My friend Scott Anthony owns a Pizza Shop in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania and holds an annual fund raiser for the local fire department.
Scott donates the proceeds of all pizza sales one day each year to the Punxsutawney Fire Department. Last year his efforts raised $30,000.
He has now been doing this for 10 years and everyone benefits. The fire company receives much needed donations for new equipment, pizza buyers make a contribution to essential services in their community and Scott gets tons of positive media attention which puts him top of mind with customers when they think about takeaway food.
That's a triple win situation, so congratulations Scott on the 10 year anniversary of this innovative business idea.
I'm currently involved in a wartime Australian garden with a novel twist.
In 1942 Australian families were encouraged to grow their own fruit and vegetables as part of the national war effort. The Dig for Victorycampaign proved highly successful.
As part of Floriade 2011 the Australian War Memorial is recreating a wartime backyard garden which hopefully inspires today's gardening family with an eye on the environment and looking to be more self sustaining.
A key part in setting up a media relations program is selecting a spokesperson(s) to be the public face of your organisation when the media calls.This is a very important job and most agencies, businesses or not for profits identify the CEO, Chairperson or person responsible for communications to fill this role.
Irrespective of the choice, your spokesperson(s) should:
Know the topic you are presenting to the media.
Be able to speak with authority about what your organization does and answer general as well as specific questions.
Be well-groomed and dress suitably.
Uses plain language and speak clearly and simply.
Be continually contactable by mobile or cell phone.
Be reasonably flexible about when and where to be interviewed.
Be available by phone or email for any follow-up questions after the interview.
Journalists do not expect not for profits or smaller businesses to have well trained media spokespersons, but they do expect them to be represent your organization, provide information and be able to tell a good story.
Training in media interview skills is not really necessary unless your issue is controversial, you plan to talk to the media often or your spokespersons are not comfortable performing this important job.If so consider investing in professional media training for your spokespersons because good media coverage is so important to the future health of your organisation.
Today our lives are so busy and time poor we rely on images as short cuts to help us process information and make decisions.
Media organisations have a constant appetite for images for their screens, on-line pages and portals.Even radio station websites cry out for pictures.That means a not for profit, business or agency that can offer compelling video or digital imagery to communicate its cause increases the likelihood of getting its story told.
Think about the imagery associated with your story before even approaching journalistsYou can supply your own photos and video to the media. This can work well with local papers and other small outlets with limited staff, however it rarely satisfies larger media organizations that need broadcast or print quality imagery.The best approach with them is to set up deliberate opportunities at your event for their news photographers and TV crews to get good pictures.
Good imagery - whether video or photographs – graphically and emotionally depicts what your organisation does.It might show a client using a service, staff helping someone or some picture-worthy aspect of your operation.The more emotion an image sends, the more likely the media will use it and the more likely they will report your story.
Imagery is so important you need to think through about what you can provide and then how you could describe your imagery over the phone to a TV producer or reporter. If you plan to send imagery to a local outlet regularly it is certainly a good investment in time and money to get a commercial photographer to help you or build up your own in-house skills.
Recently I worked with a not for profit with member clubs spread across two states to develop a policy to help clubs and the Executive manage proactive and reactive media relations.
The policy featured:
The objectives or why the organisation will engage the media in the coming 12 months.
An encouragement for clubs to proactively engage their local media outlets as way of telling communities what they and the larger organisation is doing.
Tools to help clubs such as pre-packaged media backgrounders, fact sheets, templates, speaking points and standard paragraphs for media alerts and media releases.
Advice on how to access localised media contact lists.
Guidance on handling media relations in crisis and advocacy situations.
A media release review process - for all levels - so key players in the organisation know what is to be presented to journalists and what might make news.
Tips for recycling earned media coverage so that office holders, members and key supporters know what the press is reporting.
Social media guidelines so what is presented online is consistent with what is presented to traditional media.
And because it is often so expensive, a media policy should spell out the why, when and where advertising will be undertaken and how it will be blended with media relations.
