How To Get Great PR

By Rusty Cawley www.prrainmaker.com
Reproduced with permission.

Study What Works and Copy It

Everyone wants great PR. There are lots of different thoughts on how to do it. This study follows the “teachings” of Rusty Cawley, who says Flacks take the approach, “Let’s throw all the spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks.”

Reject that notion now.

PR publicists are constantly looking for ways to improve their odds of attracting positive attention from the news media. They study individual reporters and editors. They analyse individual publications, broadcasts and Web sites.

They take the time to understand the news media and how they react to specific circumstances. They understand the reporter’s problems and they solve them.

They look for ways to stack the odds in their favour.

Dealing with the media is a lot like gambling. The odds are always against your placing any particular story. Far more news releases end up in the garbage than find a place in the newspaper or on the television.

But there are ways to improve your chances. In gambling, you do this by studying the odds and playing accordingly. The same is true in PR . You study what works, then you apply what you learn.

Anytime you deal with the news media, you want to stack the odds in your favour. You will need every advantage you can get.

Play ‘Tight and Aggressive’

Poker will teach you more about human nature that just about any activity short of physical combat.

Greed versus fear. Risk versus reward. Truth versus deception.

There are two basis approaches to playing poker. One type of player believes that victory is possible with any hand, if you know how to read your fellow players and how to skilfully execute a bluff. The other believes in waiting for a certain combination of cards that indicate a high probability of victory, then betting aggressively on those strong hands.

In Texas Hold ‘Em, you receive just two cards before placing your first bet. The best players will avoid betting at all unless those first two cards are strong cards. They will bet only if they have some combination of aces, kings, queens, jacks or tens, or if they draw a pair.

Anything less, and they fold their hand.

This strategy is called “tight and aggressive.”

It’s tight, because the player will bet only in very specific circumstances. It’s aggressive, because (once the player gets the combination he wants) he plays hard to win, giving up only when it becomes obvious that another player has a stronger hand.

How the Amateurs Play

When dealing with reporters, PR flacks and their clients play as if they can win with any hand they are dealt.

They begin with some vague notion that they have a bit of news that someone out there is eagerly waiting to publish. So the flacks hammer out a press release, which passes through a committee that usually includes the top executives and the legal staff.

If the release contained any real news value before it went to this committee, it is now buried under a pile of ego and adjectives. Next, the flacks transmit the release to a long list of media outlets, not bothering to target any specific reporter or editor, hoping the information will find its way into the right hands.

They are then shocked when their story idea finds few takers.

They are playing a loose game of PR, betting on any hand and hoping to bluff their way to victory. They play like amateurs.

The Two Cards You Must Have in Your Hand

Play “tight and aggressive.” Like the professional poker player in a game of Texas Hold ‘Em, PR experts insist upon having certain cards in their hands before placing a bet.

These cards are:

Newsworthiness.
Timeliness.

If you want to create a story that will appeal to a journalist, you must begin with both of these cards in your hand.

Without newsworthiness or without timeliness, you should fold your hand. You have little chance at victory. There is no point in betting your time, money and effort trying to bluff your way to a win. The odds are stacked too heavily against you.

What is Newsworthiness?

First, to be newsworthy and to get great PR the story must have a significant impact upon the news audience. The fact that the story interests you, or your client, or your CEO is irrelevant. This qualifies the story only for your company newsletter.

To qualify for the news media, the story must interest readers, viewers or listeners. If you want to place a story in an engineering trade magazine, then your story must interest a broad range of engineers. If you want to place your story in USA Today, then your story must interest a broad range of the general public.

Second, to be newsworthy your story must identify a conflict, signal a change, deal with a problem or point out an oddity. We will detail these four elements in a later chapter. Suffice it to say: A story that lacks at least one of these elements, by definition, cannot be newsworthy.

What is Timeliness?

To satisfy the need for timeliness, you must provide the reporter with a news peg: a reason to tell your story right now.

