Are PR Embargoes Dead?

The embargo is one of my favorite PR tactics, but it looks like it will soon be another casualty of the Internet, if it isn't already.

In the ooollllddd days, you could hand out embargoed news and assuming you had a good relationship with the media, the news would sit in the can until the agreed-upon time. But the Internet and online media changed all that, for good.

In the tech news space, in particular, the embargo has become a cause celebre. TechCrunch, one of the gorillas in the tech media space, has been pushing for the death of embargoes for awhile, and their wish may be coming true. TechCrunch may be a little early in writing an obit, but in the end, they may be right.

For other tech journalists, however, it's still something of an open issue -- and one we'll discuss next Wednesday (along with many other topics of interest to tech PR) on the PR University webinar, Tech Media and Trends PR Can't Afford to Miss: Top Tech Influencers Reveal Best PR Practices for Reaching Consumers in Today's Economy. Panelists include:

• Nancy Blair, Senior Assignment Editor/Technology, USA Today


• Spencer Ante, Computers Department Editor, BusinessWeek


• Jim Kerstetter, Executive Editor, CNET News


• David Lidsky, Articles Editor, Fast Company


• Tom Foremski, Author, "Silicon Valley Watcher"

How do I know we'll be talking about this? Two reasons: it came up today on our pre-webinar prep call, and I'm the moderator and get to ask the questions.

3 No-No's When You Pitch the Media By Email

Almost all journalists say they want to be pitched by email. So guess what -- they are deluged with email pitches! And to make matters worse, most of them are bloated, non-news pitches that get deleted faster than you can say, "did you get my email?"

How to avoid the trash bin? That's easy -- pitch real news, facts and figures, information that the journalist's audience really might want to know. Skip the self-serving pseudo ads -- those are the ones that get deleted FAST.

But the title of this post is 3 no-nos, so here's a list of other no-nos:

1. Using ALL CAPs in the subject line -- why are ya yellin' at me?


2. Putting the words "press release" or "news release" in the subject line -- yer wastin' precious space, pardner.


3. Including attachments -- send links, not attachments. Repeat -- send links, not attachments.

For more handy email pitching tips, tune in to PR University next Wednesday, September 16, for a lively webinar called, "Perfect Email Pitches: Master PR Scribes Reveal How to Craft Copy That Boosts Opens and Media Coverage in Today’s Shrinking News Hole." I'm moderating, and the panelists will include:

• Harry Medved, Head of Public Relations, Fandango


• Jane Mazur, Executive Vice President/Director of Media Relations, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide


• Dan Beeson Director of Media Relations for Mother Nature Network


• Nancy Brenner, Senior Vice President/Director of Media Relations, MS&L Global Public Relations

If You Can't Measure the Effectiveness of Your PR Effort , You'll Never Get to the C-Suite

Here's your business school saying of the day: "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it." Here's your Catching Flack corollary of the day: "If you're not measuring the effectiveness of your PR programs, your career path will be severely limited."

I've railed recently about the lack of professional standards in our industry and how they hold us back. Another practice element sorely in need of improvement is measurement.

Other departments (operations, finance, sales) are obsessed with numbers and measurement, and guess what? The cream of the crop from those departments rises to the top and gets to the C-suite. Our department, all worried about "relationships" and "awareness" but short on the metrics to prove our worth, is forever stuck in middle management. When was the last time a CEO came out of the communications function?

One of the ways an industry improves in a particular area is to set up a competition and give out awards for industry leaders. And that's the driving force of this blog post -- to let you know that the deadline for applying for the Jack Felton Golden Ruler Award from the Institute for PR is coming up soon: August 15. Winners will be feted at the Institute for Public Relations Summit on Measurement in October in Portsmouth, NH.

This award -- named for Jack Felton, founder of the IPR Commission for PR Measurement & Evaluation -- recognizes excellence in public relations research, measurement and evaluation. The award's primary objective is to identify superb examples of research used to support public relations practice, and to publish them as case studies on the Institute for Public Relations website. You can see the 2008 winners here, and all the winning submissions can be found at that site on other pages.

How to Keep Your Spirits Up and Boost Your Success in PR

Doing PR can be a pretty frustrating job, with endless client/boss demands, temperamental reporters and editors (and bloggers), pitching difficulties and the like. It's a wonder any of us enjoy making a living at this at all!