I recently came across Citizen Tube which is a feed of the latest breaking news videos on YouTube. Citizen journalists - or for that matter anyone - can upload content of what they consider newsworthy and bang through this channel it's out there for the world to see.
Citizen Tube is supported by a Twitter account - @citizentube.
How times change. Just five years ago you might report a story or an incident to your local paper or TV station, only to be told it was not newsworthy. That meant someone else's judgement effectively "killed" the story and its circulation stopped dead - consigned to you and whoever else you might happen to tell, email or text.
Now you can record something through a flip cam or mobile phone, upload it and it's online as your version of the news forever for anyone anywhere to view.
Now wonder tradtional media gatekeepers are nervous.
Australia is rich in radio. But community radio stations rarely feature in PR and media relations plans. And that's a pity because community radio covers a lot of territory and reaches a lot of people in this country.
Community radio caters for many interests including community, multicultural, Indigenous and religious broadcasters. And like its commercial cousin community programming includes a stew of music, news, current affairs, lifestyle and local content.
Although bigger stations may have a full-time station or program manager, volunteer broadcasters who give a few hours of their time each week are the lifeblood of stations. As well as their broadcasting value these volunteers are often activists in their own right who can provide word of mouth and other engagement opportunities beyond the reach of the station.
Here are the websites of peak and other bodies where you can learn more about Australia’s community radio sector:
Community stations even have their own news service. A small team of dedicated journalists run National Radio News from Bathurst in NSW supported by communications students at CharlesSturtUniversity. Their three minute news bulletins are syndicated to local stations across the country.
Many years ago I was a part-time community broadcaster. That plus recent experience of working with a host of community stations has convinced me that volunteer radio can be an important medium in a PR project.
I have just finished reading the recently published book Connection Generation.
Iggy Pintado, a former IBM and Telstra heavyweight, looks at how Australians are taking to new communication technologies and their impact on our personal and professional lives. The book is a clear, simple read and valuable for those after fresh insights into how people are using social media.
Pintado starts by identifying a number of "connector profiles". These are drawn from his own extensive marketing experience plus personal research he undertook for the book. He claims Australians - and this probably applies to those elsewhere - fall into one of five categories when it comes to using new media:
Basic Connectors are people with low levels of technological take-up. They can be any age but are united by their disdain or fear of technology.They need to be thoroughly convinced that new communication platforms can improve things and it often takes a tech-minded family member or friend to guide and encourage them to venture into online media.
Passive Connectors have a basic understanding of the new technologies but choose not to make it a priority in their lives. When it comes to online action they observe rather than participate. This is hardly surprising because many people in this category have traditionally consumed passive media such as print, radio and television. In marketing terminology they could be classed as the "late adopters" in the digital era.
Selective Connectors understand new communications technologies and use it to share experiences and maintain their family, friendship and business networks. However they stop short of expanding the range of their connections which limits their ability to take advantage of business and other online opportunities.
Active Connectors appreciate and use the new technologies to develop and maintain contacts, assertively share their thoughts and routinely use platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Linked-in for commercial and personal benefit. They are the marketing equivalent of "early adopters", people willing to try new things and take on fresh thoughts.
And finally there are the Super Connectors. These folks are digitally light years ahead of the rest of us and on the bleeding edge of technology. For them an online life is as fundamental as using running water or electricity.
These categories may define groups but they do not necessarily limit people. It is possible for individuals to move from one group to another as their circumstances and interests change.Perhaps Basic Connectors are the most digitally vulnerable because the trend is for Australians to increasingly go online to connect their lives and that sea change is unlikely to reverse anytime soon.
And what exciting times we live in when initiatives such as the Australian Government's National Broadband Program, the schools laptop program and first stirrings about Government2.0 have the potential to transform us into Australia's first connection generation.
We just finished the 2009 season for our free workshops for not for profit organisations.
Now in its sixth year these sessions offer pro bono marketing advice to volunteers groups, charities and not for profits.
To finish up the 2009 program we asked colleagues in our international PR networks to name the top ten things not for profit organisations must get right when they set out to communicate to their communities.
