The news last week that major international news agencies, including Reuters and Agence France-Presse, were going to boycott the news conference launching this year’s Cannes film festival in a dispute over restricted access to the festival’s fabled red carpet is an uncomfortable but not wholly unexpected consequence of both the blurring lines between the editorial and commercial departments of large media conglomerates and of the recognition that there is still a lot of money to be made from news content — at least, from certain kinds of news content.

Here’s the back story. The fabled film festival, which is the world’s largest and this year runs from May 12 to 23, signed a sponsorship deal with French broadcaster Canal Plus and with European pay-TV company Orange, a subsidiary of France Telecom. The deal, part of a growing trend by media properties to extract more than just exposure from their sponsorship of events, gives the two sponsors a level of exclusivity over video footage from the red carpet, where the world’s stars and starlets preen for the attention of paparazzi as they arrive for screenings, and from news conferences, where the stars and directors of the movies meet the world’s journalists covering the festival. The festival has said that other news organizations would have restricted access to these venues for video-shooting purposes. The world’s largest wire services, which are well paid to serve up this video to their clients around the globe, have cried foul.

I’m not sure they should be.

I realise that media outlets, especially reputable media outlets, have always maintained opaque Chinese walls between their editorial and advertising departments but many of them in this modern era have been tearing down those walls themselves. The trend is most advanced in broadcast, where, for example, hundreds of millions of dollars are paid every two years for exclusive broadcast rights to the Olympics. An unchallenged outcome of this is that while non-sponsoring broadcasting companies can certainly cover the games, they accept that they will face restrictions on camera placement and access to athletes, and quite severe limits on how much they can actually broadcast.

Not all that much different from what the Cannes festival has imposed.

I suspect the news agencies are crying foul less out of wounded journalistic ethic and more out of a hit to their bottom lines. You see, event organizers like the Olympics and, now, Cannes have figured out that the pictures media companies acquire at such events are worth a lot of money. And they want a piece of this action. I believe we will increasingly see event organizers charge the media for access to this valuable content.

In a way, this has long been established practice on election campaigns, where journalists who want to travel on the leader’s plane or bus must cough up substantial amounts of money to cover the costs. While nobody would ever suggest this is any sort of cheque-book journalism, it does lock out the less-wealthy media organisations and, thereby, make more valuable the stories and pictures that those with access publish and broadcast.

As I said, I’m not sure I object to this trend. While the purist in me is concerned about a world where media have to pay for access to events and the implications that holds for media freedom and other vaunted values, the realist (cynic?) in me is obliged to concede that most media today are indistinguishable from any other commercial enterprise, producing and packaging the product they know will sell while leaving aside the stuff they know won’t.

Why shouldn’t they have to pay for the raw material?

[tags] Cannes, Olympics, journalism, cheque-book journalism, media ethics [\tags]

I sent out a news release last week for NetCentric Technologies, an Ottawa company launching a new product, their PDF Accessibility Wizard, an MS Office add-in that makes documents accessible to people with disabilities.

I spent spent considerable time developing the right media list, one that contained many niche and specialty publications, so I knew the targets I’d be going after were appropriate and likely to be interested in this new product. Now, NetCentric’s PAW is not page one news and certainly will not be covered by the mainstream media. However, it offers real value, especially to the government technology crowd who are mandated by law to make their documents accessible, and a product brief or technology spotlight, customer case study or product review in a specialty pub catering to this audience would serve the company very well.

Launch day rolled around, the release was sent out, and I began to follow up with the highest value of the media targets to whom we sent the release. Phone calls, emails, Tweets, whatever channel our targets were using, I attempted to make contact. As sometimes happens, it was really (and I mean REALLY) difficult to make contact. For whatever reason, it was really challenging to get hold of people. In a moment of despair, I jokingly Tweeted that perhaps people don’t answer their phones anymore…!