Over the years, I've found that working in teams, brainstorming with colleagues and having the occasional bitch session with my peers makes this challenging profession a little more bearable.

Unfortunately for many of us, we don't work in large enough teams to make such collaborative moments possible. PR is often one of the smaller functions in a business. It's not uncommon for PR to be handled internally at a company by one or two people, and even in agencies, most client teams have only a handful of people.

As a result, our thinking can get stale, leading to more frustration and potentially less PR success. That's why I'm very happy to let you know that I'm launching a new webinar series, PR Power Boost. The first one will take place Monday, June 22 at 1pm ET/10am PT.

PR Power Boost is a 60-minute webinar to recharge your batteries and send you off with a raft of new ideas to accomplish your PR goals.

Here's how it will work:

• A small group will meet on a conference call to get the latest PR tips and share ideas. To make it as high-value as possible, there will be no more than 20 participants per call.


• Everyone's line will be live, so you can ask questions, get answers and offer ideas all throughout the call.


• I'll facilitate and make sure everyone gets the answers they need.

I'm really excited to offer this new service to the PR community and I think it's going to be a great success. I'm pricing it at a very reasonable $75 per session, and offering at introductory price for this first webinar of $60 (use the discount code BOOST).

I hope you will join us, and feel free to pass this post and the discount code around to your colleagues!

It's The Content, Not the Pipes

As this blog has noted many times, PR writing needs a major, major upgrade. On second thought, cancel that -- as long as PR writing sucks, I'll probably still be able to make a living, because I know how to string two words together.

But seriously -- I would like to see the profession's writing skills improve dramatically. I hope it happens in my lifetime, but as a sportswriter I love (Ray Ratto of the San Francisco Chronicle) would say, that's not the way to bet.

I've written and spoken a lot about improving PR writing, and I'll be giving it another stab next Thursday, April 23, when I moderate a Bulldog Reporter PR University audio conference on the subject. I just did the speaker briefing call and I can assure you that this audio conference will be full of actionable information about improving your writing skills.

Probably the main thing you need, however, is willpower. You are not going to improve your skills without a) wanting to and b) having the fortitude to take the criticism you need to take to get better. This is the perfect time to commit to improving your writing, because good writing is always a marketable skill.

I took the headline for this post from one of the panelists on next week's call, Paul Furiga, and it's his way of saying that good writing works in any medium, from Twitter to books (or e-books). It's about the writing, not the platform you use to distribute your writing.

The Big PR Lesson of "Thank You For Smoking"

I finally got around to seeing "Thank You For Smoking" last week -- my bad. It's an absolute must-see for anyone in the PR industry and if I was a university PR professor, I would use this film in my course and devote a couple of weeks to watching and analyzing it. It is a pitch-perfect study of the role of PR in society.

Even though I may be the last person in the industry to see it, I don't want to recount the plot here and spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it yet. But I did want to comment on one of the key turning points, when the main character, Nick Naylor the tobacco industry spokesman, lets his guard down (among other things) and tells a journalist a lot of information he thinks is "off the record."

When the information becomes the basis of a blockbuster expose about him, Naylor complains to the reporter that he thought their conversations were "off the record." Wrong! No conversation with a journalist is off the record unless you get specific buy-in from the journalist before you start talking! That's when you have the leverage and can negotiate the terms of the interview. And furthermore, some of the best times for journalists to get candid information from you is in the informal exchanges you might have in the elevator, sitting down for the interview, or making small talk over lunch, when you think they aren't taking notes.

The 3 Essential Skills of PR - Part 3

In my first post in this series, I laid out the three skills every PR person should have if they want to succeed:

• Developing strategy


• Writing


• Pitching

Today, let’s talk about pitching.

At first glance, pitching might appear to be the most tactical element of PR and not one of the three essential skills. But in fact, it is the most important. It’s the “relations” part of “public relations.”

For after you set your strategy and develop your materials, you have to venture out into the world and connect with other people to spread your message. And more often than not, that involves making a pitch.

Again, I find myself appalled by the poor pitching skills I observe in our industry. It’s not for lack of trying — lord knows that PR pitches are hurtling around the world at blazing speed every day. It’s for lack of understanding the “relationship” part of pitching and PR.

