Monday Morning Media Minute

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

Hook me at the beginning if you want me to notice your story.  Then keep it interesting if you want me to stick around until you’re done telling it.

Good storytellers know it’s important to grab their audience’s attention right from the start.  That’s why the lead of a news story is so important.  And it’s why you need a strong, attention-getting lead for your news releases and pitch letters as well.

There are many kinds of good leads. Here are a few of my favorites:

• Ask a question. Asking a question intriguing enough that the rest of us will want to know the answer is a good way to get reporters to read your news release to learn your answer.  Not everyone agrees with me on this one.  Some purists believe beginning a story with a question is a no-no.  Why would you ignore such a powerful way to bring me into your story?
  Example: Why are local bird watchers putting down their binoculars and picking up protest signs?
• Start with an anecdote. News is about people and things that affect people. Anecdotes humanize your story. A good anecdote is a great lead for a story about an individual or a group of people.
  Example: Joan Doe has spent the last 43 years helping others. On Tuesday, several dozen of them will be on hand for her final day at work to say thank you and tell her how she changed their lives forever.
• Say something unexpected. We’re hardwired to notice the unexpected — a strange noise that may indicate a problem with your car or a slight movement by a stranger on a dark street.  It’s a survival technique.  Because we’re hardwired to pay attention to the unexpected, a lead that surprises your audience is a great way to get their attention.
  Example:  Giving away money isn’t always easy.
• Use a first-person story. A self-directed version of the anecdotal lead.  Don’t overdo this one. But some feature stories lend themselves to first-person leads.  Just make sure there’s a reason for the rest of us to care.
  Example: The bear stared at me. I stared back. What I did next probably saved my life. And it could save yours.
• Just the facts. Once almost universally used for spot news stories and news releases, and still the most common type of lead for both.  Make sure your facts are interesting or your lead will be boring — and your news release will probably end up in the trash.
  Example: XYZ Company opened a new plant today in Localville, bringing 500 jobs and a $25 million annual payroll to the city.

That’s my’ two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

If you’re a public relations practitioner who writes news releases, speeches and articles for a living — as I am — there’s a pretty good chance you’ve written a lot of words attributed to someone else.  I certainly have.

And if you’re an executive who delivers a lot of speeches or gets quoted in news releases, there’s a pretty good chance you’ve said or been quoted as saying things written for you by someone else.

I believe that’s a perfectly acceptable practice under most circumstances.  Ghostwritten speeches, articles and news release quotes have become common.  Most of us understand and even expect it.

Nevertheless, there are some important boundaries that need to be respected.

For example, Scott McInnis, who’s a campaigning to become the Republican candidate for governor in Colorado, is in hot water for plagiarizing the words of a Colorado Supreme Court justice in an article about water issues that appeared under his byline.

When that story broke, McInnis tried to portray the incident as a case of a ghostwriter lifting the plagiarized material without his knowledge.  That ploy didn’t work very well.  One reason it didn’t work is that McInnis got paid — rather handsomely — for the article and one of the conditions of his contract was that he would write the material himself — not turn it over to a ghostwriter.

Dan Haley, editorial page editor for the Denver Post, cites another interesting example of questionable bylines.

Haley recounts an incident involving an op-ed article from Weld County Commissioner Sean Conway about a water storage project in northern Colorado.  The Post ran the article with the understanding it was original and exclusive to the Post, Haley says.

But Haley says the Greeley Tribune printed a nearly identical article two days before the Post article appeared.  The Greeley Tribune article appeared under the byline of a different Weld County commissioner.  And essentially the same article showed up and short time later in two other newspapers under the byline of State Rep. B.J. Nikkel.

Who actually wrote the article?  Here’s Haley’s description of what happened:

“I contacted Conway, who told me he wrote the column.  He did his own research and writing, and it took him upwards of eight hours to do it.

“And when he e-mailed it to me on July 5, he was offering an original piece that was exclusive to The Post, which follows our guidelines. He did not get paid.

“Yet he also shared it with other elected leaders, who he had been working with to generate publicity for a rally in support of the water project. He says he invited them to use whatever parts of his column they wanted.

“Basically, they lifted the entire column and presented it as their own.

