Why lazy corporate rebranding has become a 3 letter word

While PR is my game, rebranding and repositioning can often be a part of the services I provide. And while I don’t often deal with consumer rebranding, I’m admittedly fascinated when companies attempt a rebrand – and how consumers react to this rebrand. Often I find myself insulted by rebranding efforts. When Kentucky Fried Chicken attempted to have us forget their food is fried and generally unhealthy, they became “KFC” in 1991. Yes, they’ve added some grilled chicken to the menu but let’s be honest here, the rebrand was done to remove the word “fried” from the public consciousness. KFC’s president of U.S. operations admitted as much when the change was made.

Did it work for KFC? By most accounts, not really. The company partially reversed course four years later, restoring the name to several locations, and sales did not receive the anticipated boost. An Ad Age editorial took KFC further to task, pointing to the fact that it is one thing to change your name, but another if the name change infers that there was something inherently wrong with what the company was selling, and leaving customers to question what the brand now stood for.

Another recent three-letter acronym rebrand attempt is JC Penney, or as the sticker on my weekly newspaper delivery indicates, “JCP.” The acronym here is an attempt to run away from the brand association consumers have with the name, that of a bland, low-price bin of goods that probably held more appeal before the Walmarts and Targets of the world began selling clothing in earnest. By most accounts, this rebrand is an epic fail of massive proportions. In this case however, JCP has gone far beyond condensing its name to three letters. Led by Apple retail guru Ron Johnson, the plan was to use parts of the Apple Store model in JCP stores. If only button down shirts had the sizzle of iPads — a $427 million Q4:2012 loss and evidence that JCP’s repositioning has not only failed to resonate with new customers, but alienated and confused core customers leaves the company with a deep hole to climb out of.

Some organizations don’t even bother to shorten or “acronym-ize” their name during a rebrand, and instead simply change uppercase letters to lowercase. British broadcaster ITV recently rolled out a multi-million dollar rebrand anchored by a new lowercase logo, and the effort was quickly pilloried by their viewing audience. Here is a company that issued a press release to announce a new brand that includes a dazzling combination of “capital and lowercase letters” as well as putting part of its name in boldface! My god, your customers will hardly be able to recognize you anymore!

Probably my least favorite rebrand of all time is Radio Shack. First things first – there is no doubt Radio Shack needed to rebrand. Radio sounded out of touch and highly limiting to the products it wanted to sell. But to spend hundreds of millions of dollars at launch time to switch to “The Shack” was a head scratcher – especially since it was purportedly done to try and seem more hip and cool. If I surveyed teenagers on what words they associated with “Shack,” cutting edge technology would probably not make the list. More likely they’d associate the Shack as a place to go smoke after school or buy some batteries for a flashlight.

Rebranding as an exercise can be valuable, but many organizations stumble by not poring as much time and resources in the message backing up the new logo (the steak) as they do in the design and strategy for the logo (the sizzle). Additionally, organizations often focus on a rebrand path to reach new customers, without first assuring that existing customers will not be turned off in a rebranding effort.

4 PR Mistakes That Are Easy To Fix

Noise. This is a word that in some ways lies at the very core of what PR professionals must deal with every day. Often, our time is spent trying to create noise for a product, service or company; yet as much energy is spent trying to help clients rise above noise created in the market that threatens to drown out whatever message we are trying to deliver.

Noise is relevant in other areas of communications, and in my opinion can play a hand in common yet easy to fix mistakes that PR professionals often make. Here are five ways noise is negatively impacting the effectiveness of PR efforts, and why they are easy to fix.

Eliminate Noise Pitching HARO

Help A Reporter Out (HARO) needs little explanation at this point. It can be a tool for PR professionals to find out about media opportunities they might now have otherwise uncovered. But my guess is that 95 percent of PR folks follow the exact same template: 1) spot a query that looks relevant to a client, then submit a pitch along with the hundreds of others doing the same thing. That’s fine; there is little choice in this case to pitch into the noise, understanding that most of the time you will be drowned out.

But instead of only reaching out to reporters when a query is posted, how many of you take note of the types of stories a reporter is posting on, and then use that data at a later point to pitch a related angle at a time when the reporter won’t be slammed with pitches? If a reporter HARO query is about, for example, predicative analytics and your client is more focused on data visualization, investigate to see how wide the reporter’s coverage extends, and if relevant, pitch an article related to your client during a time when the entire HARO world isn’t also clamoring for the reporter’s attention. Even if you aren’t 100% sure the reporter will find your pitch on target, by referencing the initial HARO query you can at least provide credible context that you pay attention to what the reporter writes on.

