Agile PR

Marian Salzman

• Publisher: AMACOM
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780814437889
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Relations publiques

Public relations maverick Marian Salzman goes behind the scenes of creative powerhouse Havas PR, revealing the newest, most effective tactics for championing brands, organizations, and causes.

Today's news landscape is more crowded and varied than ever before and is only growing more diverse. From bloggers to influencers to citizen journalist to all that is coming up over the horizon, learning how to effectively build brands has become a 24/7 mission for even the most experienced PR firms, let alone the lone enterprise. So where does one even begin to take on such an endeavor? Look no further!

In Agile PR, individuals and businesses seeking to build either their brand or that of a client can learn how to:

• Use newscrafting to help you or your client be the news
• Personalize pitches to reporters and bloggers
• Master the art of storytelling
• Create branded hashtags that get shared
• Gain exposure at SXSW, TED, and other key conferences
• Get bumped to the top of online searches

Punctuated by case studies from the United Nations Foundation, Wyclef Jean, Sears, and other campaigns, Agile PR unlocks industry secrets to help anyone broaden their reach and increase their impact.

1.

PR2020: A Media Toolkit

You’ve probably already come to realize that the business of public relations isn’t exactly as it’s portrayed in the movies. Hollywood has occasionally given our industry its moment in the spotlight—think Conrad in Wag the Dog, Edina in Absolutely Fabulous, Samantha in Sex and the City, Shauna in Entourage. But those portrayals mostly represent the surface of the actual job. Believe everything on the screen, and we’d all be smart yet calculating, morally compromised, manipulative, frivolous, and/or pushy. It just isn’t true. The job itself involves orchestration, big ideas, communication skills, and, as you get deeper into it, true strategic thinking.

Better to look at European TV’s idea of what we do—characters such as Simon in Spin and Kasper in Borgen. The drama about this job is amped up, for sure (and why not?), but the essentials of our work are represented in ways that are recognizable and show some resemblance to real life. In those worlds, as in ours, the ground is shifting. The business requires higher-level thinking. Communication strategy is essential, and the PR professionals are depicted as skilled not only in relaying strategic narratives in press briefings but also in stewarding and shaping the narratives. And, most realistically, events unfold at digital speed, driven by text messages, tweets, leaks, video uploads, and the 24/7 news cycle—just as in real 21st-century life.

This book will provide you with the means for succeeding in the actual PR world. It’s a real-life how-to about next-generation public relations—the tools, tactics, and techniques of communications professionals thriving in the always-on, hyperconnected, borderless world in which we now work and live—with insider information and stories to show you how this plays out in real business situations.

In our 24/7/365 climate, a constant trialogue among journalists, commentators, and Jane and John Public creates the stories and makes and breaks the news. When you finish this book, I hope you’ll feel better able to create or manage public relations strategy and communicate effectively in a world where everyone has a voice and we can all broadcast our views.

I have worked in and around brand communications since 1986. In that time, I hope I have grown wiser, as I have had a decent seat for the commercial launches of America Online, AOL Europe, and China Online, plus the return of Steve Jobs to Apple (full disclosure: my role was often scut on some of these global power launches, but some of the best lessons learned happened when I was notetaker, scheduler, handler, and media monitor), and more. Later in this book, you’ll hear more about my relatively recent experiences, such as my weeks in the trenches as press lead for rapper/musician/actor Wyclef Jean’s run at the presidency of Haiti (think crisis management).

Back before everywhere-all-the-time technology was the norm (1996, for instance, when I couldn’t get call waiting in The Netherlands, where I lived at the time), communication strategy could be planned in advance. The campaign blueprint plotted out a timeline with a series of milestones to be activated and checked off. It was all pretty linear. The whole thing could be set up and executed more or less as planned, give or take a few adjustments to accommodate occasional unexpected events.

AGILE THEN AND NOW

While speed of light is now the norm, some savvy practitioners have been living this way for a couple of decades.