“Is that plagiarism? It’s murky, given that Conway willingly shared his material. But one expert, speaking on a different matter, told The Post last week that presenting previously published work as your own is plagiarism.

“It definitely misleads readers, which is very concerning. Readers of those other publications were led to believe they were reading the words and thoughts of those authors.”

I encourage you to read Dan Haley’s article if you write words that get attributed to others – or if you’re someone who uses words written by someone else that get attributed to you.

That’s my’ two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

Dedicated public servant who has “pursued justice fearlessly.”  Or a “high-handed” jurist leading a court that ignores the state’s constitution?

Mary Mullarkey, who announced last week that she will retire as chief justice of Colorado’s Supreme Court, is described both ways in an interesting trio of articles that appeared yesterday and today in the Denver Post.

Mullarkey was appointed to the Colorado Supreme Court in 1987 by Gov. Roy Romer and was elected chief justice by her fellow justices in 1998.  She’s the state’s first woman chief justice.  And she’s held the job longer than anyone else.

She’s highly regarded by many, but has become increasingly vilified by critics on the right who have come to resent her rulings on a number of issues they care about.

Colorado judges face periodic yes-no retention votes and Mullarkey’s opponents planned an all-out effort this fall to have her ousted from the court by encouraging Colorado voters to vote against her retention — a fight she short-circuited by announcing her retirement.

The fight over Mullarkey’s legacy as a judge belongs in another forum.  And I think most of us would agree that our politics have become increasingly polarized.

But there’s a good rule to follow when it comes to most public arguments:  Play to the middle.

In most fights, you’ll have a certain number of people who will be with you no matter what and a certain number of people who will be against you no matter what.  Don’t ignore your friends, but don’t waste time trying to convince your inconvincible enemies, either.

Most of the time you should focus on trying to convince the persuadable people in the middle.  More often than not, they’re the ones who decide the outcome of public debates.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

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Here are the links to the three articles about Mullarkey, if you want to check them out:

There’s a positive piece in Sunday’s paper by columnist Susan Greene.  “As state’s chief justice, Mullarkey wielded law with quiet precision,” reads the headline.  And the column includes this quote from a lawyer who once clerked for Mullarkey:  “I’ve never met somebody who’s so smart and so committed to public service, yet at the same time so humble.”

A decidedly negative one by editorial writer Vincent Carroll that appeared Sunday under the headline “Mary Mullarkey’s troubling legacy.”  Carroll’s view is that Mullarkey “presided over a Colorado Supreme Court that in recent years has grown increasingly high-handed.”

And an editorial in today’s paper that appears under the headline “A force behind Colorado’s bench” that reads:  “For more than two decades, Mary Mullarkey has been a force to reckon with on the Colorado Supreme Court.  The barrier-breaking chief justice has drawn opposition from some who contend she led a political court with a liberal bent, and she has drawn praise from those who think she pursued justice fearlessly.”

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

Are Ronald McDonald’s days numbered?  Will the day come when he’s promoting fruits and veggies instead of burgers and fries?

In last week’s MMMM, I wrote about the group that killed Joe Camel going after Ronald McDonald as “the product of a well-orchestrated and shrewd marketing strategy” that’s helping make kids fat and contributing to “a deadly epidemic of diet-related diseases.”

I concluded by saying I don’t know where the Ronald McDonald retirement campaign will go or how successful it will be.  But I said McDonald’s would do well to open up lines of communication with the group promoting the “retirement” campaign.

Business Wire founder Lorry Lokey, now retired, offers a starker view:

“Actually, Jerry, McDonald’s only route to saving the clown is to make radical adjustments to its menu.  That doesn’t mean doing away with fries and burgers. But why not add a parallel menu of the good stuff — fruits, veggies, yoghurt shakes and so on offered with any purchase?

“Maybe offering a free salad tray of small carrots, beets, tomatoes, celery, etc., would be an inducement, and all of those are pennies in price compared to the same volume as a hamburger.

“As for fries, some fast food outlets are dumping the high cholesterol oils in favor of other, less damaging stuff.  As for burgers, use 90% fat free beef. Problem is that it costs more.  And as for full flavor carbonated drinks, switch to diet only.  Boy, that’ll be the day!  And with all this have Ronald McDonald pushing acceptance of it.”