Eliminate Noise With Speaker Submissions

We’d like to believe that each speaker submission is given equal attention – no matter if the submission is received the day after the call for speakers is posted or on the final submission day. But of course that is often not the case; submission reviewers aren’t just going to twiddle their thumbs during the speaker entry period and then wait until after the submission close date to plow through everything. They will no doubt feel less pressured and have more time to evaluate submissions on the front end of the submission period when the volume is lighter. It would not be outrageous to speculate that 60 percent or more of submissions come in during the final few days or week of the submission process, which means that judges and organizers have less time to devote to latter entries.

Eliminate Noise At Press-Attended Events

How many times have you showed up for an event where perhaps media are sitting on a panel, leading a topic discussion, or just attending to cover the event content? And how many times do you end up in a single file line behind other PR professionals who are forced to cram several minutes of conversation topic into 30 seconds of introductory chitchat? If you have a previous relationship with the reporter great, but if not, these events are terrible places to try and make an introduction. The environment is literally noisy, there is competition for the reporter’s attention, and there is pressure to try and have a meaningful conversation while several other people are impatiently waiting for their turn.

I’m going to add a caveat to this one, because I get the appeal of showing up at events where desired press is attending. Even if you can just spend a couple minutes dropping your name so that the next time you send an email or call there will at least be some recognition, there is potential value there. As opposed to trying to establish a first connection via emails and voice mails (which the reporter can easily ignore), an in-person exchange ensures you can at least get on his/her radar. But I’ll stick to the belief that beyond a name drop, these events are not well suited to have deeper conversations about your clients or pitches.

Eliminate Noise Around Social Media Efforts

We all have at least one person or organization we follow on Twitter that basically social media vomits all over our Twitter feed. It’s absurd, and highly ineffective. Too often, PR professionals and clients equate volume to engagement. In other words, the belief that the more an organization, tweets and Facebook posts, the more engaged consumers and customers will interpret it to be. Social media noise exists when the organization uses popular channels to spew out content devoid of strategy, or content that does little to spark conversation or engagement. Yes, it is important to prevent social media profiles from going stale with outdated content, but too much content – particularly content that is of little value to the online community – is equally damaging.

The role of PR with dubious ‘interstitial videos’

In today’s Washington Post, Paul Farhi authors an important piece on the rise of interstitial videos – short video segments lasting less than 10 minutes which further blur the lines between paid advertising and earned media public relations.

Once a month a client forwards me an email or voice mail from one of these video production companies lauding the client’s ‘fantastic’ business and how they would make a great profile for a TV segment. It could be the program featured in the Farhi article (In Focus), or one of a handful of others such as “Profiles with Terry Bradshaw,” that promise corporations and organizations feature placement of the TV segment on cable news stations and an attached celebrity to participate in the segment such as Bradshaw or Martin Sheen. At some point down the line these programs mention the fee, which is typically around $20,000.

While many organizations receiving these cold calls have PR counsel that should advise against participating, many do not. In the Washington Post article, The Museum of Spanish Colonial Art in Santa Fe acknowledges it is a small non profit but decided to plunk down the cash for “In Focus” because the executive director, admittedly not a “TV or Broadcast person,” felt it was an attractive opportunity.

PR professionals have an obligation to educate clients on the true structure of these interstitial programs. This isn’t a case of just trashing them for the sake of trashing them, but in serving as vital counsel so that clients understand:

• Bait and Switch. While the program might claim airings on major cable outlets such as CNN, CNBC, Fox Business and PBS, few have actually secured guaranteed airings as a TV ad might do. Moreover, cable stations that have agreed to run a program often set it up to run at days and hours with low viewership, such as 6am on Saturday.
• This is not advertising. Some clients might look at the $20,000 price tag and compare it to million dollar ad spends and feel that it is a bargain. In reality, the odds that the program will be able to effectively target audience groups relevant to the client’s product or service is almost nil.
• This is not PR. These programs are not the same as securing a TV segment by a cable news program, and will likely not be viewed by audiences with the same level of credibility.
• Dubious celebrity involvement. As the Post article alludes to, the promised celebrity involvement is often a fraction of what is implied, and should not be a major driver for any client considering this type of program.