We got more than ten so here's the list.
Craft a message that resonates and connects. Before embarking on a PR campaign, craft your message. Who you are and who do you help? Do your services overlap with other groups? How is your organization unique and what makes it stand out? People want to know before investing what area of the community you serve. Is it pets, homeless people, the elderly, disabled children, etc? They also want to know that the majority of funds go to the intended programs and recipients.
Find out how to connect emotionally with your target audience. Put a face on the population you serve and tell their story. Describe their situation and how your services have helped them. If you must present a bleak picture be sure to provide a solution. People want to hear positive outcomes to things that affect them and their community so how do your services improve the community's quality of life.
Make your message as personal as possible to the audience you are trying to reach. And the information you are giving them has to be kept simple on the front end. People aren't going to read, or listen to a lot at the outset. Once you get their interest then you can deliver more content. So you have to really target your audience carefully. Tossing out lots of content broadly hoping to catch a few is wasteful in this economy.
Demonstrate the need, show you have a solution and then share your successes.
Listen before you communicate. The good Lord gave us two ears and one mouth for a very good reason. The basic motivation factor of "putting something back in to the local community" is a good message. It leads to a sense of achievement and well being for volunteers and a sense of philanthropy for donors. Also promise donors publicity because people like to be seen to be doing good things. Communications must empathise transparency and accountability. Ensure you report on how the funds you raised are being used and that what you claimed you would do, you actually did. A lot of not for profits want to start with the tactics first and forget to spend a few minutes asking the questions to make their efforts smarter. So before you communicate, ask what is the purpose of my communications? What is the primary message I want to convey? Who is it designed to reach? What do I want people to do after they hear what I have to say? How will I know I have been successful?
Have I got my logos, images, taglines and spokespersons ready to roll before I start talking?
Understand the media likes conflict. Where there is no conflict or opposing views there is no story. So find a local hero and go for a feature story rather than a news story.
What is your value to the community at large? How many people are using your services, how many are unable to get these services? Where would those folks get services if your organization didn't exist? What would happen to them? And what is your impact on the general community?
Take advantage of third party endorsements in the form of testimonials from clients, favorable media placements, or even simply through the reputations of the people who serve on your board or who volunteer. But please choose them wisely. The best part of this strategy - it's virtually free.
Show the value you provide - the value of your research, the fact you employ real people at all levels, spend your money in the local economy and that you are open to people asking questions and seeing what we do. Wrap those points up in good story telling and tell a story about people who do things. Storytelling is becoming a lost art but you can't lose if you can get a handle on it.
... and my very special thanks to our contributors - Chips Henriss, Kristie Aylett, Karen Miller, Tim Entwisle, Janet Bosserman, Jeff Botti, Mike Spear, Rosanne Gain and Susanne Dupes.
A middle aged woman from a Scottish village looking very much like the lady next door stuns a TV audience with her angelic voice. Her story captures the mainstream media and sweeps through the online world. With 25 million YouTube hits and nearly a half million new friends on Facebook people everywhere are applauding Susan Boyle's entry into the singing world. In the coming weeks her success on that UK Talent Show may well continue to be a hot media topic and win her even more digital endorsement.
Ms Boyle's fame may be short lived. As easily as the media is jumping aboard her bandwagon, it could just as easily get off at the next stop. In the ways of instant celebrity she could be into her first minute of Andy Warhol's 15 minute of fame. Or she goes on to fulfill her ambition to sing as a career. Personally I wish her every success. In this era of often vapid celebrity it's encouraging to see real people recognised for good things and the fact that from apparent ordinariness they can offer us something special.
But Susan Boyle's story is as much about communications as it is about singing.
If Susan hadn't gathered the courage to enter that talent show and risk the potential for failure and ridicule, the world would be ignorant of her great gift. And I'm pretty certain there were those in her Scottish village who predicted her failure even as she set out for London.