Before Sept. 11, 2001, there was little interest in the news media in the Taliban. After Sept. 11, that lack of interest turned into a frenzy of interest.

What changed? The story became timely.

The Taliban issue had developed a news peg. There was now a reason to tell the story.

That’s an extreme example, but the lesson holds in any story situation. It’s not news that Xerox hired a new CEO two years ago. It is news that Xerox will get a new CEO this afternoon. The difference is timeliness.

By definition, news is timely. If you can’t tie your story to breaking news, or at least to very recent events, then shelve the story. Your best bet is to wait for a future event will make your story timely once again.

Never Bet on a Weak Hand

Expert PR publicists play “tight and aggressive” at all times. They never let ego, emotion or outside pressure push them into betting on a losing hand.

They insist that every story they take to the news media include two essential cards: newsworthiness and timeliness.

Put on your game FACE

Every news story must have a FACE. If you forget to put a FACE on your story proposal, your chances of interesting a reporter are nil.

By FACE, I mean:

F: Feelings
A: Analysis
C: Crisis
E: Energy

These are the elements of a well-crafted story proposal. Let’s look at each part one by one.

Feelings are the emotions that your story stirs within the reporter, and thus the reader. The seven basic emotions are love, hate, anger, fear, sorrow, envy and greed. There are endless degrees, combinations and variations on these seven. (For example, “pity” is fear blended with sorrow. “Rage” is an extreme form of “anger.”). Your story must strongly arouse one, and only one, of these basic emotions. (Note that only one of these emotions, “love,” is positive. This is one reason why news is almost always negative.)

Analysis provides the logic that sells the story. Feelings open the door with a reporter, but logic closes the sale. Analysis may come in the form of numbers, statistics, data, studies, surveys or expert commentary. The key is that the analysis must at least appear to be objective and accurate. The analysis allows reporters to take your story seriously. It also gives reporters a subconscious excuse to listen to their feelings.

Crisis is the inherent conflict within the story. Without conflict, there is no news. This is what reporters mean when they talk about getting “both sides of the story.” Every story must have at least two sides. Ideally, for the news media, the story has a hero on one side and a villain on the other. You want to be the hero.

Energy is what results from mixing feelings, analysis and crisis in the right proportions. Energy is what drives the story. It is what compels the reporter to want to write the story. It is what compels the editor to give the story good play. It is what compels the reader to finish the story, to remember your story, to pass it along to friends.

The expert PR publicist knows: You never take on the media without putting on your game FACE.

Write Proposals, Not Releases

If you want great PR, there are only two times to write a news release:

The first is when your story is so big that your only real problem is finding a room large enough to hold all the reporters who want to attend your press conference.
The other is when your news is so small that it warrants only the briefest mention.

The first instance is rare and is generally reserved for large-cap public companies. Microsoft announces that Bill Gates is stepping down as CEO. Coca-Cola announces a settlement in a yearlong racial discrimination suit. Ford announces it is recalling thousands of Explorers to replace their Firestone tires. These are examples of when a press release is the right choice.

The second instance is fairly common and is found in organizations of all kinds: public, private, governmental and not-for-profit. Your organization names a new vice president. Your company announces its second-quarter profits. Such news is condensed into a release and distributed to local newspapers and trade magazines, usually with solid results.

But all too often a CEO expects the mainstream media and the trade press to jump on a story that simply has no obvious news value.

A prominent restaurant chain opens its second location in a major city. The first location got great coverage; the second should get even more, right?

Wrong.

There’s no obvious news value to a second location. Send that as a news release to the media, and your story will line garbage cans throughout your town.

The PR publicist knows: In most situations, it is better to think in terms of proposals, not releases.

Instead of releasing a general idea to the media at-large, tailor your story to specific reporters at specific publications.

Forget the headline: “Restaurant Opens Second Great Location.”

Consider breaking your one large story into several smaller stories, then selling the pieces to the media one at a time.