I could go on and on with this list. Many programs claim audiences and reach well beyond the realms of reality. For PR agencies and in-house PR professionals exposed to these opportunities, it is important to communicate the true colors of these programs to decision makers so that a poor financial decision is not made.

5 mobile apps to simplify life of PR Pros

Do not despair: this will not be another one of those lame app lists that purports to be for a specific industry or professional, yet winds up to be lazily generic. Oh really, LinkedIn is one of your recommended apps for PR professionals? Way to go out on a limb. I’ve also heard that pizza is recommended for people who like cheese and bread. I saw another list that included the Starbucks app because PR pros like to drink coffee. Life-changing recommendations for sure.

It will also not be a list that conveniently sprinkles in apps provided by Lustig Communications clients. I do have clients with some great apps, but when I see PR firm blog entries touting client products and services under the auspices of alerting readers to informative, supposedly unbiased content I die a little bit inside. For them. I die for them.

Yes, this will include some familiar app names, but hopefully it will dive deep enough so that every PR pro can find 1-2 new apps on the list that he/she will find worth checking out. Enjoy.

1) MobileDay - I am probably not the only PR pro with recurring nightmares over missing a client conference call, forgetting what time a conference call was at, getting stuck in traffic with limited ability to pull up a conference bridge on my iPhone, dial the bridge number, and enter the 47 digit access code. MobileDay is a brilliantly simple one-touch conference call app for mobile devices. By integrating the app with your calendar, MobileDay sends a push notification at the time of the call that allows you to one-touch dial into the conference. Even better, the app will automatically enter the access code for you, in addition to allowing the user to one-touch email or next call participants if you are running late.

2) Smartr by Xobni - The only thing more painful than pulling up conference call information on the fly is trying to find contact information – be it a name, phone number, email address – across multiple, disparate address books, contact lists, etc. Smartr solves that as a search-focused contact manager that crawls all email accounts you choose to link to it, phone contact lists, etc., then assembles it into a single list that fills in any contact blanks you might have in one particular program.

3) TripIt – There are lots of apps out there for travel management. TripIt simplifies things quite a bit by creating a single itinerary across flights, hotel, rental car bookings, and can scan your Google apps and email for new booking confirmation alerts. It also has integrated map capabilities, and a ‘Pro’ edition, which does cost about $50/month, takes things up a notch with alert notifications.

4) Harvest - Thankfully I don’t have to worry too much about the brutally painful practice of time tracking. I still don’t believe it is the optimal way for PR agencies to spend or account for staffers’ time, but it remains a way of life for many agencies. Harvest is not only a solid app for staff time tracking, but also integrates client invoicing capabilities.

5) Desktop Connect – So Dropbox is great, I use it a ton. It is an app on most every list so seems redundant to do the same here. Also, Dropbox is only as valuable as a PR Pro’s ability to anticipate files and documents he/she will need on the road. Desktop Connect eliminates that risk as a desktop viewer for viewing and controlling Windows, Mac OSX and Linux computers. It does cost $14.99, which is high by app standards but not so much considering that even saving a PR Pro once or twice a year will justify the investment several times over.

Kickstarter as a PR tool?

I recently attended a panel discussion the state of seed stage funding for startups and investors. Sandwiched between the panels was a fascinating presentation by a young local entrepreneur by the name of Salman Sajid, who successfully raised $45,000 on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter for an iPad case that can also hold the Apple wireless keyboard.

Sajid’s endearing enthusiasm oozed as he described a variety of marketing, SEO and public relations strategies he used once the product was already on Kickstarter to generate awareness. What I found particularly striking as a PR professional, unsurprisingly, was Sajid’s use of Kickstarter as a PR vehicle. It is hardly news that traditional media outlets and strategies, while relevant, do not have the thrust they once did for a range of oft-cited reasons.

Sajid talked about the fact that he could have raised more money, but it was as much about generating awareness for the product and creating a market demand for it as it was about finding investors. He didn’t stop the PR machine there: Sajid reached out to reporters who had covered successful Kickstarter crowdfunding examples before, and reached out to them about the success his company had raising funds. He featured positive reviews for the iPad case on the site, furthering credibility for the product.