My colleague Lisa Vanella, a healthcare media relations guru and 25-year PR veteran, recalls what “fast” meant way back when:

I was working for Merck’s vaccine division and came into work one morning at 9 to notification that the FDA was approving our chicken pox vaccine and wanted to do a joint press conference that afternoon in D.C. I had to run into a maternity store and get something suitable to wear (not easy when you are seven months pregnant), then I hopped in a car from the maternity store to the airport and to D.C., where we had to organize a huge press conference in one hour—no cellphones, no laptops, no social media. We couldn’t track down all our patient experts, so I wound up doubling as a spokesperson, fielding media questions on whether I planned to vaccinate my baby when she was born. All this while two account executives stood by the fax machine and manually sent media alerts and press releases. We had to track “immediate results” by phone, and it took days to monitor for full coverage through clipping and video monitoring services. A results report that takes one person an hour today took a team several days to track and compile.

Today, we monitor news in real time, typically reporting to clients three to five times per day and night to make sure they see not only the news as reported by journalists but also the social and antisocial commentary that bubbles up in Twitterville, on Facebook, and in the comments section below the digital postings of credible and less credible journalists. And that is just the start of it. Oftentimes, besides monitoring, we are weighing in to clarify, confirm, or dispute the kinds of twists and turns that come out of the social life of a news story. The phrase “social life” may sound friendly, but in the age of “everything communicates” and “the world is polarized,” it’s no wonder that so much of what gets logged and debated is one of the three V’s: vapid, vicious, or vile. So, part of the real-time analysis involves sentiment auditing: any story that is neutral to positive is good(ish) news.

But that world is gone. Technology has made the faster pace and increasing frequency of unexpected events a certainty. The raucous multichannel news cycle demands a constant supply of sensational news and either finds it or creates it. In this environment, a linear communication strategy is vulnerable to literally anybody, anywhere, who has a connection. Whether by calculation, stupidity, or plain bad luck, we can guarantee that unwanted news, photos, videos, and text will get into the mix. Think the Ashley Madison data breach, Uber inadvertently leaking the personal data of hundreds of its drivers, or the Panama Papers, comprising 11.5 million leaked files from law firm Mossack Fonseca, revealing offshore tax schemes for a who’s who of global public figures.

This is a tough time for anybody who wants certainty in strategic communications, with everything plotted out into the future with spreadsheet precision. No longer can an agency’s communication strategy be a finalized set of tactical actions executed with unwavering adherence to the map. In fact, unwavering adherence to any map can be a recipe for disaster when unexpected obstacles drop from nowhere and block the way forward. (Memo to newbies in the public relations space: Get a mental first aid kit ready and grow thick skin. The first truth of agile PR: There is no place to hide.)

More than ever before, public relations pros must be nimble, performing balancing acts and high-wire feats without the safety nets we used to depend on and without looking like we’re breaking a sweat. We must get our clients’ messages in the news—or even better, as Havas PR’s mantra says, get our clients to be the news—while the very definitions of who is making the news and how it’s being made are shifting. We must remain ever aware of what’s happening in the world and spot potential connections without tripping over our own feet.

(Occasionally throughout this book, I am going to flag social trends that have a PR effect. I am, first and foremost, a trendspotter, and in this day and age, I would argue that the best PR people are natural trendspotters who recognize that they can get ahead of the news by anticipating it. More on this later.)

That’s not to suggest that all our previous methods must be scrapped. They just need to be adapted to new audiences, new media, a new universe.

At my agency, we’ve been perfecting that adaptation—call it agility—and have put together some guiding principles that our team members can turn to, lest they become dizzy. We’ll be elaborating on all of them throughout this book, but here we introduce you to the basics. Some terms may be familiar, others not so much. Taking what you need and leaving the rest is a key to agility, too.

THE NEWS THEN AND NOW

It seems like forever ago that the traditional media had a virtual monopoly on mass-market audiences. It owned newsgathering, it owned the stories, and it owned news-hungry audiences, which was pretty much everybody. And news brands and their journalists owned credibility and trust. That meant that the PR industry had little choice but to rely on traditional news media to reach news audiences.

But very few people still wait patiently for the next edition of the newspaper to arrive or check the clock for a scheduled TV newscast with their favorite journalist. Whatever the news might be, it’s online somewhere soon after it happens, so it’s just a matter of finding it when and where you want it. That still could be traditional news brands but is more likely on their websites. Or people find news on startup news sites, citizen journalist sources, individuals’ blogs, Twitter, Facebook—the list goes on and on. People have become savvy at finding news, often accessed through the latest technologies, and curating their own mix to satisfy their personal needs.