It was time to pull out the big guns. If I was going to get some worthwhile traction for my client, I was going to have to resort to the time-honored, secret weapon that we PR consultants absolutely know will result in coverage.

Much like magicians who condemn one of their own for revealing trade secrets, I’m sure my colleagues in the PR business are going to be terribly chagrined if I expose the secret to success in PR. It’s something we’ve held dear for all of our years in the business, the surefire way to get a response from media targets.

Are you ready? Here goes…

It’s persistence. Tenacity. KEEPING AT IT.

I know, it’s not terribly exciting, but that’s the secret to success. Hard work. Though as my favourite teacher always used to say, “work smart, not hard.” So, rather, it’s smart work … with a little elbow grease thrown in.

There is no magic bullet in PR, it’s just a lot of work, putting the right resources in front of the right targets, in whatever format makes the most sense. Where the worst of our industry all too often falls down is where the rubber hits the road. The release is sent, if it doesn’t click immediately, that’s the end of it. “We sent it out, the rest is up to the media.” Wrong.

If it didn’t click immediately, why not? Perhaps, as in this case, the publications being targeting are part-time propositions, or the person who typically writes about such things is on holiday, or is focused on a deadline, or myriad other good reasons. Use common sense, obviously; don’t fill the inboxes of editors and reporters with umpteen emails and voicemails from you. Rather, be persistent without being annoying.

I’ve had some really high-value conversations in the last eight hours, ones that not only secured my client coverage that will no doubt move their market, but also that wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t kept at it. Because of the research we do at the outset of a campaign, I knew that I had the right information for the right targets; it was just a matter of time before it all came together.

Technorati Tags: tenacity, PR secrets, NetCentric Technologies

Anecdotally, it seems that September is always a busy time for a PR firm. Executives are coming back from the cottage, relaxed, and ready to work. This can mean that they’re ready to either start or restart a PR campaign with gusto, outline objectives for the year ahead, and commit some budget to meeting those objectives.

We’ve talked in the past about the folly of suspending marketing activities over the summer, advice that still holds true. Regardless, the reality is that we’ve got a number of launches slated for this Fall. Some clients are new, some are renewing their commitment to PR. Either way, there are a few items to keep in mind as you launch your PR campaign in the autumn:

Some longer lead publications will already be planning 2010. This is a great time to get on the radar of editors who are working to shape next year’s editorial calendars. If we can influence their decisions at this stage, we have the potential to make pitching our clients easier later on. In addition to helping shape editorial calendars, we’ll be collecting calendars as they’re released and checking where we will be able to pitch our clients into stories.

Just as they maintain a longer view into what editorial they will be crafting for next year, monthly lead times for some trade publications and commercial magazines are well in advance of publication dates, so the work that you do in September may not see print until the end of the year. Most clients have a range of media that cover the spectrum from instant coverage in blogs and online news portals, to daily and weekly papers and newsletters, to those with three-plus months of lead time, so if your PR firm has a dynamic media list, your coverage will span a reasonable period of time.

Although the field may be crowded in September, with your partners and competitors also likely ramping up their PR activities, this can work to your advantage. If a journalist is receiving pitches from similar companies, they may choose to do a round-up in a particular space or a comparison of competitive offerings. If partners are reaching out to the media, you can coordinate efforts to beef up your offering to key outlets. Of course, if you can bring customers to the table as well, you’ll be in great shape.

I had better get back to work on content development for these upcoming launches. Best practices are best practices, regardless of the time of year, but the tips above hold particular value as the leaves change and the wheels on school buses resume their revolutions round and round.

Technorati Tags: back to school, editorial calendars, lead times, summer vacation

So, you want to see your story make the pages of the major business media? Well, if it truly merits that level of attention, then applying the right mix of patience, persistence and PR savvy should pay off… or perhaps you could try a somewhat less orthodox method to guarantee front page attention.