Many of us work for organizations, manage our careers or lead our lives in a state of nervous timidity, continually anxious about stepping out to try something new. Susan Boyle's story shows that only by daring to communicate can we achieve the recognition we deserve. Ms Boyle's story is counter intuitive. Her voice does not match her image. Her "branding" seems all wrong. Perhaps in recent years we have grown too accustomed to style over substance as the media has over-exposed us to the antics of celebrity heiresses, errant footballers, high fliers of finance and others. And yet despite all the coverage and attention those people have received - often at the expense of the worthwhile causes that are the real stuff of our communities - in the end they leave us with little of real value.
Susan's story is about substance elbowing aside style. And that people, just like those in that initially skeptical London audience, will always stand to applaud the "real thing" when they see it. They just need the opportunity to see it for themselves.
Thanks Ms Boyle for reminding us of two fundamentals of communications. To win firstly you must dare. And cool always crumbles before character.
Next time you need to communicate with a dispersed audience, don't forget the humble telephone.
A tele-conference call is a great way to pass highly relevant information to an individual or very specific group of people at the same time. This past week, as part of a national PR campaign, we hosted PR teleconferences for not for profit groups around the country. We dealt with around 20 community groups around Australia that had recently received a Commonwealth Government grant for grass roots community relations programs.
The tele-workshops were set up to share thoughts on how these organisations could raise community awareness about the important work they plan to do. The workshops covered media relations, social media and word of mouth marketing and explored how local not for profits could use these three strategies. People representing six to eight organisations took part in each 60 minute call. Keeping the numbers small made for an intimate atmosphere where people could raise issues and offer their thoughts on what works for volunteers and what doesn't. To provide a focus for discussion we circulated a slide package highlighting key PR and marketing points before each tele-conference. People on the call either printed it off or followed it through their computer. We conducted six sessions and received very positive feedback. We also found that after some minor technical problems (which Optus promptly fixed) the tele-conferences were easy to set up and manage. In tight times when funds are limited, the telephone and speaker remain handy and cheap tools that people in different parts of the country can use to share thoughts on PR and marketing.
In Friday 30 January it was very hot in Canberra. Well into the evening the temperature was hovering around 82 degrees F.
But to the south, Melbourne was far, far hotter and the City was suffering significant power shortages as the overloaded power grid struggled to meet the electricity demands generated by the heat. Melbourne's rail service ground to a halt under a combination of the heat and the power outages.
A significant part of the City was affected by power cuts. And at least on 30 January the power blackout was matched by an Internet blackout.
Only two of the five power utilities servicing Melbourne had up to date outage information on their websites. Well done to those two - Jemena and SP AUSNET. For the others, well it was business as usual.
The Victorian Government Internet portal carried dated information. And the websites of the Victorian Police and the State's Emergency Service had no current news on the outages.
Although local newspapers and other media carried news, key corporate and government websites were strangely silent on an event that impacted on so many people including concerned relatives like me in other States.
Victoria gets a "could do better" grade for its effort to use the online communications to keep Melbournians updated on what was happening in their sweltering off-line world.
US media maven Margo Mateas has been in the communications business for 20+ years and in that time has trained thousands of PR professionals in media pitching and other skills.
An ill-considered blogpost recently attacked the maven's methods.
We can only speak from our experience. But using Margo's methods we have been able to achieve over 7000 media items for Australian clients with almost universally high favourability ratings.
In 2008 working alongside the media team of a major Australian cultural institution we helped the institution reach a cumulative media audience of 56 million people for one of its programs.
I review Margo's materials before I start each campaign to remind myself of the essentials of media relations.
So thanks to Margo for her ability to take people behind the newsroom curtain and learn effective skills that get their stories covered.
When your name comes up in conversation do people talk with respect or do they trash your brand?
We all want positive word of mouth about our products, services, issues or causes. Yet the irony is few Australian organizations use word of mouth marketing as part of their marketing mix?
Word of mouth marketing has been around forever, beginning when people first saw the value in sharing information and warning others about risky situations.
Word of mouth is about genuine conversations where people exchange ideas, criticisms and endorsements.And it is becoming increasingly important given the tsunami of invasive advertising hitting us each day. Sernovitz argues ‘traditional marketing is no longer the safe way to go.It may make you comfortable but it is becoming gradually less and less effective for more and more companies.'