Does your new restaurant offer a trendy new dish or an exotic cocktail? Call the local morning show producers and offer to show viewers how to make it at home.

Installing a high-tech kitchen with a flash-cook oven unlike any other in town? Call the restaurant-beat writer at the local business journal and offer an exclusive look at how the device will make your restaurant among the most profitable in town.

Is your celebrity investor dropping in to check out your site? Take high-quality photos and send them to the city’s gossip columnist. Better yet, call the talk radio station and offer a live interview.

If nothing else, plan a stunt. Break a world record. Get outrageous.

Propose your stories one at a time. That’s how the expert PR publicist works.

Change the Customer, Not the Product

When faced with customers who are either ignoring or abandoning their products, CEOs often choose to alter their products to fit demand. This is usually a path to disaster.

Altering a product is expensive and time-consuming, eating away at precious resources and profits. It also damages the strength of its brand name, confusing the consumer and widening the rift.

The PR publicist understands that there are two ways of doing business. You can compete or you can create.

Most companies compete for the same set of customers. In a growing market, this works just fine. The number of available customers is going up and up, so there’s plenty for anyone who is willing to get out there and fight for them.

But what happens when a market refuses to grow? Or worse, what happens when a market actually begins to shrink. Suddenly, you are fighting for fewer and fewer customers. Your pricing power vanishes. So do your profits.

Instead, companies should seek to change the customer by creating new behaviours. The best method for this is public relations.

No one understood this better than Edward L. Bernays, the father of modern PR. Indeed, according to Bernays, it is this principle of changing the public instead of the product that separates PR from advertising and marketing.

Whenever hired to sell a product to the consumer, Bernays always chose to sell a new behaviour instead.

He began by quickly analysing the public behaviour that prevented his client from thriving. He then determined how the public would need to think and to act in order to benefit his client.

Finally, Bernays would select the strategy and the tactics that would alter public opinion and consumer behaviour to fit his needs.

Caution: Bernays at Work

His methods were indirect, complex and at times inscrutable. They employed front organizations, public demonstrations, letter-writing campaigns, expert testimony and other alliances.

But more often than not, they worked:

Assigned to sell books for Simon & Schuster, Bernays enlisted experts to call for great literature in the everyday home, plus he convinced architects to include built-in bookshelves in their home designs.
Called in to bolster the sagging luggage industry, Bernays persuaded colleges to inform their freshman students about the wide array of suitcases they would need on campus. He also hired singer Eddie Cantor to pose for magazine photos while packing a large trunk for a coming tour.
When the hairnet industry found itself threatened by the shorter hairstyles of the 1920s, Bernays convinced health officials to require restaurant employees to wear hairnets. He also urged fashion setters and famous artists to write newspaper articles that proclaimed the beauty of long, flowing hairstyles.
When Proctor & Gamble found that it couldn’t get children to use Ivory Soap, Bernays organized national soap-carving contests for kids.
When the bacon industry found itself being shut out of the urban American breakfast during the Roaring Twenties, Bernays found doctors to proclaim that a “hearty breakfast” of bacon and eggs is more healthful than a light breakfast of coffee, fruit and toast.

The key, Bernays said, is to get a credible champion to say what you need to have said or to do what you need to have done in order to alter the public’s opinion. Bernays would build an event around this champion’s words or actions, thus attracting media attention.

In this way, he would change the opinions and behaviours of consumers, and thus grow the overall market for his clients.

Bernays knew what many CEOs forget: It is always better to own a small share of a growing market than a large share of a shrinking market.

Three Steps to Changing the Customer

The Bernays Formula for employing the news media to change public behaviours is simple, but effective:

Use PR to generate an event.
Use the event to generate news.
Use the news to change opinion or behaviour.

Of course, today’s news media are far more sceptical than they were in Bernays’ day. But they are just as easily manipulated by the PR expert who has the creativity and the moxie to put Bernays’ ideas to work.

Don’t believe it?