Yesterday’s spoofing of the New York Times by the mysterious Yes Men presents companies with an interesting alternative to traditional PR tactics: if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Just think - Company X unveils version 3.8 of Software Application Y - the cover story on BusinessWeek. Although printing a million fake newspapers in support of every news release is probably going to eat into that marketing budget rather quickly.

Ho hum, back to the drawing board.

Technorati Tags: media relations, New York Times, PR stunts

One word: Cuil.

This supposed “Google-killer” launched to much ballyhoo earlier this week. Problem is that the product itself is not yet ready for prime time and so it has, as many media have said, “stumbled out of the gate.” In today’s fast paced tech environment, it’s a costly misstep for a company to generate so much publicity when the product itself isn’t up to par, especially when it’s something so high profile as taking on the most successful search engine in history.

I’m sure the Cuil powers that be are questioning both their branding and their launch strategy this week, with influential bloggers being unable to resist the urge to deem the offering “Totally UnCuil.” Ouch.

Technorati Tags: public relations, publicity, PR disaster, Cuil

One of the first of what I like to call “Francis’s favourite fictions,” or “Everything I know that’s wrong about PR I learned from technology company executives,” was a line from the CEO of one of the very first tech companies I pitched when I originally ventured out on my own in the early 1990s. “I want to be on the front page of the Ottawa Citizen tomorrow morning,” he said.

I was a lot younger, thinner and more intemperate in those days, so I replied, “Okay. Go home and shoot your wife tonight.”

Right answer, just not terribly delicately put. However, he got the point and I got the gig.

What I was trying to say, of course, is that media relations usually doesn’t work that way and, for some companies, it never works that way. In fact, at inmedia, our objective is never Page 1 tomorrow. Rather, we try from the very outset to build the kind of foundation for an ongoing media relations effort that will generate meaningful coverage over the long haul. In the technology B2B space, where virtually all our clients are new, small and/or completely unknown, this means we first must thoroughly educate target media about the client, its story and how it will be of interest to the journalists and their audiences now and into the future. If this process delivers immediate coverage, so much the better, but that’s not the primary intent.

This first company was also the first time I tried out what has come to be known around here as a ramp up and roll out, or the media and analyst launch of a company that builds the foundation I’m talking about. The company had recorded many newsworthy successes in its history and had a market-leading presence in its space. However, as we also like to say around here, they call it the “news” business, not the “olds” business. So most of those achievements were now just so much fishwrap as far as the media were concerned.

What I did was develop a comprehensive set of materials that told the company’s complete story, including a timeline of its growth and successes and a couple of case studies that showcased its leadership position. I then sent that package out to the media I had identified, through research, as being at the intersection of Writes-about-this-subject and Influences-my-client’s-market. I followed up with each of them, had great conversations about how my client might feauture in future coverage, and even generated some really good immediate hits. Over the long run, I generated a constant stream of coverage about the client, including, eventually, a Page 1 piece in the Ottawa Citizen.

If a client today tells me the same thing — “I wanna be on Page 1 tomorrow.” — I tell him or her much the same thing. I just use a slightly more subtle approach now.

Technorati Tags: Launch, media relations, technology, B2B

All right, picking up from where I left off last time:

7) Be prepared: When you engage the media, questions can come from all directions. Even when you are taking a media call on a particular milestone, such as a new product launch, expect the unexpected. That doesn’t mean you should readily view the journalist with suspicion and expect to be ambushed with inappropriate questions. Perhaps the journalist is looking to follow up on old news, such as whether the company is still on track to reach profitability by a certain date, or if those hiring plans you mentioned a year ago worked out, what your future growth plans are, etc. When arranging an interview time, confirm what the journalist would like to discuss. For more reading on what materials to have ready for the media, see Providing the media with the tools they need to cover your company.

8) Keep it simple, stupid: That doesn’t mean talk to the journalist like he or she is an idiot. If they want something dumbed down, they’ll ask and you should accommodate. Better to take the time and demonstrate patience with questions that require something be explained in terms a 10-year-old would understand than risk a miscommunication. In the age of Google, retractions and correction notices do little to yank back errors that may be damaging to your company, or at least confusing for busy readers who want their information delivered in clear and obvious terms.