The terminal decline of traditional media, the rise of citizen journalists (a deceptively simple phrase covering everybody from a lucky bystander with a smartphone to dedicated bloggers with a passion for a particular subject), and the future of news coming from anyone and everyone have many implications for PR professionals. First: The sheer challenge of keeping up with who’s who—anybody with opinions, an Internet connection, and time on their hands—can grow big quickly. A bigger challenge: figuring out who among all the names really matters to the relevant audiences. Which news sources have profile, traction, and influence? Above all, who has momentum? On one hand, PR runs the risk of wasting scarce resources on cultivating relations with new sources who look impressive but who are on a fast track to nowhere. On the other hand, there’s the risk of missing out on small players who have what it takes to garner big influence.

Then there’s the issue of whom audiences trust. Do the new players want to be impartial commentators on the brand and its industry? Do they want to stay independent but get scoops from the brand? Do they want sponsorship or some form of privileged relationship with the brand? It will take fine judgment by PR professionals to figure out their potential.

The Ties that Bind: Paid, Owned, and Earned Media

PR is about image—no question—and today’s PR practitioner must be well put together. Think of these three types of media as all the wardrobe basics you’ll need, not only to cover yourself but also to look good on every occasion.

1. Paid media is just that: ads on media (even social networks) and search engines that you have to pay to place. Sure, it’s tried-and-true and somewhat easy to track, but does it have the human and authentic touch we’re all craving? Not necessarily. But paid is a great way to drive traffic to owned media and to generate content for earned media.

2. Owned media is a proprietary mix of content created by a company and wholly owned by it. Think, for example, of a website or blog that is crafted by a company and distributed through its URL. It can tell a moving story in a good, strong voice. It’s not organic, but it’s a great way for the public to engage with your brand.

3. Earned media is that sweet spot where consumers craft the message of your brand or company and spread the word on their social networks—influencing and amplifying it. It’s perhaps the hardest to achieve, as so many things worth striving for often are. It drives traffic and is the next generation of that much coveted word-of-mouth marketing. Earned media, sometimes called free media, also includes publicity secured through promotional efforts, aka pitching.

But here’s where integrating your wardrobe—call it mixing and matching—comes in. One of the most important tools today is native advertising (once upon a time called advertorials), which occurs when ads mimic the editorial content surrounding them such as articles, videos, photos, and more. It evolved from the concept of embedded marketing, but instead of placing the product within the content, native ads become the content.

Native advertising can be implemented in many ways, from content recommendation engine widgets to promoted listings to paid search ads to custom ads. Marketers benefit from native advertising because it creates one of the deepest connections between a brand and a consumer, precisely in the place where we all live and breathe these days: in content. A consumer might get a Nike ad in her next online search after cranking Spotify’s latest running playlist. Whether native advertising is ethical is a whole other question. It depends on whom you ask—and how it’s done. Today’s savvy consumers know the score. No question, however, it’s here to stay, and learning the ins and outs is essential.

Understanding Influence

Influence is the new affluence, as the United Nations Foundation’s chief communicator noted in his foreword. From social media to the comments sections of blogs and news sources, everybody has something to say, and they’re saying it louder t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• Preface: A Nose for Today’s News
• Foreword
• 1. PR2020: A Media Toolkit
• 2. Tell Me a Story: The Importance of Engagement
• 3. Crafting the News: Artful Persuasion
• 4. Blow Up the Internet
• 5. Massaging the Message
• 6. Power to the People: Giving Your Brand a Personality
• 7. Cause Is the New Celebrity: Doing Good to Do Well
• 8. Going Global
• 9. Go Big and Stay Home: Global Versus Hyperlocal
• 10. The New Relations in Public Relations
• 11. The Rules of Regulation
• 12. Keep Calm and Manage On: Crisis Management
• 13. Measurement: As Simple as Three Letters?
• 14. Trendspotting: Forecasting the Future
• 15. The Future of Public Relations: New Definitions
• Notes
• Index
• Free Sample of Talking to Crazy by Mark Goulston
• About AMACOM
• Copyright