Public Relations for the 21st Century
Let’s say you have a good story about a product or service, and want to get it out to a broad base of prospective customers, but you don’t have the budget for a big ad campaign. Sounds like a job for PR Pro! (Your Public Relations Professional superhero...)
Or, conversely, you have a really bad story that you have to deal with, like the Big Pharma companies whose painkilling drugs were recently publicly linked to thousands of cardiac events which they had known about, but didn’t bother to disclose. PR Pro to the rescue!
Of course, public relations professionals don’t run around in red tights (at least most of them don’t) or leap tall buildings in a single bound. But in the right circumstances, they can deliver Superhero results.
More Than One Public
The term “public relations” describes a collection of activities which an organization undertakes to manage the way it appears to the outside world. A central idea in this profession is that an organization deals with more than one “public.” These publics include customers, employees, communities, shareholders, regulators, other organizations and society at large.
The Public Relations Society of America offers this definition: “Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.”
This definition suggests that public relations is a two-way street – and in fact many public relations professionals spend a lot of time examining print, broadcast and Internet sources to determine how their client, organization or entire industry is being perceived by the outside world.
Putting Out Brush Fires
One of the more challenging aspects of the PR Pro job description is crisis communication. Most of these crises are not as severe as the pharmaceutical debacle, but they all have to be handled quickly and precisely.
According to Carol Fusaro, Vice President at Sullivan Creative, the best response is to attack the crisis head-on, and get factual information out to all the publics involved. “You have to say, ‘We’re working on solving these problems. Here’s what we’ve done already, and here’s what we’ll do next’ – and then follow through with doing that.”
For example, one of our clients confronted a recent crisis when an accident at one of its facilities caused some concern in the surrounding communities. The PR solution was to run full-page ads in community newspapers, explaining exactly what happened, taking responsibility for it, and listing steps that would be taken to prevent such a thing in the future.
A rumor is not as dramatic as a crisis, but it can still be dangerous – kind of a smoldering brush fire. In a research paper published on the Institute for Public Relations website (www.instituteforpr.com), authors DiFonzo and Bordia determined that the most effective tactics for dealing with rumors were 1) structuring uncertainties (giving boundaries to them), and 2) making clear, decisive official comments about the rumor’s truth or falsehood (don’t say “no comment”).
Courting the Reporters
A public relations professional may manage speaking tours, investor or employee relations, communication with interest groups, conflict mediation or convention planning, but typically a major part of the job is press relations.
“One of the big advantages of PR,” says Fusaro, “is that it offers a lot of third-party credibility to your campaign. Even if you wrote the press release, the publication or broadcast thought it was important enough to put out, which gives you credibility in the marketplace.”
The first step is to determine the target audience, and then figure out what publications are geared toward that audience, whether it’s trade- or industry-specific publications, general business publications or city or regional newspapers sold to the public.
Next, make a list of the reporters who cover your beat. A number of directories are available listing publications and reporters (including contact information); Bacon’s is a leading provider of these directories and lists. (www.bacons.com)
Now it’s time to establish relationships with the journalists you consider valuable. At meetings, seek out trade publications editors: face-to-face relationships are the strongest. Don’t waste a journalist’s time: any contact should provide useful information, stories or tips. A stream of empty press releases has only one destination, the circular file.
Find out as much as you can about your valuable journalists. How do they prefer to receive information – mail, e-mail, telephone? (see sidebar) What’s the best way to contact them? What stories or angles do they return to on a regular basis?
Tools of the Trade
The first tool is the press kit, a packet of concise, clearly written information about your organization. This will typically include the organization’s background – its products and services, history, mission and vision; fact sheets, and information about its position in the marketplace; information about the industry generally, which can help a reporter fill out a story; and the name of a contact person.
A press release can go out with the press kit, or at any other time when there’s something newsworthy, such as a new product or service, a new contract or a promotion. Journalistic training is helpful here: the more the release reads like a news story, the more likely it is to be used. Get Who What When Where Why and How into the first paragraph. Give it a “hook” (typically the Why). Include sentences about the company, and the client if applicable. Keep it brief – one or two double-spaced pages is plenty.
Your organization’s key personnel can be pitched to journalists as resources for stories – people with experience and knowledge about their field who will be good subjects for an interview.
And PR initiatives can be timed. Pay attention to reporters’ deadlines and required lead time. Trade publications put out editorial calendars for the year; a story about your organization can be pitched to coincide with the theme of a particular issue.
Evaluating Results
The question of how PR should be evaluated has been a thorny one for the trade. Measures have progressed from outputs (number of stories) to outcomes (increase in sales) to, most recently, the maintenance of a sustained relationship between an organization and its publics.
“At Sullivan Creative,” says Fusaro, “we use public relations as part of the whole integrated branding and marketing campaign. It’s an especially good complement to direct marketing. When we time it right and get a DM piece into people’s hands a few days after they’ve read an article about the organization – that’s a real hit!”
PR and the Internet
The rallying cry of the ‘90’s, “The Internet changes everything!” has evolved in the early 21st Century to, “The Internet changes some things more than others.” It’s changing public relations quite a bit.
Your Website: PR Power
For starters, look no further than your website. Today, that is the face that your organization shows to many members of your publics. That’s where they go to see who you are, what you’re up to, what’s new and how vigorous you are. (How often is your website updated?) As your website evolves, keep a public relations professional in the loop.
Your website should also be a part of any crisis communication tactics. Not that you want to feature a crisis as a main headline, but people who are concerned should see that you have answers, and see how to get to them, as soon as they hit your home page.
Some PR commentators point out that with e-mail and a website, “we no longer have to put up with those #*!# reporters” – but this misses the whole point about third-party credibility (see main article). No matter how well-crafted, your website and marketing e-mails are coming from you, and don’t have as much credibility as a broadcast story or print article.
The Information Ocean
The Internet has quickly developed into an information ocean. There’s more information there – good, bad and indifferent – than anybody can deal with.
Most journalists today use the Internet as a major research tool. This means that they can quickly learn a lot about your organization and your industry – maybe more than you know yourself. This is a strong incentive for PR professionals to do a lot of research, and stay honest in their communications.
The Internet also has virtually unlimited negative information potential. As many organizations have found, an interest group can put up a website overnight that trashes their reputation. PR professionals need to be continually vigilant. A survey by the Institute for Public Relations found that the average PR professional spends between 15 and 19 hours per week online.
e-Mail Overload
The IPR survey cited above revealed that 2/3 of the PR respondents prefer to deliver pitches and press releases to journalists by e-mail. Most journalists would prefer to communicate by e-mail, and some journalists won’t accept press releases in hard copy.
Survey respondents believe that the widespread use of e-mail has increased the amount of information that is communicated; strengthened professional ties, personal rapport and relationships; and quickened the pace of decision-making in journalism.
Some PR professionals direct journalists to a page on the organization’s website where they can download electronic stories, graphics and hi-resolution photographs – everything they need for immediate publication.
But as we all know, the sheer abundance of e-mail can be a curse. Professionals of any description would rather spend less time reading e-mail, so they can devote more time to actually doing work. The problem is especially acute with journalists, who experience heavy information overload and have developed a quick finger for the Delete button.
Many journalists have more than one e-mail address. The challenge for the PR professional is to get the “inside track” address. This underscores the importance of establishing good relationships with those who can help you. The Internet hasn’t changed that at all.
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