Whenever you are pitching someone, whether it is to suggest that they do a story on your company or client or whether it is to get them to hire you or your agency, you must approach it from a relationship perspective. You have to ask yourself:

• What do I have to offer this person?


• What are their problems and what opportunities do they have, and how can I help them solve their problems and achieve their goals?


• When and how would be the best way to connect with this person?

Notice, none of the above involves “getting a hit,” PR jargon for convincing a journalist to do a story on the subject you pitched them. That’s what’s in it for you if you do it right, but first you have to figure out what’s in it for the person you are pitching. If you don’t do that, 9 times of 10 your pitch will fail.

The key to figuring out the answers to the three bullet points above is getting out of your own head and your own problems and doing some research on your targets. Honestly, with the Internet this has never been easier, whether it’s a journalist or blogger you are pitching or a business exec. And remember to use your ears to listen to the other person — they will almost always tell you what they need if you give them a chance.

I’ll leave you with this sage advice:

“God gave you two ears and one mouth. So listen twice as much as you talk.”

The 3 Essential Skills of PR - Part 1

There are three essential skills every PR person should have if they want to succeed:

• Developing strategy


• Writing


• Pitching

In today’s post, let’s talk about how to be a strategist. Tomorrow and Wednesday, we’ll cover the next two.

Being a strategist is the hardest part of PR, which is why the best strategists get the big bucks and the best jobs. Developing your strategic skills is the work of a lifetime, and should start when you are young, just getting into the business world.

The first thing you should do is undergo a personality assessment. Seriously. Something like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) test or an equivalent. You might also avail yourself of a career assessment by a career counselor. These will tell you where your innate skills are and what your style is, so you can develop your strategic personality accordingly. Not everyone is cut out to be a CEO, but everyone has strategic skills if they know their strengths and weaknesses.

In PR, the next step is to understand the following:

• Bosses and others above you, such as clients


• The media and communications environment


• How to work with your peers and subordinates

Again, there’s a world of resources to help you with these tasks.

The last part of the recipe is the hardest: learning to think for yourself. Here’s where no one else can help you. You have to be confident in your judgements and be prepared to take the heat when you’re either unpopular or wrong.

You’ll know you’re succeeding when people turn to you and ask for strategic advice (like how to solve a big problem, not where to go for lunch). The better your advice, the farther up the food chain you will go.

Tomorrow: the keys to being a better writer.

The 3 Essential Skills of PR - Part 2

Yesterday, I laid out the three skills every PR person should have if they want to succeed:

• Developing strategy


• Writing


• Pitching

In yesterday’s post, I talked about being a strategist. Today, let’s talk about writing. Tomorrow, we’ll talk about pitching.

As I’ve said repeatedly on this blog, the paucity of good PR writers is baffling. It may be the single biggest reason we are a fringe profession (Yes, we are. We are about 1% of the size of the advertising industry, for comparison, and we have fewer discernible industry standards than licensed plumbers).

It would be impossible to lay out a quick plan for becoming a better writer. But here are my essential tips:

• Get a good editor. Everyone, including the best writers on the planet, run their work past editors. Good editors help you shape your work and your writing style, forcing you to dig deeper and provide your readers with more and better information.


• Develop your ears and your eye. Your ears hear words and ideas you can incorporate into your writing. Your eyes draw you to good writers you can learn from. Pay attention to these senses and work to develop them.


• Simplify. Use the fewest, shortest words possible. Believe me, no one is impressed with multi-syllabic words for their own sake. One of my favorite current writers is the Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon. He uses lots of complicated words, and so I started to read his books with a dictionary by my side. Damned if each of those words wasn’t the exact right word at the right time to express the nuance and depth of his thought! That’s when you use big long words — when you have no other choice.


• Rewrite if you need to. Unless you are sure that your draft is the best you can do, give yourself permission to rewrite. All the best writers do it. It’s magic, really — rewriting helps you clarify your thoughts and exposes whatever weaknesses were hidden in your first draft.

Good writing is hard, and good writers, generally, aren’t born that way. They develop over time, with the help of good editors and by their own perseverance. If you want to be a better writer, and you should, commit yourself to it over the balance of your career.