Study the media machinations of the Clinton White House.

Observe the techniques of activist groups opposing everything from old-growth forestry to global trade.

Dissect the news in national media and look for the front groups, the third-party experts and the public events that are used to mold public opinion.

You can apply these same techniques today to grow your business.

If you want to attract more customers or clients, focus on changing their opinions and behaviours, not on changing your product or service.

Or, as Napoleon told his generals, “Circumstance? I make circumstance.”

Be a Hero, Not a Zero

Every company has a choice. It can be a hero, a villain or a zero.

The PR expert always chooses to portray his company as a hero as quickly and as effectively as possible.

Being a hero automatically translates into solid reputation and high credibility.

Solid reputation translates into new customers and clients. High credibility can delay, avert or even prevent a future media crisis.

Becoming a hero is a process that must begin immediately. If you wait, your company may end up like Exxon in the wake of the Valdez oil spill in 1989. More than a decade later, Exxon still suffers from its portrayal in the news media as a villain, thanks largely to the ineptitude of its CEO and its PR machine.

Exxon does a lot of great work in its community. For example, the company spends big money to save endangered tigers through zoo management and research.

It doesn’t matter.

Exxon could cure cancer, and yet an entire generation will always link Exxon with the Valdez oil spill. Exxon is a media villain, typecast as certainly as the Sheriff of Nottingham and the Wicked Witch of the West.

No PR effort can save the Exxon brand. It’s too late. It is a villain and can never become a hero. (Want proof? A 2001 survey of executives named Exxon-Mobil as the least attractive CEO job in the nation.)

Exxon’s mistake was to adopt the strategy that is adopted by most companies out of fear or ignorance: To portray themselves as zeroes. These companies want to appear entirely neutral. They want to around no strong feelings from the public by engaging in any crusade that would transform their brand from a zero into a hero.

At first glance, being a zero appears to be the safe choice.

This was the position adopted by chemical maker W.R. Grace before the book and the movie “A Civil Action,” by the investment firm Drexel Lambert before the junk bond scandals of the late 1980s and by Union Carbide before a gas cloud killed 1,400 people in Bhopal, India.

All three brands are now villain brands because the companies failed to move themselves from zero to hero in the public mind.

As with Exxon, it is too late to save W.R. Grace, Drexel Lambert and Union Carbide from being portrayed as villains.

Don’t fall into the zero trap.

PR experts portray their companies as heroes before the news media can use a crisis to turn their companies into villains. We will discuss how in the coming chapters.

Start at the Top

Begin at the bottom rung of the news media and work your way to the top. That’s the conventional wisdom most companies follow.

PR specialists call this “building credibility.”

This approach sees the media as something like the farm systems used in professional baseball during the mid-20 th century.

Back then, a prospect went straight from high school to Single-A ball. If the prospect mastered that level of minor league baseball, he moved up to Double-A, then Triple-A.

And if the player proved his skills at Triple-A, maybe . just maybe . he would get an invitation to play Major League Baseball.

This is the concept that many PR specialists sell to their clients.

“We’ll begin with the trade publications and the small newspapers,” they say. “Once we build our credibility there, we can move up to the daily newspapers and to large-market television. And if we succeed there, maybe . just maybe . we can break in with the national media. This will take years of hard work, but we can get you there if you trust us and do as we say.”

Bull.

Start at the top.

Put all of your resources initially into breaking your story in the Big Media. Focus on the national newspapers — The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Los Angeles Times — and on the regional newspapers that serve the top 20 markets, such as the Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune or The Dallas Morning News.

There is sound thinking behind this tactic.

One Good Key Will Open Many Gates

One story in a major publication will do more for your reputation than will a thousand stories in lesser publications.

Get you name into the Wall Street Journal, and you achieve instant credibility with just about any other media you contact.

Gates that were closed to you will suddenly spring wide open.

Why?