9) Good stories have drama, conflict and resolution: Journalists looking to tell a good story hate to hear that everything is perfect and peachy keen. That doesn’t mean they’re looking for trouble where there isn’t any, they just know the skies can’t be sunny and clear all the time. Don’t be afraid to be frank about challenges your business has faced. Instead, take it as an opportunity to talk about how you’ve persevered and overcome, the lessons you’ve learned, or at least, how you intend to overcome if the bio-waste is still flying from the fan. Remember what I said last time in Point #3? What you’ve learned in the School of Hard Knocks can help paint you as a seasoned and capable executive. It also makes for compelling reading that can imbed you in readers’ minds far better than a write up about your latest product’s bells and whistles.

10) Don’t hide: Sometimes, what you don’t want the world to know gets out at the most inconvenient times. Perhaps it’s bad news, or just news you’re not ready to share. It’s often better to set the record straight than ignore a journalist with a scoop that’s been obtained through avenues beyond your control. The journalist may have already scraped up enough information to run with a story before they even pick up the phone to call you. Don’t throw away the chance to tell your side of the story and clear up any possible misinformation, or negotiate an exclusive with the journalist that allows you to embargo the news, if that’s appropriate. Dodging the media is often perceived as a sign that you have something to hide, which only adds fuel to the fire.

On the other hand, don’t feel pressured to give that interview before you’re certain about what it is you want to say. Take the call, garner exactly what it is the journalist is looking for, and arrange for the interview to take place at a more suitable time. But appreciate and respect the fact that the journalist likely has a deadline and an editor breathing down his or her neck.

In conclusion:
It should be self-evident by now that there’s often room to negotiate the terms of engagement with the media. Ethical journalists are after the truth with fair and balanced coverage of the news, events, and organizations relevant to their publication. But how that coverage is obtained, how you agree to be the subject of public scrutiny and consumption, is up to you. The simple rule of thumb is don’t say anything to a journalist you don’t want to see in print. If you want to err on the side of caution, you could always give the media the cold shoulder. Of course, do that and you cut yourself off from the most effective means of generating awareness of your value proposition to potential partners, investors and customers. The media can be a powerful means to promote your business and the subject-matter expertise of your management team that you can’t afford to ignore.

Also of interest: No sandwich required 

Technorati Tags: media relations

I had one of those conversations last week that frustrate the hell out of me and leave me wondering when, if ever, some technology executives are going to come to their senses.

I was at a session of the Ottawa Wireless Cluster on Thursday evening and I took advantage of the networking to renew an acquaintance with a seasoned CEO, someone who has helmed at least a couple of companies, bringing one of them public.

As usual, I asked him how things were going with his latest venture, now about four years old. He said things were alright, but that it had taken about twice as long as he expected to reach the level of business he currently has. Naturally, I asked him what he was doing to acquire that business. Such as, oh, I don’t know … marketing?

With no apparent awareness of the bitter and tragic irony at play, he proceeded to tell me his new company didn’t need — indeed, didn’t want! — marketing because it is the little upstart in the sector and he doesn’t want to tip off his competitors to what he’s doing. He said he gets customers through word of mouth, or by identifying prospects and going after them.

Now, I have nothing against a sales-driven customer-acquisition strategy and there’s no more powerful a channel than fabled word of mouth, but if it’s taking you twice as long as you expected to acquire those customers, maybe the direct route could use a little help. Such as, oh, I don’t know … marketing?

