Expert advice

During last year's PRSSA National Conference I had the opportunity to join several of my fellow PRSSA members in going to dinner with Richard Edelman, president and CEO at Edelman, the world's only independent global PR firm.

I was impressed with his breadth of knowledge and insight into PR, but more especially his understanding of the new communications tools (i.e. blogs, social media, etc.). He asked us alot of questions and gave us some great advice. Because of my interaction with him I started reading his blog. It is really informative and I highly recommend it to any PR professional. I realize, of course, that Edelman has had some recent ethical problems, but I do not believe, however, that these few incidents automatically indicate Edelman is an unethical company.

Anyway, check out Richard Edelman's blog. The blog is titled 6 a.m.

How I really feel about public relations

I was reading through some of my past postings and I realized that I sound like I have a negative view of public relations. Let me clearly state that I absolutely love public relations! It's a field I kind of stumbled on to, but I'm glad I did. I really am passionate about PR and hope to spend the rest of my professional career in this exciting field.

That said, there are some current trends in PR that are frightening to me. I really hope the entire profession does not morph into media relations alone. If an organization fails to build relationships with all of its publics and concentrates solely on media relations, public relations, I fear will slowly fade into the background. There is so much more to PR than just media relations: employee communications, crisis communications, advising management, etc. Let's learn to think outside of the press release and work to become strategic communicators for our clients or organizations.

PR Measurement

Check out this great white paper on aligning communications efforts with business objectives:

http://www.factiva.com/campaigns/marketing/segment/F-2965scottwpRev2.pdf

Let's talk about evaluation

“How to Measure PR’s Contribution to Corporate Objectives,” Presented by Donna Coletti, Texas Instruments

How do you determine the best measurement techniques for your specific campaign or objectives?

Coletti gives a few tips for how to determine which measurement technique is best. The first of these is matching the proposed measurement technique to the available resources (i.e., how much money you have to spend, how many people you can devote, etc.). This step, I believe, needs to be done before implementation of strategies and tactics. Evaluation should be figured into the budget, or else you might find yourself without the needed money to adequately conduct evaluation.

Second, measurement and evaluation does not necessarily have to be expensive. For example, small surveys or quantitative tracking of messages can be done for little or no money and with limited staff.

Finally, when trying to determine the best measurement techniques, you need to find something that will be important to management. You can have amazing success in evaluation, but if your evaluation doesn’t highlight something important to management, then your efforts are lost. The quote Coletti gives in this presentation sums this all up: “Providing Value Add to management will help build a case for a measurement and evaluation budget.”


“Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE),” Jeffries-Fox, Bruce. Institute for Public Relations, 2003

Is Advertising Value Equivalency really a viable way to measure media relations efforts?

Simply stated, Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE) is a measurement effort to compare the effect of media relations efforts to the dollars spent on traditional advertising. This is done by “measuring the column inches (in the case of print), or seconds (in the case of broadcast media) and multiplying these figures by the respective medium’s advertising rates (per inch or per second). The resulting number is what it would have cost to place an advertisement of that size in the medium” (2).

I tend to view AVEs as being an unreliable way to measure media relations efforts. It just seems too quantifiable for me liking. My personal views aside, the author of this paper does cite some substantial problems in regards to AVEs.

First, there is no factual basis for assuming that a particular news story has the same (or greater) effect on an audience than an advertisement would. Like advertising, we cannot guarantee that people will see a media placement, much less act the way we desire them to simply because of the placement.

A second problem is that AVEs “only value what actually appears in the media” (3). As the author points out, there are many times when an organization would not want publicity. In cases such as these, AVEs do not provide an accurate measurement.

Third, an advertiser can run the same ad a number of times to persuade its audiences. News doesn’t work this way. The same story is not repeated verbatim. It may be told again with a slightly different take, but it is still different. Therefore, AVEs cannot be used here to effectively measure the effect of media hits.

There are other problems with AVEs, but these I’ve listed are enough for me to do some serious thinking before I employ AVEs in my measurement techniques.

Is creativity an intrinsic characteristic?

Something intrinsic is something "belonging to a thing by its very nature" (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/intrinsic). With this in mind, I have never considered myself a creative person. One only need look at my grade school art projects to appreciate the validity of this statement! However, after reading the text's small blurb on creativity I have come to believe that creativity is not an intrinsic characteristic, rather, it something everyone can gain and enhance.

