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Archive

Month: March 2019

9 Ways to Measure Your Story’s PR Potential

Posted on by Katie Koeppel

Marketing departments don’t always fully grasp the role of public relations departments. The PR team’s work is often reduced to “getting our company in the news.” While that may be a goal in PR, it takes strategy and a nose for news in order to get there. Brands are often anxious to send out press releases that don’t always tell a newsworthy story. The first task for any PR professional—well before we pen the first press release—is to find the client’s story. And we know the news when we see it.

Before a story makes it to the front page of the newspaper, the 10 p.m. news or a featured spot on the web, it must contain at least one of the elements of news. A good PR agency knows how to measure the newsworthiness of your company’s story. This ultimately increases your company’s ROI on PR efforts: when your PR agency spends more time pitching high-quality stories, you can expect more high-quality coverage.

Not sure whether your story is newsworthy? See if it has at least a few of these elements:

  1. Timeliness. Did something just happen? Better yet, is it happening in the future? You might have news on your hands. If it happened a week ago, or even a day ago, the newsworthiness of your story is diminished. Events are always more likely to be covered before they happen; reporters rarely write about events after the fact.
  2. Proximity. If you have an exciting story happening right in your hometown, perfect—reach out to the local news organizations. USA Today, however, probably isn’t interested (unless your story contains several other elements of news). Similarly, if you’re launching a new product nationally, local and regional news outlets may be less interested than national publications that have a wider audience
  3. Prominence. If your story involves a prominent figure on a local or national level (think politicians, athletes or any kind of celebrity), it automatically has news value.
  4. Oddity. Anyone that’s worked in journalism knows this old adage: If a dog bites a man, it’s not news. If a man bites a dog, you’ve got a story. The unusual is interesting, and often newsworthy.
  5. Emotion. A story that tugs at the audience’s heartstrings can be newsworthy; for example, a story about war veterans reunited with their long lost friends from the war after many years, or a story about a family that overcomes challenging circumstances. These stories may not always be timely, but they draw in the audience with their emotional appeal.
  6. Human interest. Is “human interest” just a euphemism for fluff? Maybe. But these stories have their place. They can be quirky or funny anecdotes that incorporate some of the other elements of news, like oddity or appeal to emotion. Examples would be a story about a pet competition at the county fair, or an article about extreme bargain hunters on Black Friday.
  7. Sex. It sells, as they say, and it also tends to increase the news value of a story.
  8. Conflict. You may not want to pitch a story that highlights your business in conflict, but stories involving a conflict between two or more parties are often newsworthy. Readers enjoy rivalries and watching conflict play out.
  9. Impact. Anything that impacts a great number of people is more newsworthy than something that only impacts a small subset of the population. Is your big company announcement going to impact the community at large, or is it only noteworthy to your employees? If the latter, it would be better suited for your internal newsletter than in a press release.

Remember these elements when sharing ideas with your PR team. They aren’t hard and fast rules, but by understanding what makes a story newsworthy, you’ll be better able to identify a great story from your own company when it arises.

Posted in PR

Client Collaboration: Our Secret Weapon

Posted on by Brian Bennett

As I surf marketing industry blogs, I see much discussion about the new economy and new agency business models. I’m shocked that I haven’t heard the topic of client collaboration discussed at all. It has been a critical part of the STIR business model and our success.

What is client collaboration?

It entails the fusion of agency and client resources to produce efficiencies. It often takes the form of coordinating the creative, digital, PR and promotional staffs of both entities on the same campaigns.

The upside of client collaboration

The primary benefit is to reduce the cost of execution by sharing tasks among client staff and our “out-of-pocket” labor. It allows us to execute bigger ideas than our budget would otherwise allow. We’ve found, however, that the benefits go much farther. Campaigns have better efficacy because there are deeper links and superior integration with in-house programs. Our clients provide better insight on the front-end and more thorough follow-through on the back-end. Client staff has more skin in the game, seeing the agency as teammates rather than rivals. The agency is learning more about the inner workings of the client’s business. These relationships are built and fortified throughout the staff, not just “top to top” at the director level. This stabilizes our accounts. And guess what? In almost every instance, it improves agency morale.

Examples

One client asked that a talented internal creative serve as co-creative director on the account. We found a lot of talent there and a strong ally. We are routinely training in-house creative on how to extend our campaign. On the digital side, we are choosing CMS, designing websites and social marketing campaigns around the skillset of the client, so that the program can be easily transitioned and managed internally. This saves them a bundle and wins us the assignments. With promotions and event marketing, we are collaborating with field marketing personnel to help to design and execute events, greatly extending the campaign’s reach where it was previously unaffordable. With public relations programs, we have designed conceptually driven concepts and trained client personnel to reach out to trusted contacts, execute trade show events, assist with reporting and provide technical support. Because the campaign is so much more extensive and successful, our involvement is an asset, not an annoyance to in-house staff.

Ingredients

I want to say that talent is first, but truthfully most agencies have the talent. Collaboration, trust and confidence are absolute essential ingredients and perhaps harder assets to develop and harness. Our team is recruited and managed with this in mind. In the end, we’ve found that we must focus on the best interests of the client’s business, not our own. We find that by doing so, we have transformed our corporate culture and done precisely what is in the best interests of STIR. We’ve built better, more effective campaigns and stronger client relationships.