Monday Morning Media Minute

The answers you get often depend on the questions you ask.  So, if you ask the wrong questions, you’re likely to get the wrong answers.

The current brouhaha over the appointment of a new senator from Illinois to replace that guy with the funny name who quit because he got a better job is a good example.

Gov. Blagojevich’s in-your-face appointment of Roland Burris is hardball politics by someone who appears to be asking:  How do I stay out of prison?  He’s reminding prosecutors and everyone else that he’s still governor.  My guess is he wants something — his freedom — in return for resigning.

There’s been talk in Springfield of speeding up impeachment proceedings against Blagojevich by legislators asking:  How do we get rid of the political awkwardness caused by the Burris appointment?  They’re asking the wrong question.  Blagojevich may deserve to be impeached, but speeding it up to scuttle the Burris appointment is the wrong answer because they asked the wrong question.  The right question is should Blagojevich be removed from office because he’s corrupt, not should he be removed from office quickly because he embarrassed other politicians by making an appointment he’s legally entitled to make.  Moving quickly to impeach Blagojevich for the wrong reason will cause more problems than the one it’s intended to solve.

And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced before the Burris appointment that the Senate would refuse to seat anyone appointed by Blagojevich — something he’s repeated since the appointment was announced.  Experts disagree over whether the law is on the side of Reid and other senators who want to keep Burris out of the Senate.  Regardless of how that issue is resolved, the effort to keep Burris from being seated promises to create a political circus that can only cause further embarrassment for Senate Democrats.

Reid and others like him asked the wrong question:  How can we show our disapproval of Blagojevich?  They should be asking whether Blagojevich got any kind of illegal payoff for naming Burris to the job (no one’s credibly suggested that’s the case) and whether Burris is qualified to be a senator (clearly he is).

The Blagojevich mess will take care of itself over time.  I have my guesses about what will happen.  You probably do, too.  We won’t resolve that here.

So, what’s the point?  People and organizations in the public eye frequently create problems for themselves by asking the wrong question, sometimes in the name of doing the right thing.

Make sure you ask the right questions.  You’ll have a better chance of getting the right answers if you do.

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

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The Monday Morning Media Minute is now available as an eBook.  My new eStore features five eBooks based on the Media Minute.  To check them out, visit my eStore and buy early and often.  The eBooks come as PDF files.  You don’t need special eBook software to read them.

Someone asked me last week what she should put into a press kit.  Here’s what I told her:

Think of press kits as story-assembly kits.  Everything in the kit should help tell your story.

Most start with a news release.  Then the question is:  What else can I add to help tell my story?  The objective is to include material that will help reporters understand and tell your story – not to see how many things you can include.  More is not better.  Including too much material is the number one mistake people make in assembling press kits.  Have a reason for everything that goes into your press kits.

Some things to consider for your press kit in addition to your news release:

• A fact sheet.  Keep news releases short and simple.  A fact sheet is a way to provide more information without cluttering your news releases with too much detail.

• A photograph, chart, illustration, or some other visual.  If the news release is about a person or quotes someone, you can include a picture of that person.  If the news release is about a product, include a picture of the product – preferably being used by people – or a sample of the product, if practical.  Diagrams, schematics, charts, maps, graphs – anything that will help tell the story visually – are fair game.

• A biography.  If your story features a person, consider including that person’s biography.  The biography should focus on things relevant to your story.  If appropriate, point out local connections that will help reporters localize your story.

• Questions and answers.  A question-and-answer format is a good way to provide a lot of information on a variety of topics in short, readable segments.

• Testimonials and endorsements show third-party support.  Get permission from the people providing the testimonials to use what they’ve said.  And know what they’re likely to say if contacted by reporters for additional comments.

• Reprints of news stories can serve the same purpose as testimonials.  Reprints often can tell your story more credibly than you can.  Many magazines will sell you full-color reprints of articles about you.

• For TV reporters, videotape that illustrates your story.  Keep the footage simple.  Audiotapes with recorded soundbites are helpful for radio stations.

Despite their name, press kits also used for marketing, investor relations and other purposes.  Most press kits can be tailored for each of these uses without much effort.

And don’t forget to put your press kit onto your Web site for reporters and others researching your story.

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

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The Monday Morning Media Minute is now available as an eBook.  My new eStore features five eBooks based on the Media Minute.  To check them out, visit my eStore and buy early and often.  The eBooks come as PDF files.  You don’t need special eBook software to read them.

