Geography lessons required for national PRs?

Cartoon by emraharikan – see more here

Here’s a scenario I have seen unfold in front of me with many a regional and local business journalist – in fact, it happened twice in the space of 2 hours this week so I thought I’d blog about it today…note that it happened as I sat catching up with the journalist…

Mobile rings. Journalist answers and moves away from PR chap – this could be sensitive info after all.

Journalist confirms name and publication…twice. Journalist listens. Journalist politely informs Arabella/Tarquin from SW1 PR that no, Cambridge is not in the East Midlands and no, neither is Hull. “Nearly East Midlands” or “sort of your patch” doesn’t make it relevant unless perhaps there is a local case study? There isn’t. PR thanks journalist and sends press release anyway to “tick the regional box” for client report.

PR is about relevance and news. Unfortunately, many larger, particularly “national” PR agencies rely too much on mammoth databases rather than personal connections to keep in touch/send the odd email to journalists. After all, the Midlands is quite a strut from London and there’s no tube line to Nottingham!

The best PRs know their sector/niche and know which journalist writes what, about whom and for which audience. Whisper it but they may even have met one in real life…more than once.

They also know what is happening in the sector/locality outside of the publication they are targeting – in the case of regional publications such as the one I was chatting with, we’re talking politics and economics. Who is doing well, worse or better? What are the factors behind this and what are the angles that they and their client can then perhaps hang a relevant story on?

Armed with these facts, they can plan and execute campaigns that have relevance to their target media. They are in constant contact with the journalists because they have a portfolio of clients in the same sector/niche. As a result, the switched on PR gets wind of opportunities all the time, rather than when a database query flags something up.

The journalist is also more likely to work with them as an ongoing partner, versus the buyer/vendor dynamic of the odd phone call or email, often prevalent when a national agency has to get back in touch with a regional publication.

PR is about relationships – clients with their readership and PR representatives with key journalists. If you like, it is about knowing your chardonnays from your Bombardiers.

One final note, I asked the journalist in question about this story 10 minutes ago. He just replied. Turns out it was Ipswich, not Cambridge. Oh well, close enough eh?

ends

Driving a wedge between right and left?

Plenty of outrage this week with Jeremy Clarkson forced to issue an apology for his rant about striking public sector workers.

In case you missed it, Clarkson’s latest outburst came on the ever-so-cosy The One Show, you can view it here along with the full context of what he actually said.

Essentially, when asked about the public sector strikes Clarkson said: “I’d have them all shot. I would take them outside and execute them in front of their families.”

He added: “I mean, how dare they go on strike when they’ve got these gilt-edged pensions that are going to be guaranteed while the rest of us have to work for a living?”

Harsh words but this is essentially Clarkson’s act. Of course he was going to say something ridiculous – for that is what it is. Does anyone honestly think he thinks that? Sure he may well not agree with the strikes but does anyone actually believe he would organise a mass execution?

If you are going to book a “star” onto a magazine show to fill space, they are going to talk to their PR team and work out how best to leverage the opportunity. In all honesty, it probably happened that Clarkson’s team called them but the point is the only reason that the BBC has these celebs on is so they can either fill time or promote a BBC programme that is coming up. The radio is full of it too.  So, Clarkson will be hell-bent on saying something to be remembered by.

With the complaints to the BBC now over 21,000, the pressure for heads to roll has mounted but there are those that say the production team of The One Show (heard laughing uproariously in the background) knew about the remarks ahead of the interview. Clarkson has since apologised, with his mate David Cameron calling him “silly” (that rather flippant remark could return to haunt Cameron) and Ed Milliband calling them “disgraceful and disgusting”.

Clarkson has since told the Daily Mirror: “I support the strikers in the first part. I said it was like being in the 1970s, my favourite decade. Then I said, but this is the BBC so we have to be impartial, and I expressed an extreme version of the other side of the coin, neither of which I believe.

“I expressed two different views. Which one do I apologise for? I am just making fun of the BBC’s need to be impartial. Not about strikers. I wasn’t saying that strikers should be shot.”

I think there are actually two potential winners here. The strikers, who can leverage this moment to add further fuel to their movement, keep the awareness up and flush out the fence-sitters who always felt that something was wrong with the system and also..Clarkson. Clarkson will have calculated this as a PR gamble and it nearly backfired but for all the apologising he is winning. He has garnered loads of attention from people who do not read his column or watch Top Gear just in time for the Christmas DVD and book market. The people who never liked him will never like him. He doesn’t want or need to win them over.

Could he have been fired from the BBC? Maybe but again, there are always rumours about Top Gear finishing so even if it did, not a problem for Jeremy who would exit in a blaze of publicity.