You might quibble with the details of what Lorry says simply because it’s impossible to know what the future holds.  But conceptually, I think he’s probably right on.  Unless McDonald’s finds a way to address the complaints underlying the Ronald McDonald “retirement” effort, the clown’s likely to become a growing liability for the company that created him.

Symbols are important storytelling tools.  But for the same reasons that Ronald McDonald is so good at selling the McDonald’s brand he could easily become a symbol for what’s wrong with the McDonald’s brand in the hands of a group using him to fight childhood obesity.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  And Lorry Lokey’s.  What’s yours?

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

Nissan says it will begin taking orders for the all-electric Nissan LEAF on April 20.  What a missed PR opportunity.

April 22 is Earth Day 2010.  It’s also the 40th anniversary of the first Earth Day in 1970.

Don’t they realize how much more publicity they would have gotten if they had started taking orders for an all-electric car on Earth Day?

The 40th anniversary of Earth Day is going to generate a fair amount of media coverage.  Getting a well-known celebrity — the head of EPA or someone like George Clooney, for example — to place the very first order on Earth Day would have put the Nissan LEAF right in the middle of a lot of the Earth Day coverage that’s going to happen.

The calendar can be your friend when it comes to telling your story.  But you have to pay attention to take advantage of it.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

P.S.  If you want to buy a LEAF, you’ll have to wait until at least December to get it.  Nissan plans to introduce the LEAF in select markets in December, with nationwide availability next year.  I won’t be placing an order.  I outlined my reasons for passing on the LEAF on my new blog, BrownonGreen.Net.

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

I find grocery lists useful when I’m buying groceries.  But they’re a disaster when talking to reporters.

A common mistake people make when talking to reporters is talking about too many things.

In his book, Selling the Invisible, Harry Beckwith describes it as the “grocery list problem.” I call it being unfocused.

Here’s what Beckwith says:

• “Saying many things usually communicates nothing.”
• “If you deliver two messages, most people will process just one of them — if that.  Say one thing.”
• “After you say one thing, repeat it again and again.”

That’s good advice. All I would add is this:  Be able to say that one thing in 10 to 15 seconds. If it takes you longer than that, the reporter may get it wrong. And the rest of us won’t remember it.

Does that mean you limit your media interviews to 10 to 15 seconds?  Of course not.

But be able to state your “headline” for any interview – the one thing you want to be sure gets into the story and you want people who see the story to remember – in 10 to 15 seconds.

And repeat it every chance you get.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

Do you know what you’re selling?  Sometimes it pays to give that a second thought.

I went for a ride in a Tesla sports car last week.  I described it on my blog BrownonGreen.Net as the most fun I’ve had in a car since high school.

The car’s a lot of fun.  But the most interesting thing to me is how smart Tesla has been in figuring out what they’re selling.

The Tesla, for those of you who aren’t car buffs, is an all-electric sports car that will go from 0 to 60 in 3.7 seconds.  It’ll pin you to your seat while you do it.  And it’ll lighten your wallet if you decide take one home.  The base price is $109,000.

Tesla’s creators started from the premise that no one was buying electric cars because no one was building electric cars people want to buy.  They’re selling performance and sex appeal, not green-ery.  And they’ve made an electric car people want to buy.

The verdict’s still out on whether Tesla will succeed long term, of course.  But they’ve got a shot at it.  And they’ve gone a long way toward changing the conversation about what an electric car should be.

What this all comes down to for the rest of us is messaging.  When you describe what you do is it clear why the rest of us would want to buy what your selling?

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A couple bonus items this week.

• There’s an interesting article on CNET about the power of public feedback on the Internet. It involves an attack on Nestle that uses the company’s own Facebook Fan Page against it.  I encourage you to read it.  Nestle’s response to the Facebook attack is also a good case study on the dangers of going on the attack in a public forum where you’re outnumbered, fighting a popular cause and have no control over what the other side says.
• A blog item by Denver PR executive Steven Silvers questioning the value of Twitter as a business tool.  I agree with his point.  And it’s a good read.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

One of the first lessons I learned many years ago as a young newspaper reporter was never to let the facts get in the way of a good story.

It’s a lesson you should keep in mind when telling your story, too.