Ultimately, Sajid’s presentation and experience hammers home the fact that social media PR has become ‘traditional’ in many ways, and PR professionals must not shy away from evaluating alternative channels such as Kickstarter as part of a broader PR strategy.

Leveraging channels like KickStarter is not easy, and can be fraught with frustration if not presented to the client and executed in the right way. Expect growing pains, as the path to success might mirror the early days of viral video, where clients tasked their agencies to create the next YouTube sensation. After much trial and error, astute agencies figured out that swinging for the fences with a budget busting viral video is a recipe for disappointment.

Part of this experimentation with channels such as Kickstarter results from determining the right ‘tone’ for the channel. In the early, early days of PR outreach to bloggers, we quickly realized that the rules that applied to press did not apply to bloggers. If you come at a reporter with an overt marketing spiel the worst thing that happens is the reporter ignores the pitch and chooses not to cover the client. With bloggers, the risk was far greater, as some publicly skewered pitches that were off-target, overtly promotional or sloppy.

There was nothing wrong with this per se, but it took time for PR professionals to understand a different tone was required with bloggers, and the same can be said for alternative channels like Kickstarter. Part of the appeal of Sajid’s approach is that it is homegrown – he’s a self-made entrepreneur doing the nitty gritty work himself. Whether the same approach would work if a PR firm was working on his behalf is hard to say, but the bar would no doubt be higher.

When a PR firm has to do crisis communications…for itself

I have, on more than one occasion, used this blog to draw attention to what I consider to be unethical, sloppy and just plain boneheaded things PR firms do in the name of ‘client service’. Yet a recent incident involving a PR firm’s client pitch strategy caught my eye because, in fact, the PR firm handled the crisis expertly in my opinion. So well that one could argue the PR firm may be perceived more favorably by the client – and other prospective clients – than if the entire episode never took place.

Basically what happened is that a Canadian company working with Fleishman-Hillard Canada developed a pitch for its client Backcheck (which, as the name implies, conducts background checks), piggybacking on the “body parts killer” male porn star who stands accused of killing and dismembering in Canada. The gist of the pitch being that failure to perform tenant background checks could expose one to insane killers such as this one.

The pitch was in poor taste, no doubt about that. Piggybacking on topical news events is a tried and true approach for PR firms, and there is always, ideally, an understanding of what news should be off limits. If a heat wave knocks out power to thousands and your client has a technology to prevent blackouts, no problem. That’s an acceptable piggyback. If 15 people die in a horrific roller coaster accident and you represent the amusement park’s primary competitor then, well, a pitch in that case is not exactly kosher.

Needless to say, Fleishman-Hillard took some backlash. But in developing a response to the backlash, they did multiple things right in the apology letter:

1) Visible and quick apology letter – Fleishman didn’t bury the apology. They placed it front and center on the website.

2) Right level of CXO involvement – Too many apologies are issued by in-house marketing and communications staffers rather than a CXO. Apologies from that type of employee conveys spin rather than sincerity. Fleishman’s apology came from the President – an appropriate level given the situation to show they took it seriously.

3) Didn’t try and pass the buck – What many firms would have done is craft some BS that it wasn’t actually Fleishman-Hillard but a “firm they used for the outreach.” Fleishman didn’t pass the buck, instead taking full ownership for the mistake.

4) Demonstrate capabilities – The President’s letter did a fantastic job of connecting the need for crisis communications in this case to the crisis communications services they provide for clients. By handling it well the situation can, if needed, actually become a case study of how the firm turned a potential PR disaster into something that, at the time of this writing, was somewhat mitigated.

Evidence that Fleishman-Hillard got it right can be found in the comments by the president and CEO of BackCheck to the Ottawa Citizen. It is certainly not without precedent that clients fearing backlash would abandon ship on the PR firm. But here, BackCheck acknowledged that while the approach was flawed, the message was sound, almost as if to say you might not like the tactic, but at least it shows how serious background checks can be.

There may be more to this story going forward, but at this point Fleishman earns top marks for handling a crisis situation.

If A Tree Falls In The Forest, Will Your PR Agency Be Fired?

I’m admittedly amazed at times on how emotionally needy PR agency professionals are – myself included. We aren’t looking for smiley-face, pat-on-the-back emails from clients every day, but when we arrange a glowing profile in WIRED Magazine for a client and the only response is “they got my middle initial wrong” it cuts, and it cuts deep.