The real potential loser (PR-wise) in all of this is the BBC who will stand accused of pandering to the right if they let him off or to the left if they crack down. They are meant to be impartial (a point Clarkson made before his rant) and it will be hard for them to distance themselves here. Clarkson wasn’t trying to sell his political ideology, he was trying to sell books.

I just wonder whether some of the proceeds might go towards the NHS he is so keen on shooting. After all, they did save his mate Richard Hammond’s life. I doubt he will do it but it would be the best PR move now for him and love him or loathe him, he normally gets it about right (for his ends).

Barton not impressed with England rugby team

I agonised today on whether to write about Blackberry/RIM’s latest PR disaster or whether to have a pop at the antics of the England rugby team. I’ve discussed both subjects before, firstly with RIM’s disaster on the BBC  and then with regards rugby in general and #bloodgate

However, just when I thought I would plump for RIM following today’s outage update and apps compensation I heard a certain Joey Barton had given his opinion on the rugby. No contest now. Over to you Joey. (thanks to the excellent Football 365 for the content)

He was speaking at the Professional Players Federation national conference this afternoon and wasn’t going to pull any punches…

“If that was an England football team at a World Cup, there would probably have been public executions when they got home.

“‘Football’s a gentleman’s game played by thugs’, I hear quite a lot, and, ‘rugby’s a thug’s game played by gentlemen’.

“The minute a footballer steps out of line, I think the media in this country – because of the sums of money they earn and also because of the stigma attached – are really quick to jump on it.”

You know what, I think I agree with Mr Barton. I do think the rugby players get away with more than the footballers. Even cricket hero Freddie Flintoff’s pedalo incident seemed to be reported more as mere “japes” compared to what might have happened if that was Wayne Rooney or our old friend John Terry.

I predict that by the next rugby world cup (which is actually to be staged in this country) we will have seen countless more antics such as those of Tindall and co in the bar, ball swapping and before that, this shocking attack by current star player Manu Tuilagi on then star attraction Chris Ashton and his latest contribution to our international reputation after jumping off the ferry in Auckland.

After going on to question the issue of star footballers as role models, Barton was still ready to turn his ire on his fellow professionals, picking out John Terry and Ryan Giggs for criticism:

“The Giggs issue in any walk of life is not right, the behaviour of the man towards another man, towards his brother.

I’m not a particular fan of Barton in terms of the way he has led his life (although I do find his increasingly candid approach to the press refreshing -if a tad dangerous) but when someone like him is having a pop at the “gentleman’s game” then the RUFC really does have a problem.

What do you think? Hypocrisy from Barton or are the rugby lads getting away with it? If so, how long will this go on for?

All aboard

This time last week I was stationed outside Antenna, Nottingham’s creative hub, in the pouring rain waiting for a bus. “Wow, how fascinating” I hear you cry.

However, this was no ordinary bus (new Sade remix in there somewhere!). This was the StartUp Britain #subtour bus, replete with experts offering advice on anything from tax, IP and funding, to PR, marketing (Francine Pickering at Clarity Marketing) and SEO (Susan Hallam) both of whom are fellow inafishbowl experts.

Inspiring a more enterprising nation

After a quick brief from business author, founder of Enterprise Nation and co-founder of StartUp Britain, Emma Jones, I slipped onto the bus and bagged myself a seat at the back (such a rebel) settling myself in for whatever the rain and the start-ups of Nottingham could throw at me.

Though the start-ups were hugely varied, there was a constant theme – how do I generate some PR?  Some had already made decent strides here, such as Helen at Bambino Beads who recently won Theo Paphitis’ Small Business Sunday award on twitter but the vast majority were unclear on how to get cracking.

So, I thought I’d provide a checklist to help anyone, not just start-ups, get started, before they even begin to write their first press release.

1. Know your audience. What do they read? If you are going to start a PR campaign you need to know where your battleground is. How might they find out about you? Online, magazine, newspapers, trade magazines, all of the above? Sure, a feature in the FT sounds great but is that what your customers read? Could you even fulfill an order if you pulled it off?

2. Once you have a feel for the media outlets that will best serve you, try to prioritise them into simple A, B and C categories and get researching them. Read the target media before you think about pitching your story. Not only is it more effective, as you will understand how you might fit in, it is just common courtesy!

3. Plan. Contact their editorial assistants and ask them for the schedule for the year. It may well be that you can provide timely comment or content in the coming months. Planning is a huge part of PR. You can’t just turn it on or off when you fancy it. You need to aim for a consistent drip feed of messages. Forward feature research through these schedules can fill gaps when you do not have any genuine news hooks.

