It’s no coincidence that some companies and products receive constant media coverage, while others never see the light of day. While a solid, innovative product has a lot to do with the coverage a company or product receives, there are other crucial factors affecting a successful media campaign. Below are the top four reasons that companies become media darlings.
Creativity (when a straight product pitch won’t cut it)
It’s all about how the story is pitched. Since there are only so many latest, most innovative, sexiest companies or products, creatively positioning a pitch can be the difference between getting coverage and getting a dial tone.
For example: RLM formulated a pitch for a lip balm. Instead of pitching the gooey product as its own story, we used a dermatologist as a spokesperson, and pitched a TV segment on keeping your skin healthy during the cold, dry winter months. As the dermatologist was giving tips, she worked in the lip balm as a great preventive measure and therapy for dry lips. The producer was happy because she had an expert giving her audience free advice and our (thrilled) client got a brand mention on live, and then viral, TV.
Uniqueness
Of course, if a product is groundbreaking or completely different, media coverage is all but guaranteed. My five-year-old nephew could have placed Viagra or BOTOX stories.
Timeliness/current events
Timeliness is always a key factor in securing optimal media coverage. For example, there is no better time to pitch a digital camera than December for the holiday Gift Guides.
In addition to leveraging reoccurring events such as holidays or seasons, using current events like a really unusual election (read: recall) can also pay nice dividends. For instance, we pitched a “career expert” client so that she could give commentary on life-changing careers as she promoted her new book.
Relationships
At the risk of sounding self-serving, which I risk every day, a good PR firm with established relationships is a key component to placing a story. As with anything in business, strong relationships will take you far. Developing mutual trust and respect with producers and editors will not only increase the chances that they will take a call from a PR pro, but it also increases the likelihood that they will cover stories that have less “headline appeal.”
Yes, of course, these four factors do not guarantee media coverage (or lack thereof), but understanding them will increase your chances of being the next big thing.
Simply put, at that point you can decide if autographs are allowed, darling.
Tip #5 -- Don't bury the lead. Journos hate that.
ReplyDeleteOn that note, I feel like relationship building is really the biggest key to PR in the digital age. Of course, I'm a writer in a specific niche, so I get to know a fair amount of PR people in the scene. The more that are genuinely interested in helping you out, while helping their client out, are the ones who I listen to on a regular basis.
Creative pitch? Trash bin, nearly always. Person emailing to say hello w/o any news? An immediate good will reply, and a further fostered relationship.
Now I'm not saying you have to be best friends with everyone, nor to annoy with follow up emails like "ARE WE BFFS YET?!?!?!" but a simple, courteous, to the point introduction does wonders.
Current events and creativity are nice, but they're gimmicks in the niche publishing world. They might work for the biggies, where most people want to place their clients, I'm guessing, but for smaller unknown products w/o brand recognition looking to build a presence, a unique product and/or a good relationship are the key.
Everything else is just fluff.