We’re human after all, and feed off of praise as most do. But the more I think about this insatiable appetite for positive reinforcement from clients the more I realize how ridiculous it is. When you go to the dentist and he finishes a cleaning do you ever say “Great job?” Do you praise the cashier at Target for providing you with correct change? I’m guessing the answer to both questions is no, and if it isn’t you are probably freaking a lot of these people out. The point is that so what you booked a great profile article or created an infographic that went viral? That’s your job. Why should they say great job for basically doing what you are paid to do?

This lack of feedback from clients can make it difficult to keep a finger on the pulse of a client’s level of satisfaction with your agency. And it is the reason that every PR agency executive and account manager, at some point in his or her career, has been blindsided by a client defection. In most cases it isn’t a case of a client lavishing the PR agency with deceptive praise before severing the ties with little warning. More likely, the client offers vague, sugar-coated reasons for moving on – be it the standby ‘shifting budget priorities’ or ‘reassessing next year’s objectives,’ these relationships often end with a whimper rather than in a blaze of glory.

Bottom line: When it comes to PR Agency-Client communications, silence is deadly. Silence represents a void in data the Agency needs to best service the account. It is the way Agencies justify continuing with the status quo without really examining whether it is moving the needle. There are a few key approaches to keep in mind in order to prevent a client blindside:

• Sometimes you just have to say, “what the f*#k” – Silence is a product of fear. Agencies fear that if they are overly aggressive in soliciting feedback, it will give clients an excuse to bring up things that might otherwise not arise. An apt example is a debate colleagues at a former Agency always use to have around conducting media sweeps for clients. Media sweeps involve sending clients a daily/weekly roundup of news articles that include the client, competitors or the broader industry. The internal debate was that while sweeps ensure the Agency and client stay on top of relevant news, they also show the client all the articles that competitors are included in, thus inviting scrutiny on why the client was left out. Insulating clients from negative news might be an attractive short-term fix, but in the long run it does both the Agency and client a disservice.
• Address the dirty “M” word – PR Agencies approach the Big M (metrics) the same way elderly individuals approach the Big C – panicked whispering by the water cooler or during power walks at the Mall. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to metrics other than the fact that every client will want to see more customers/users and revenues. PR professionals tend to shy away from tightly linking PR results to sales, because there are a number of other relevant variables that can undo PR efforts. But we should not shy away from having a metrics discussion on the front-end of the engagement, if only to find out what matters most to clients, and reaffirm these goals frequently.
• Track competitor activity religiously – By all means I’m not perfect when it comes to executing every single PR best practice. But one area I am obsessive about is tracking strategies, activities and media coverage of competitors. I want to know at all times what competitors are doing, and how these activities will impact my client. At the same time I find it a valuable learning exercise, as there will from time to time be creative strategies and ideas that can be applied to my client. This is not to say I mimic competitor moves, but they often spark ideas by making me think about something in a different way. By tracking competitor PR activities it provides a useful baseline against my own performance, which can help in being blindsided by a client that might seek to execute a similar comparison.

Social media destorying art of the corporate apology

Let’s face it: Social media is wreaking havoc on the art of the corporate apology. At first, brands under siege welcomed the ability to handle crisis communications via a blog post, tweet and Facebook posting.  This enthusiasm was born from decades of train wrecks that occurred when an insincere CEO tried to be sincere for a 2 minute TV appearance and either came off as aloof, uncaring or just plain incompetent. Who could forget BP CEO Tony Hayward during the oil spill on how inconvenient the entire disaster had been, remarking, “I’d like my life back.”

These TV appearances were agonizing for CXOs and their crisis communications teams – requiring 11^th hour media training and preparation. Yet for all of the drawbacks, television and print apologies held one significant advantage relative to the reality corporations must deal with today – it was a one-way conversation. In effect, it was a hit-and-run apology: CEO apologizes, then removes his or her microphone and goes back to business. No yelling, cussing or insults hurled at the executive walking out of the studio.

Fast forward to today, when corporations have embraced social media for the all-important apology. Sure, why not, executives convince themselves. By apologizing via social media they are doing so directly to the affronted without having to deal with pesky interviewers prodding them with questions specifically designed to create a verbal blunder.