4. Prepare. Have you got some photography of your products/people/services? A picture tells a thousand words and can raise a fairly average story to great heights. Naturally, a distinctly poor photo, or none at all, can have entirely the opposite effect.

5. Done your planning? Got the contacts? Now, find your hook. Ask yourself, is this really news? If your product or service isn’t actually new, perhaps it chimes with some current affairs or seasonal events? If you are thinking, “hmm, yes, it would make a great Christmas present“, get moving NOW. Christmas features and ideas have been rolling off the PR bandwagons since July!

6. Plan done? Hook located? Now you can begin to prepare a press release. This article is my most popular on inafishbowl and tells you how to do just that.

Speaking of the fishbowls, George, Claire and Lyn were on the bus too. See what they made of it here.

Finally, just a quick note to thank Emma and the team at StartUp Britain for letting me loose on the bus. The whole campaign was a breath of fresh air on a dreary August morning and hugely beneficial to all I’m sure.

Gaddafi needs help with his image

Scanning the web this morning for blogging fodder, I learnt that some big, shiny London PR agencies received a curious email last month, purporting to be from Libya’s Ministry of Information.

Turns out this mysterious ministry was asking for PR support to improve the image of Muammar Gaddafi.  Many dismissed it as the work of a hoaxer and I suspect I would have done the same – not that I was asked (obviously not big, shiny and London enough).

However, writes PR Week in a surprising twist, two weeks later an official at the Libyan Mission in New York has declared it to be legitimate.

Dia Abubaker Alhutmany said: ‘The government is trying to gain the support of people outside the country.’

A dirty job perhaps (depending upon your opinion) but surely someone has to do it? Shouldn’t all the facts be conveyed as accurately as possible? Isn’t it a PR’s job to tell the client’s story? Shouldn’t the media be able to access both sides of the story?

This little affair did make me wonder, would I have pitched or taken a brief if I had been invited? My wondering lasted all of 5 seconds as I just couldn’t bring myself to sell my soul (in my humble opinion) to this regime. Also, in more practical terms, just imagine trying have a contact meeting (perhaps Skype?) or chasing down the accounts department for late payment!

But seriously, consider the impact on the agency that DOES take this account on. What would their other clients think being part of that portfolio? What would employees, suppliers, investors, prospects and peers make of it?  Could adding such a client ultimately prove to be a fatal PR move for the agency itself?

What about you? Have you ever been invited to pitch for some business (PR, Marketing, Legal, Banking, Accounting, whatever it may be) and just though “nah, I’ll leave that one, not good for the reputation” or do you think it is your professional duty or perhaps your right to choose whom you work for and with and nobody else’s business?

So why am I asking what appears to be an accountancy question on a PR blog? Well, it comes down to perception really and if I’m going to bang on every week about how to help manage your reputation I thought I should at least consider the message that your legal status sends out.

Sure, for some it is just a series of letters on the bottom of an invoice or email signature and it probably won’t be a deal-breaker if you have already wowed the client with your wonderful widgets but…it….might.

Would you want to take that risk?

I work with a huge range of clients, most of which fall into the (rather large) SME bracket and most of whom are Limited in terms of their legal structure but I also regularly meet sole traders happily going about their business  - hey, until March this year I was one of them. So why did I make the leap and go Limited?

• I thought the timing was right for me
• I thought it would send a good message back to the owner (me!) about the business
• I thought some people viewed sole traders as less than serious about their business and didn’t fancy similar misconceptions
• I thought that clients, suppliers and business partners would potentially have that little bit more confidence/reassurance
• And…sure…I thought there might be some advantages when it comes to the tax man!

Take perception into account

Here’s Jon Norris, web editor over at Crunch:

Fishing for PR tips?

Last week I answered a question over at the business reality website inafishbowl.com

Cuadros now offers the 0% finance own art scheme

George Thornton, the owner of Nottingham-based gallery Cuadros has some great news to shout about as he is now accredited to the pioneering “Own Art” scheme. Essentially, you can buy contemporary art with 0% finance.

However, George has to be careful with his budget so he was looking to do some DIY PR. As George is a former chef in a Michelin-starred restaurant, I thought I’d break down the ingredients of a classic PR campaign and perhaps lift the lid a little on the melting pot of PR. Warning, extended analogy alert!

Here’s a taster, just for starters:

What are you trying to achieve?

Firstly, work out what you are trying to make. PR for PR’s sake is pretty pointless so establish what you want to achieve first, then you can test, measure and tweak it as you go. If a table of six sat down and asked you for your recommendation you wouldn’t just begin banging the pots and pans around making a lot of noise about “something spicy with meat in it”. On the contrary, you’d work out what you have in your store cupboard, what you have in fresh today from local suppliers, what the guests have told you they like and then, if you can, you’d add a little seasonal twist.