It’s not about playing fast and loose with the truth.  Far from it.  Being honest with your audience is important.  It’s about knowing what to include when you tell your story — and, equally important, what to leave out.

A good story is interesting and memorable.  It has a message.  And it has a narrative — a beginning, middle and end designed to get your audience to pay attention long enough to hear what you have to say and understand and remember your message once they’ve heard it.

What should go into your story?  You need to answer several other questions to answer that one:  Why are you telling your story?  What do you want to happen as a result of telling it?  That’s your objective.  Who’s your audience?  What will they want to know?  What do you want them to know?  If you want them to do something, how do you motivate them to do it?

Once you know the answers to those questions, craft a message — make it short enough to remember — that will tell your audience what you want them to know or persuade them to do what you want them to do.  Then build the rest of your story around that.

Humans have been telling stories to communicate with one another since prehistoric times.  We all know a good story when we hear one.  So, why do so many of us have trouble telling our story?  The two main reasons are too much information and being too self-serving in what we say.

A good story has enough information to be credible and tell us what we want to know without being so bogged down in facts that we miss your message and forget what you said.

People often pile so many facts into their stories that they forget to tell the story.  They let the facts get in the way of the story.  Include enough facts to make your story credible and to give your audience they information they really need.  But don’t get so bogged down in facts that your story feels like nothing more than a compilation of facts.

Leave out the self-serving sales pitch, too.  Make your story interesting or, better yet, useful to the rest of us.  But skip the purely self-serving stuff.  You’re the only one who cares about that.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

If it’s not already there, “The Hurt Locker” will soon be coming to a theater near you.

As the big winner at last night’s Academy Awards, the little-seen movie will be cashing in on its new celebrity — as it should.

You probably won’t win six Oscars in one night.  But don’t forget to cash in on positive publicity that comes your way.  When it comes to media coverage, the coverage isn’t the goal.  The goal is to reach your audience in a way they’ll notice and remember.

Some things to do when you get positive media coverage:

• Forward it to your customers / constituents by email or via your company newsletter.
• Put a link to it on your Web site.  Consider making a PDF copy of the story and linking to that if the story’s likely to disappear from the news site where it first appears.
• Link to the story from Facebook, if you have a Facebook account.  You don’t have a Facebook account?  Why not?
• Get reprints and give them to your sales staff as collateral, if appropriate.
• Frame the story and display it at your place of business.

You probably can come up with more ideas.  Here’s the point.  If you get positive coverage, do whatever you can to leverage that coverage as much as possible by spreading the word yourself.  Even if your company gets a lot of news coverage, there will be stories worth sharing beyond their natural reach.  Failing to broaden the reach of positive coverage is a missed opportunity to tell your story.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

Former House Speaker Tip O’Neill was famous for saying “all politics is local.”  All news is local, too.

So, at least one Denver TV station led its Sunday evening news with the story of a Colorado resident winning the first-ever U.S. medal in the Nordic combined competition at the Olympics.  And Canada is celebrating its first-ever Olympic gold medal won on Canadian soil.

Every story can be localized.  Localizing yours will increase your chances of turning it into news.  A few thoughts about that:

• Do you have a local angle that ties into a global story already making headlines?  Then you have an opportunity to take advantage of the story already making news to turn your story into news.

• The more locations you can include when localizing your story, the broader your reach.  State Farm has gotten tremendous coverage for years with their annual 10-most-dangerous-intersections list.  There’s a built-in “local” story in every community that has an intersection on the national list.  State Farm localizes the story even more by doing state versions of its list.  Newspapers that ignore the national version because it doesn’t include any intersections in their readership area run stories about of the list for their state.

• Localizing a story is about more than geography.  It’s also about shared interests.  Is there an angle to your story that will interest golfers?  Senior citizens?  Teachers?  An ethnic or professional group?  If you can tailor your story to focus on the interests of any sizeable group, chances are there’s at least one reporter who writes for and about that group.

• You can “localize” a story by finding an exotic angle.  When a Seattle-based chain of coffee stores opened its first store in Tokyo, the Seattle Times ran a story about the local company expanding to Tokyo because there’s something exotic about that.

• You can also do the reverse of localizing, using local folklore or local color to entice reporters in distant cities to write stories local reporters would ignore.  Travel magazines do this all the time.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?