Organic word of mouth is the range of genuine conversations people have among themselves each day.They share information on what to buy, what to wear, where to work and countless other topics with friends, family, classmates, workmates and team mates.Organisations can encourage organic word of mouth by providing quality services, listening to people and responding to their issues and continually freshening conversations by bringing in new programs, products, faster turn around times, etc.
Organisations use amplified word of mouth when they deliberately set out to create positive talk about their products or services.This often involves seeking out people with influence with the specific intent of inviting them to start conversations within their networks.And organizations can accelerate this type of word of mouth by moving it online where, through a keyboard or mobile device they can engage either individuals or specific groups.
Amplified word of mouth marketing can also be encouraged by creating online communities where people swap ideas and experiences, encouraging others to promote what you do and using advertising or media coverage to strategically prime the pump and start conversations.
Andy Sernovitz’s book details the topics, talkers, tools and tracking needed to make word of mouth succeed. It is a must read for those of us on limited budgets looking to communicate with impact.
Choosing a media spokesperson is key issue for most organisations.
Many choose the default position and select the Minister, CEO, Head of PR or another specific individual for that role. And then the curtains come down and no-one else is allowed to talk to the media. True this ensures absolute control over the message. But it often robs an organisation of the chance to get its really interesting stories out and put a more human face before the public.
We noticed during the Olympics the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (an Australian university) had a number of academic spokespersons providing media commentary on the Games. The Institute advertised their availability to journalists and used event-specific interviews to profile its people and its brand. Check out the results here.
And on the subject of media interviews, click on this short video featuring a Fox News interview with Todd Palin, the husband of US Republican Vice Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin.
Perhaps Todd could use a little media training and the journalist interviewing him could certainly use help in asking more substantive questions.
In the past week we saw a media storm in the US presidential election following comments by BarackObama about the Republican Party trying to dress up its policies.
He used a colloquial term‘lipstick on a pig’ which is a colourful way of saying you can’t make something attractive if it plainly isn’t.
The Republicans took this as a criticism of their Vice Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, who the week before had used a lipstick reference in her acceptance speech.
The media picked up on the ‘he said she said’ verbal seesawing that followed between the two parties. The air turned thick with claim and counter claim about lipstick, pigs and personal attacks.
What a waste of precious time and energy that all was. Especially when global warming, terrorism, the state of the US economy and other key issues call for immediate attention.
The Public Relations Society of America was the only group to emerge looking good. On behalf of its 32 000 members the Society called on both the Democrat and Republic campaign managers to commit to the highest standards of ethical practice in their campaign communications and forgo innuendo, incomplete information, surrogate messaging and character attacks.
For years I have belonged to the Public Relations Institute of Australia, the Australian Marketing Institute and the International Association of Business Communicators. Yet I can’t recall those professional bodies saying anything in public about honesty in public communications.
A recent edition of the Canadian podcast Inside PR contains useful tips on how to improve your PR writing. Scroll down and listen to Inside PR #122 of Wednesday 30 July 2008.
Recently Leanne addressed a an IABC Canberra audience (mainly Australian Public Service communications professionals) on her work and the extensive research behind it.
Leanne has met with public servants, journalists and advocacy groups and analysed three government communications case studies in detail. And while her work is yet to be completed it is throwing up interesting insights including:
Government communication is often viewed as something the government ‘does’ to people rather than an exchange of information.
There is no single model for government communications ... rather approaches and strategies continually change as personalities and politics dictate the communications mix.
Public servants who are not communicators tend to see PR mainly in media terms and as ways to push information out to persuade.
On the other hand, public sector communicators are often looking for a broader and richer engagement with their audiences.
She suggests public sector management needs a more detailed understanding and acceptance of PR principles and communications ethics, rather than view PR merely as a technical tool.
And a Pentagon General says “… when you get the call in the middle of the night and everything is going the wrong way, blogging could in fact inform decision makers in real time with real information to make decisions much quicker than a phone conference.”
