campaign, I recommend owning one or more of these directories, such

as Bacon’s Media Directories or Gebbie’s All-In-One Media Directory. If you

are truly only going to do a one-shot press release once or twice a year,

you can often find some of these books in the reference section of your

local library.

! Develop a good media list — a list of media contacts to call when you

want to get a story in print or on the air. Ideally, your media list is a

work in progress that is comprised of contacts from a current media

directory in addition to personal contacts. A thorough media list con-

tains not only contact and outlet information but also information on

deadlines, preferred means of contact, and other useful notes. A media

list is an invaluable tool when you’re sending any announcements or

responding to queries.

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• Keep your lists updated. Reporters commonly switch beats or

even outlets, so keeping in touch with your contacts is important

so you know whom to call or where to send your releases.

• As the years go by, your media contacts will change jobs. Keep

your media contact list up-to-date, and follow these contacts as

they move from job to job. Failing to do so means you have lost

valuable contacts you have spent time and effort in building.

• As people make career moves, they often climb the corporate

ladder. As a result, the young journalists I knew when they and I

were in our 20s are now in their 40s. Many are media big shots, and

by keeping in touch, I now have personal access to high-level pro-

ducers and editors at media outlets I did not have before.

Remember: One easy way to get to the top of the oak tree is to

plant an acorn and sit on it.

• For more information on building a media list and working it to

your advantage, refer to Chapter 11.

! Use a monitoring service. A monitoring service, also known as a clip-

ping service, helps you track your media placements. Monitoring serv-

ices provide two benefits: They track the stories you place and the news

you don’t as well. For example, if you sent a release to the Wall Street

Journal, and the service finds nothing about you in the Journal, you

know your release didn’t get used. In addition, reporters don’t have time

to clip and mail you the stories they write about you when they’re pub-

lished. So without a monitoring service, you may not even know that a

story has come out.

Monitoring services are a great safety net when reporters can’t give you

a publication date on a story they’re writing about your company or

when a television station picks up an announcement as soon as you

release it. Several free but very limited services, such as Google Alerts

(www.google.com/alerts), Yahoo! Alerts (http://alerts.yahoo.

com), and Northern Light (www.northernlight.com), do a better job

monitoring an industry than a specific company. Fee-based services

such as Factiva are online and have a comprehensive list of publications

and radio and television stations that they monitor through company- or

keyword-specific searches. Also fee-based are traditional clipping serv-

ices such as Luce or Burrelle’s, which send you photocopies of newspa-

per or magazine clippings but have a longer delivery time. Broadcast

monitoring services such as Video Monitoring Services or Media Link

monitor both radio and television programs for clients.

! Become acquainted with the media outlets. The media directories are

a great starting place and an ongoing resource for getting to know the

media. But the best way to fully understand what a newspaper or televi-

sion or radio station covers or to find out about a specific reporter’s beat is

simply to read the newspapers in the morning, turn on your radio on your

way home from work, and catch the evening news on television. Doing so

helps you to better frame your stories and to avoid PR blunders — such as

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pitching a reporter on a story that he covered only two days ago.

Building relationships with reporters is key.

! Collect and maintain editorial calendars for key media. Magazines and

special sections of some national daily newspapers have yearly editorial

calendars that note upcoming topics or issues they will be covering. To

obtain a calendar, log on to the publication’s Web site or call its advertis-

ing sales department.

! Assemble a complete list of vendors. You will deal with many different

vendors on different projects. From printers for press kits to release dis-

tribution services (services that distribute your press release to the

media for you via mail, fax, or e-mail), many vendors can enhance your

activities. Some vendors excel at making color media kits, while others

are known for broadcast faxing out a press release. Helpful sources for

finding vendors include your local Yellow Pages and networking with

other businesspeople in your city or town.

! Do your homework. Research your competitors on the Internet, while

daily keeping abreast of breaking news, trends, and new developments.

What’s the best way to do this? Go to the library and search a database

of past news stories in your industry (some clipping services come with

this option) and read as much as you can every day.

! Develop a standard kit of core press materials. A good press kit con-

sists of the following elements:

• Company fact sheet: This one- to two-page document gives a brief

description of the company, its primary activities, products and

services, and any other relevant facts, such as sales/revenues,

number of employees, and names of key management personnel.

• Biographies: Prepare short biographies of your company’s key

management, usually the CEO, chairman, president, and other key

executives, such as the CFO or senior vice presidents. The bios

should discuss their current position and responsibilities in addi-

tion to a brief professional history.

• Key releases: Depending on your objectives and your audience,

key releases can be anything from quarterly results to product or

service announcements.

! Sharpen your writing skills. PR professionals write everything from

press releases, media alerts, and letters pitching ideas, to speeches,

strategy plans, and client correspondence. You may want to consider

taking a PR writing or journalism course at a local college to find how to

write for your different audiences. You should always have at your fin-

gertips these three writing resources — a dictionary, a thesaurus, and

the Associated Press Stylebook to guide you on matters of grammar and

style. And remember, professionalism is critical in your relationships

with both clients and media, so always carefully proof your materials. Or

better yet, ask someone else to look over the material for mistakes.

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Sometimes you can easily fail to see errors in documents that you’ve

written yourself. For more tips on how to write better, refer to Chapter 27.

! Network. Try to continually meet other PR professionals and journalists

to help you develop and maintain relationships. Here are some ways to

do this:

• Join industry trade groups like the Public Relations Society of

America (PRSA; www.prsa.org) or the National Investor Relations

Institute (NIRI; www.niri.org). They offer seminars that provide

access to some of the most well-respected PR professionals and

key media people. They also offer invaluable training and informa-

tional seminars on a wide range of areas (for example, crisis man-

agement, media relations, buzz marketing, and writing skills).

• Invite reporters out to lunch, not to pitch a story to them, but

rather to give a general background on your company and to find

out more about what stories they’re interested in covering.

Creating and maintaining

a media contact list

As an alternative to formal networking, a business owner or manager who

has part-time responsibility for public relations can build up a list of media

contacts slowly, over time. You do this by creating and maintaining a list or

database of any media contact or outlet that runs a story or short item about

you based on PR materials you sent. Your media contact list consists of the

names, titles, publications or stations, addresses, phone numbers, e-mail

addresses, and fax numbers of editors, writers, reporters, program directors,

hosts, and other media people who have previously given coverage to your

PR efforts. Putting together your personal media contact list is outlined in

Chapter 11.

Every time you get media coverage, send a thank-you note to the reporter or

editor who used your material. Your note should thank the person for taking

the time to write about you, while also briefly mentioning one or two other

story ideas that may be right for the publication and that you could help with

by providing more information. The letter should be short and primarily

focus on a sincere thank-you; the mention of new ideas should be a soft sell

and take only one or two lines.

Don’t offend the media! Members of the media are extremely sensitive about

the symbiotic relationship between the press and PR people. Be extremely

cautious not to suggest in any thank-you letter that the journalist is doing

you a favor or helping to promote your product.

Chapter 4: Setting Up Your PR Department and Program

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