The rest of the media hate to admit this, but the major daily newspapers still set the agenda for national debate. If a story appears in the New York Times, then reporters, editors and producers across the nation know that the story has met the most stringent of journalistic standards.

This gives journalists a sense of comfort that most of them secretly crave. Think of it as journalism’s version of The Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.

For all their bombast about their independence, only a very few reporters, editors and producers are mavericks. Journalists are far more comfortable running in packs than flying solo. They care very much about how they are viewed by their peers. (Thus the obsession with the Pulitzer Prize and other awards.)

Think back to the movie “All the President’s Men,” which is a remarkably accurate portrayal of the Washington Post’s efforts to break open the Watergate scandal of the Nixon White House.

There’s a scene midway through the movie where the editors are debating whether to continue the investigation. If this story is so big, they ask one another, why are we the only news outlet in the entire nation that is covering it?

Editors, reporters and producers ask each other this question every day.

If Time magazine is running a cover story about the White House, you can bet the editors at Newsweek and U.S. News are asking each other, “Why didn’t we have a cover story about the White House?” If CNN sends a reporter to cover a hurricane in Puerto Rico, you can bet producers at CBS, ABC and NBC will ask, “Why don’t we have a reporter in Puerto Rico?”

And if a story appears in a national newspaper, you can bet other news media will at least consider producing their own version of the story. It terrifies them to do otherwise.

No Company is Too Small for National Attention

Resolve that you will start at the top, then work your way down. Understand that getting that first story in the Big Media will be exhausting and frustrating. But also realize that, once you land your national story, your other PR efforts will become many times more effective.

“But we can’t do that,” you may be telling yourself. “My company is too small. We lack the clout to get the Big Media to pay attention to us.”

The PR expert knows: The Big Media care only about the story, not the size of the company behind the story.

Journalists just want a good tale to tell. It doesn’t matter to them whether your company is large or small, whether you are a Nobel laureate or a small-town dogcatcher. They just want a good story.

With some knowledge, skill and creativity, you can provide them with a good story.

Is it easier for a major corporation to get media coverage than it is for a start-up? To a certain extent, yes. A big company like Microsoft has a massive PR budget and scores of PR specialists at its disposal. It can crank out an endless series of media releases, press conferences, photo ops and news junkets.

But study a week’s worth of the major daily and weekly newspapers. Devote a week to watching the networks’ morning and evening news programs as well as their news magazines. Note how often you see, hear and read about companies and individuals you’ve never seen, heard or read about before.

You can be among them. PR Rainmaking will get you there.

Do yourself a big favor. Don’t waste time, energy and money “building credibility” in the minor leagues.

When you’re ready to roll, start at the top.

Always Have a Plan B

PR experts know they can do everything right, and still fail to make news.

It’s a fact of life. Accept it now.

All news is affected by whatever else happened that day. All news is relative.

Newspapers have only so many columns to fill. The TV news has only so many minutes to devote. Even Web sites have only so many slots to fill with news of the day.

Even on a slow news day, more copy is thrown away than is ever used. More emails are deleted than followed. More faxes are trashed than considered.

There is also a hierarchy to news, especially in the mainstream media. Breaking news will supplant soft news, such as features and analyses. News of broad interest will supplant news of specific interest; for example, a tornado that wipes out your downtown area will likely push a local school board meeting to the back pages, if not out of newspaper entirely.

You can arrange the most visual, most intriguing media event possible. But if City Hall is burning down at the same time as your event, then that is where the news cameras are going to go. The news demands it.

We all know what happened on Sept. 11, 2001: Two passenger jets slammed into the World Trade Centre, while a third crashed into the Pentagon and a fourth was forced to the ground in a Pennsylvania field.

Just think how many important and interesting news events were chased out of the news media on Sept. 11 and during the weeks that followed – not to mention all of the soft news features and media events that were cancelled.

So how do PR publicists handle this reality? By leaving nothing to chance.

In others words: Always have a Plan B.