Increasingly, however, social media is proving a thorny medium for the corporate apology for a number of reasons:

1)   Picking the right platform for corporate apology – Social media is inherently informal, which can create an impression problem if a brand uses it to apologize for something that consumers or citizens consider of a serious nature. Social media can be used effectively to communicate that an organization regrets a decision, but using it as the only form of communication can be dangerous. Time after time, we’ve seen blow-back from individuals insisting that a Facebook apology was ‘not enough.’ To cover its bases, an organization should use social media as part of, but not the entirety of, a crisis communications plan.

2)   Anticipate the reaction to the apology – If there exists a better example of a shortsighted crisis communications operation than recently occurred with Lowe’s Home Improvement and its attempt to eject itself from the controversy surrounding pulling ads from the program “All-American Muslim” I haven’t seen it. Lowe’s was one of several firms at the center of the storm, but its biggest mistake was turning its Facebook page into a lightning rod for individuals on both sides of the argument to hurl horrific accusations and commentary at one another – and Lowe’s. 28,000 comments (many inflammatory) later, Lowe’s has taken many messages down. It’s admirable in some cases to allow a platform for feedback, but it does not work in all cases and for Lowe’s using Facebook as apology central was a miscalculation.

3)   Consider source of the apology – As part of the same swirl of controversy around “All-American Muslim” Kayak.com, which also pulled its ads, dispatched its CMO to social media to post the apology. While PR and marketing professionals can certainly play a key role in helping an organization develop and execute a crisis communications plan, it is my firm belief that the marketing executive should not be the principal voice for crises of a significant nature. There will be an inherent assumption of spin, and frankly I rarely see a well-received corporate apology that comes from a marketing executive. And I’m not even getting into the CMO insisting that the firm pulled ads not because the show was controversial, but because it was bad (didn’t I see their ad air during episode of “The Playboy Club?”).

4) Consider who is impacted to determine platform – When I worked with a technology company that was beset with technical problems that impacted a portion of the user base, we always struggled with how broadly to communicate the issue. In other words, if we had an outage impacting 10 percent of the customer base, we did not have the means to know exactly which 10 percent lost service or have means to ONLY communicate to these customers. So, the question became — do we take a more reactive approach where we would ensure that if impacted customers reached out we could make sure the had constant updates, or communicate the outage to the entire customer base which could, over time, erode customer confidence in service even for those that were not having problems. This is a long winding path to say that there is a difference between utilizing Twitter and Facebook if a corporate apology is directed towards the customer base. Where do they engage most – Twitter, Facebook, the corporate blog? Also, with Twitter the news can end up more broadly  disseminated than if it is only shared on a Facebook page where only customers are more likely to congregate.

Are PR professionals e-mailing their way to extinction?

I’ve been tracking a rather telling LinkedIn Group topic thread titled “Telephone follow ups to email press releases” that now exceeds 100 comments. There are some legitimate, albeit ageless, frustrations expressed by PR professionals on the whole telephone/email conundrum.

The thread addresses the fact that reporters, for the most part, state a preference for emails rather than phone calls, but due to the volume of emails received end up responding less frequently. Posters also stress the importance of building relationships with reporters via coffee, lunch, tea and crumpets – all fine recommendations but ones that only go as far as a reporter/editor’s willingness to develop a relationship.

More interesting, and I believe disturbing, are the handful of comments regarding how PR professionals determine what type of client news is deemed significant enough for a follow up call. In fact, one thread poster wrote:

“Bottom line, not every press release is worth that call! It’s crafting the message as best you can, with legal and regulatory in mind, and ultimately knowing what releases are worth the call, and those that aren’t. One other tool I have found helpful, the multi-media press release!”

News flash: If a press release pitch isn’t worth a call it isn’t worth a press release – or a pitch! Basically what this poster is saying is that email-only pitches are fine for non-newsworthy client announcements that the PR professional knows really won’t be interesting but just feels he/she must go through the motions to be accountable when the client asks for outreach efforts, BUT…if there is actual real news then the PR professional will bother to pick up the phone and pitch?