Naw, he said, don’t need it. In fact, don’t want it because, until very recently, his company was in “stealth.” God, I hate that word. Check out what I wrote about it in Mass High Tech Journal a while back. I have never been able to fathom why companies elect to be in so-called “stealth mode.” I have yet to come across one that was truly stealthy; that is, hiding itself from every prying eye. Most are talking to just about everyone — potential investors, candidate employees, suppliers, landlords, bankers, you name it — everyone except potential customers. In other words, they are simply failing to invest in marketing, and excusing it to themselves by pretending they’re doing something exotic and daring.

Fortunately, I also had the chance last week to at the same OWC event to conclude that conversation and go listen to a tech company CEO who really gets it. The featured speaker at the event was Nick Quain, founder of Cellwand, a gorgeous little company that has rolled out one of the wireless sector’s first premium directory assistance products, #TAXI, with others in the wings. I could write a lot about the product and the company’s strategy but for the purposes of making a stark contrast, suffice it to say that Cellwand executed effectively on the technology requirements and has racked up phenomenal success securing partnerships with wireless carriers to the point that the company now has blanket coverage in Canada, where it started, and is available on 150-million phones and counting in the U.S. It’s a textbook case study in building the right product and the right channel to market, and Nick did a great job of sharing the lessons he has learned along the way.

But, get this: He insisted that, phenomenal product, great carrier partners and blanket coverage notwithstanding, Cellwand is dead in the water without one more key ingredient. Such as, oh, I don’t know … marketing?

The CEO I spoke with before Nick’s presentation began was still there when it was over. I sure hope he was paying attention.

Technorati Tags: Marketing, technology, stealth mode, Cellwand, #TAXI, Ottawa Wireless Cluster

Last week, I wrote about the basic materials that, when combined with your media kit, will provide the media with all of the components that they need in order to cover your company, with or without your input. In addition to having these materials at the ready, in the hands of your agency, it’s best to house all of these components along with your media kit in an online newsroom on your web site. Here are our recommendations to a best practices approach for building and maintaining your online newsroom:

• a clear link to it from the front page of the corporate web site (and clear navigation back to the home page once you’re in the newsroom);
• a one-paragraph corporate overview on the landing page, full contact information and further links to:
• corporate backgrounder, executive biographies, product descriptions and other support materials (essentially the contents of a media kit). This section can also include good quality jpegs of the company logo, and head shots of executives;
• current and archived news releases;
• media coverage published on other sites or for which you have obtained a license to post on your own site. In the former, the link should open in a new window; in the latter, it should open a PDF page within the site.

We have recently launched several clients that have done a great job of following these guidelines on their own web sites: Essential Life Data and Singletouch. Visit their sites and see if there are any improvements that you could make to your company’s site, based on the guidelines above.

Technorati Tags: public relations, PR, media relations, online newsrooms, press center

At the outset of an engagement with a new client, we have a checklist of materials that we need to develop for the media and analysts to whom we are about to roll out the company, in order for these influencers to gain a comprehensive understanding of the company and its offerings. This includes, but is not necessarily limited to, backgrounders on the company and the technology, biographies of key spokespeople, a fact sheet that provides information at a glance, and a news release to front the information package. Still, there are additional materials that are of great value and that ideally should be available at the time of the launch.

Chief among these additional materials is images. We work hard to ensure that the printed words that we’re sending out on our clients’ behalf do a good job of telling their story, but as the adage goes, a picture tells a thousand words. If your company offers products, have available high-resolution (minimum 300 dpi) images of the product in action that would be suitable for printing alongside your product announcement. If your key spokespeople will be quoted in the media, or if you plan on sending out hiring announcements, high-resolution images of your company’s executive team or that new hire will be requested. It’s also good to have your company logo available to any outlet that might be interested.

Rather than sending all of this information unsolicited to media and analyst targets, just have materials at the ready and when requests come in, they’re easily fulfilled. Another, and perhaps the best approach, is to have a fully stocked newsroom on your web site that houses all of the components I’ve listed above. I’ll address our best practices approach on web newsrooms, and links to some sites that do it particularly well, in a future post.

Technorati Tags: media relations, public relations, PR