You can read the main course in full here

Can a facebook campaign get more people to "like" Murray?

More importantly…will he care?

Well, if this slightly nauseating viral campaign on You Tube, in which we are encouraged to “Like” Andy’s fan page is anything to go by, he, or at least his sponsors, care a lot.

I’m not sure Andy Murray cares too much about how loved he is compared to good old “Tiger” Tim Henman but there is one reason he should care a bit more than he seems to (note “seems”).

It has nothing to do with securing sponsorship deals for well-known juice drinks or washing powder, this is to do with his game. The home crowd are a HUGE advantage in any sport, especially one so isolated and solitary as singles tennis.

When Henmania ruled SW19

“Tiger” Tim Henman and his contemporary Greg Rusedski had some fine moments on SW19, buoyed by a crowd and a chance to achieve beyond themselves.

Murray had the all-round game to blow both of those two crowd favourites off the court at an early age without having to reach to the crowd for inspiration. However, against the likes of Nadal and Federer and the inspired Novac Djokovic, who has seen Murray’s rise and bettered it, Andy needs to be able to reach inside himself and out to the fans for that extra burst of energy, that crucial moment of inspiration.

There is no need to moan on here about what has gone on before, how Murray hasn’t seen eye-to-eye with the LTA etc because frankly, the watching British public couldn’t give a strawberry. They want a British champion (I’m not going to get into the Scottish issue, the BBC are as complicit in that message as Murray is, they do it with the snooker too you know).

The vast majority of the viewing public on TV and in the grounds don’t, as a rule, follow the tour year-round and see Andy regularly beat all three of the superstars previously mentioned. They tune in for a fortnight, once a year, get a bit giddy about tennis all over again and then often leave, deflated by their hero’s unfortunate demise to a superior player.

The three in the way

For that is what they are. Nadal, Federer and Djokovic have consistently shown they are the best and that is shown in the rankings. On his day though, Murray can beat them. He just needs a bit of help from his friends, old, new and on Facebook. What doesn’t help is that Novak does funny impressions, Rafa is a showman and an incredible shot-maker and Roger is perhaps the nicest man in the world.

So what can Murray do about it?

It sounds bizarre but…he should be himself. I do watch tennis year-round, I follow him on twitter and you know what, he’s a pretty funny guy. He has character. The problem is, it doesn’t always show and he is so bottled up with the tension of the crowd and the perception that perhaps he can’t win them over anyway that we don’t get to see it.

Last week Andy was interviewed on BBC Radio 5 Live and when asked about wincing after a certain shot, Murray laughed gently and noted that “I grimace after every shot!” A sense of humour alert was issued immediately throughout the press box and we saw a different side. If he can show this more, the press will report it more. Oh, and a few more of these trick shots would help too Andy.

Good luck.

Fishing for answers on PR

Another question from the inafishbowl website which I think will resonate with many.

This question came from Amanda Waring of Mama Jewels who decided to hire a PR agency to get some featured material in some of the bigger names in the Mother and Baby magazine world.

That sounds like a good PR opportunity doesn’t it? Well, it would if he and/or his publicist had prepared fully first.

If you aren’t aware, after some nice and cosy questions him about the new Playbook tablet (exactly what the PR wanted), the  focus shifted onto RIM’s problems in India and the Middle East, where governments want to gain greater access to the tight security system used for Blackberry’s business users.

PR response wasn't in the Playbook

Ah, awkward. Not what the PR wanted. However, these guys are pros, they would have anticipated that this might come up surely? Alas, it seems not.

Mr Lazaridis described the question as “unfair”, signalling the interview was over – the PR can be heard muttering similarly in the background. Now, whether unfair or not, whether the clip doing the rounds on the internet is unfair and unbalanced or not (it is news by definition as there is interest in it) the pair of them should have had a better response than throwing their toys out of the pram and taking the metaphorical ball home.

By doing this, they have exacerbated the problem and drawn even more unwanted attention to something that perhaps only specialists were aware of. A calmer response would have been better and would have been simpler if they had foreseen this line of questioning ahead of the interview. It was, afterall, a possibility. The CEO knows it is an issue, so should the PR.

Journalists by and large are not out to make trouble, they are out to ask questions. Sometimes they are tricky questions but therein lies the trade-off. This is a two-way street. PR team gets cosy opportunity to profile new product, journalist gets one on one access to the top dog.

99 times out of 100 it all works beautifully. However, it just takes one moment for everyone to wonder whether it was all really worth it.

Remember guys, fail to prepare, prepare to fail.

A more complete cut of the interview will be broadcast on the television edition of BBC Click later in April.