If that is in fact where things are headed PR is etching its own tombstone towards becoming a human version of Vocus – an email blasting machine devoid of strategy, value and ultimately, strong results. This notion of creating tiers of outreach based on the self or client-determined importance of the news exposes an obvious flaw that explains why reporters tune out so many email pitches. You think you are doing reporters a favor by not calling them on lower priority news announcements, but all you are really doing is polluting their inbox with the dregs of ‘news’ and ensuring that any real news that might be emailed will become lost in the clutter.

Let’s be clear, this isn’t a discussion with an easy answer. The fact is that the press release itself is really secondary to the pitch. No one should be pitching a press release – they should be pitching a story for which the press release might be a supporting piece of.  Here are a few ideas:

1)   How about a little (gulp) honesty with clients – We all love the fact that clients are excited about their news, products and services, but understandably not all of them will generate the same external enthusiasm. It is hard for PR professionals to kill press releases because, unfortunately, that remains a component of what we do. But in the bigger picture there are likely other ways to communicate the information that will be more valuable than a press release, and it is up to PR firms to identify those rather than blindly drafting and blasting releases.

2)   Eliminate the two-tier news approach – This notion of a two tiers of newsworthiness is just ridiculous. Something is important enough for a phone call but other news only rises to email level damages the value of what we do and contributes to the eroding value of the PR professional-journalist relationship. Something is news or it isn’t.

3)   Remain proactive but not stubborn – I’m still a big believer in phone calls and in person interaction with journalists. Not as a ‘follow up’ to an email but simply as an effective means to communicate. Email is easy and it is lazy. Takes 2 seconds to send an email and if a reporter bites back than wham, maybe an entire outreach initiative becomes a success. Calling can be tedious and painful, but as many other posters in the LinkedIn thread confirmed, there is a 50/50 chance at best the journalist even saw your email.

The role of PR spin at your Fantasy Football Draft

Here in Washington, DC, the transition from summer to fall is obvious by the thermostat’s overnight drop from 100 to 70, the clogged beltway and kids return to school. Early September is also notable for the flurry of fantasy football drafts taking place across the country.

Whether fantasy team owners realize it or not, PR spin is actively at work leading up to and during your in-person fantasy football draft. I’ve compiled a quick list of 5 PR tactics you are likely to see at on Fantasy Football Draft day.

5) The classic ‘undersell’ – I can’t remember the last draft I participated in where at least one owner gave me the “I am totally unprepared for this draft” shtick before the draft gets underway. This is done for a couple of reasons: first, that owner wants you to believe he will not be a draft day threat so you don’t have to worry about him stealing your sleeper pick; and second it is apparently not cool to admit publicly you spent any time preparing for the draft. Everyone wants to make it seem as if they are rolling into the draft from some hot club with no preparation whatsoever so it is all the more impressive when they take the title.

4) The classic ‘misdirect’ – Everyone likes to showoff. Everyone believes they have some ‘sleepers’ that will go from injury-plagued or under-performing to league star. These owners want to demonstrate how clever they are by announcing at the draft who will have a breakout year so that they can go back and say “I told you so.” But, let’s give these owners a little credit: they don’t want to roll out their studs, but instead will announce a few second tier sleepers who most likely aren’t even sleepers at all. “Hey, keep an eye on Percy Harvin this year,” or “watch out for Felix Jones.” By doing so, they protect their top targets but can still take credit if their predictions pan out.

3) The classic ‘draft hex’ – You know this guy at the draft. He’s the guy who, if he appeared on the Jeopardy game show, would claim he knew every answer but was hitting the buzzer 1/8 of a second late. At the draft, this is the guy whose great pick every round was coincidentally taken by the person drafting right in front of him. Then, when the draft is over, he complains “my team should have been with this player and that player, but because that person was gone it ruined my entire draft!”

2) The classic ‘it’s not me, it’s my draft position’ – “Well it is going to be hard to win getting 8th pick again.” Inferring it is impossible to win without first pick is like saying a racer can’t win Indy 500 without the pole position. That doesn’t stop this draft owner from complaining they have that pick every year falling out of the top 4 where all the stud RB reside. Then, when you check their draft history you find out the owner’s picks the past five years have been 2nd, 6th, 10th, 3rd and 5th.

1) The classic ‘I only had one beer and a couple wings’ spiel – This is the owner who, when it comes time to pay up at the end of the night for the food and beer, claims he is a human camel that did not have a single drink for 4 hours and might have nibbled on a couple of chicken wings. If this is truly the case, this owner is far too sober to be in your draft.