The text defines creativity as "the process of looking outside ourselves and our routine to discover new ideas and innovative solutions" (W&O, 139). The commonly used cliché, "think outside the box" may need to be reworked for public relations practitioners. Perhaps we need to learn to "think outside the press release." This is not to say that we should never think within the box (press release), but creativity pushes us to go beyond the bounds of our self-imposed comfort zone. As the text states, "creativity often means borrowing and adapting ideas" (W&O, 141). Being creative does not mean we have to come up with brand new ideas all the time. We would live in a very primitive world if no one ever built on the ideas of others.

Finally, "fear is probably the single greatest barrier to creative behavior" (W&O, 144). I often hesitate to voice my ideas and opinions for fear of rejection or ridicule. Doing so greatly stifles my creative capabilities. We are not born with or without creativity, but our fears can certainly limit it.

What I've learned about media relations

I hate media relations. I think it is used too much in current public relations practices. That being said, however, I do agree that media relations is an important part of public relations. What follows are some tips on working with the media that I've picked up along the way. Whether they are valid or not is open to interpretation!

1. Be a blessing, not a burden, to your media contacts. Understand and respect their needs and deadlines.

2. Pitch news, not free advertising. I once had the opportunity to talk with a reporter from The New York Times about her views on working with PR people. She told me that The New York Times gets thousands of press releases each day (about three e-mails per minute), but most are just trying to get publicity for their client. Reporters’ jobs are to report the news, not your client.

3. "Provide quality media contacts" (W&O, 159). Make sure you use the writing style of the particular media outlet and that there are no errors in what you submit to them. Make sure the people they interview from your organization are knowledgeable, personable and well prepared.

4. "If it can be handled in a news release, use a news release" (W&O, 159).

5. Proofread all e-mails sent from you to media contacts. I learned this the hard way when I failed to proofread an e-mail I sent to Walt Mossberg, a prominent Wall Street Journal reporter. Because of this, he misinterpreted my meaning and sent me a scathing e-mail. Needless to say, he wasn't interested in the pitch after that.

Of publics, messages and objectives...

Is it better to set objectives before choosing publics or to choose publics before setting objectives?

This is a difficult question to answer. I can see how both ways could be beneficial, but I agree with the authors of the text; they feel it is best to set our objectives first and then chose our key publics.

If we are using the 10-Step Strategic Communications Planning Matrix, during the Background portion of our Research section we will identify and profile all potential publics that may be affected by the current problem or opportunity. First, we must sit down and identify all of the potential publics. Notice that right now we are referring to them as "potential" publics. Later on we will identify our "key" publics. This should be done in a brainstorming session "to ensure that no potential publics are left behind and everyone has a chance to participate" (Wilson & Ogden, 68). Even though this list is comprehensive, we still have work to do. Once we have our list of potential publics we then must create in-depth profiles for each public. These profiles should contain demographic and psychographic information. We must also state the organization's current relationship with the public, the public’s influentials and the public's self-interests. Remember, these are only our potential publics. We have not yet decided if these are the publics we are going to focus our public relations strategies and tactics on.

Now we are ready to set our objectives. If we try to choose key publics before we set objectives we run the risk of having public-specific objectives. Some may argue that this is exactly what we want. However, we must "recognize that any given communications effort may need to encompass publics other than those identified as organizationally key" (W&O, 112). Our objectives need to be flexible enough to be able to apply to more than one public. Furthermore, by choosing key publics before setting objectives we are focused on who we want to reach rather than what we want to accomplish.

What's the point of meticulously of taking time to research and segment our publics if we only use mass media to reach them?

This idea has become somewhat of a hot button with me. Research is not easy. It takes time; it takes work; it takes money. Furthermore, it takes considerable time and effort to select and segment our key publics and respective messages. When we do all this, yet choose to simply "shotgun" the message through the mass media, all of our previous efforts have been in vain. It doesn't matter how good your research is, how well defined the core problem is or how amazing your publics are if they never hear the message. Wilson and Ogden have stated, “We would do well to remember that just because a medium is designated mass does not mean that the publics consuming the information are mass (W&O, 114).

I believe there is a perception both within PR and without that if your organization is mentioned on the local news station or featured in the paper that everyone will see it want to change their behavior. How false this idea is! We must remember that people "choose to perceive a message only when we design it specifically to appeal to them" (W&O, 114). I am not saying that we never use mass media to reach our publics, we just need to make sure we use mass media outlets to appeal to the self-interests of our publics.