Keep the time window for your media event as open as long as is reasonably possible. If you arrange for a media event to last only one hour, then you severely limit the media’s ability to attend. You may force the media to choose between your event and breaking news. If you force that choice, you will lose. Keep the window open for at least three hours. If the participants (such as the CEO), balk at this idea, ask them bluntly: “How badly do you want to be in the news?” The media are in control of whether you get coverage, not you.
Choose a time that will work best for the news media. Generally, the best time for any event is between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. These are the times when the news media have the most resources available to cover events. These windows also give the reporters plenty of time to meet their deadlines.
Have your video crew on standby. Almost any city will have a company that provides video services for a variety of needs. Arrange to have a crew on standby, ready to step into the situation if breaking news draws the media away. Your crew members can shoot video and audio of the event, just as if they were the news media. They can then edit the raw footage into what is known as a “B roll,” which is a videotape of event highlights that you can provide to the local media. You must move quickly. Shoot the footage, prepare the B roll and get it to the TV stations on deadline. You cannot wait for tomorrow.
Be prepared to move to another date. When designing a media event, be sure to compare the event date with other events around the city. Avoid conflicts whenever possible. Monitor the news media as your event approaches. Have a back-up date in mind, in case other events threaten to eclipse your own. And if the newsworthiness of your event is threatened, especially by breaking news, do not hesitate to make the change.

PR experts understand and accept they are not fully in control. They know the daily news is driven by immediate events, not by advanced planning.

The only insurance policy is a sound Plan B.

Every Reporter Wants a Pulitzer

Whenever you deal with the news media, there is a primary rule that you must keep in mind at all times.

This is Cawley’s Theorem of Media Relations:

All journalists secretly believe they will someday win the Pulitzer Prize.
No journalist ever won the Pulitzer by writing nice things about businesses.

Therefore: If a journalist finds out something negative about your company, expect to see it in the news.

So what’s the point of this theorem?

Anytime you deal with a journalist – whether in person, online, by phone, by letter, in a media kit, whatever – realize you are dealing with a tiger.

The tiger may purr. The tiger may preen. The tiger may even run and jump and play. But if the tiger smells fresh meat, the tiger will feed.

No matter how friendly you become with a journalist, no matter how well an interview goes, no matter how warm and fuzzy you feel as you wait for a story to appear: Expect negatives.

The journalist’s job is not to make your company look good. The journalist’s job is to report an intriguing story that an editor will approve, an audience will read and – if possible – a prize committee will recognize with praise and trophies.

And nothing makes a story more intriguing than a big, fat, hairy, embarrassing negative.

Let’s put it this way: The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward didn’t become Bob Woodward by writing nice stories. He spent the early part of his career digging up as many embarrassing stories about government agencies and private companies as he could. He cut his teeth by revealing corporate greed and government waste.

Then came Watergate, which gave Woodward the opportunity to apply all his well-honed, field-tested skills to dismantling the Nixon administration.

This is how a suburban beat reporter becomes Bob Woodward.

So:

If a reporter tours your job site before a groundbreaking ceremony, and sees a laundry list of OSHA violations, expect the violations to appear in the story.
If a reporter visits your headquarters to profile your CEO, and happens to view a layoff order on an assistant’s desk, expect to see the layoff reported in the news media.
If a reporter attends a preview of your newest product, and comes across a consumer advocate who believes your product is a threat to public health, expect to see the advocate’s comments prominently played in the article.

The point of Cawley’s Theorem is not to make you fearful of the news media. The point is to make you keenly aware that there is risk as well as reward in dealing with reporters.

You cannot control what the reporter reports. You must deal with this basic truth. Your CEO must deal with it. Your entire company culture must deal with it.

Like the rest of us, journalists are looking to advance in their careers. There’s no faster way to advance in journalism than by winning the Pulitzer.

And you win the Pulitzer with brass-knuckle reporting.

The PR expert always keeps in mind: The reporter is never your friend and is never looking out for your best interests.

Conclusion of The Second Rule

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