President-elect Obama is playing to the middle so far.  And it’s a good lesson for the rest of us.

In almost any situation calling for you to communicate with the public, a certain number of people will support you no matter what, a certain number will oppose you no matter what and the vast majority will be somewhere in the middle.

The folks in the middle are the ones you’re trying to reach because they’re the ones you need to convince.  All too often, people waste way too much time trying to convince the inconvincible or preaching to the already converted.

People who will support you no matter what need to hear from you enough to be able to argue your case for you.  So, don’t ignore them.  But don’t make them the focus of your communication efforts — unless you’re counting on them to be major advocates for your cause.  If you’re counting on strong advocacy from them, then step up the attention you pay to them.

Ignore the inconvincible.  They won’t support you.  So, don’t waste your time trying to change their minds.  One important caveat:  Sometimes opponents look like they’re inconvincible when, in fact, they can be persuaded to move to your side.  How can you tell?  Listen to your opponents.  If they’re asking for something you can agree to, then it’s worth exploring whether accommodating what they want will bring them over to your side.  The inconvincible will always find a new objection if you answer one of their demands.  If that happens, move on.

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

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The Monday Morning Media Minute is now available as an eBook.  My new eStore features five eBooks based on the Media Minute.  To check them out, visit my eStore and buy early and often.  The eBooks come as PDF files.  You don’t need special eBook software to read them.

Joe the Plumber and Colin the General both made political splashes during the past week.

When all’s said and done, the general’s a better spokesperson for his candidate than the plumber because his message is more consistent with the messages of his candidate.

Just because of who he is, Powell’s endorsement supports Obama on key themes of the campaign — that he’s ready to be commander-in-chief and that he isn’t a terrorist or a pal of terrorists.  Joe the Plumber’s credentials supporting the idea that McCain’s tax plan helps small businesses and Obama’s doesn’t is a little more suspect because Joe the Plumber’s identity is more suspect.

And every reason Powell gave for endorsing Obama reinforced one of Obama’s campaign messages.  Joe the Plumber wasn’t as clearly on message for McCain.

Politics aside, the general and the plumber are good examples of the strengths and weaknesses of third-party advocates.

The benefits of using third-party advocates is well known to PR professionals.  But they can be hard to keep on message — your message, at least — because they have own messages, their own identity and their own strengths and weaknesses.

So, use third-party advocates when you can.  But make sure they’ll support your message, not interfere with it.

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

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The Monday Morning Media Minute is now available as an eBook.  My eStore features five eBooks based on the Media Minute.  To check them out, visit my eStore and buy early and often.  The eBooks come as PDF files.  You don’t need special eBook software to read them.

With politics and the financial mess getting wall-to-wall coverage, it seems like there isn’t much other news these days.

And that means it’s time to lay low for a while if you have a story that will get drowned out by them.

That doesn’t mean you can’t tell any other story, of course.  But it does mean you may be better off putting some stories on the shelf for a while — until there’s less competition.

The political news will die down after the election.  The financial mess?  That may take a little longer.

In the meantime, you may want to consider holding on to stories that can wait to be pitched.

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

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The Monday Morning Media Minute is now available as an eBook.  My eStore features five eBooks based on the Media Minute.  To check them out, visit my eStore and buy early and often.  The eBooks come as PDF files.  You don’t need special eBook software to read them.

Remember Sarah Palin?  The one running for vice president.

After delivering an acceptance speech that turned her into something of a political rock star, Palin’s largely disappeared from public and media view.  And the few interviews she’s done have been – to put it kindly – less than rousing successes.

From outside, it looks like the McCain campaign has put their VP candidate under wraps because they’re afraid she’s not ready to handle questions from the media.  Understandable at first since she hasn’t been on the national political stage before.  But at some point it becomes an issue.

I’ll leave it to you to make up your own mind about Palin and whether she should be talking more often to reporters.

But the media fortress that’s been built around her reminds me of a problem I see too often within companies and agencies who see themselves as besieged by a hostile media.  They simply quit talking to reporters except when they feel they have no choice.  And they go into the few interviews they do with a chip on their shoulder, assuming the reporter’s only there to do them harm.

The problem with this kind fortress mentality is that it fosters the kind of negative coverage it’s designed to protect against.

Some reporters do practice gotcha journalism.  Most don’t.  But reporters are human.  And, like all of us, they draw conclusions about the people they come in touch with based on how those people react around them.

Most of us assume that people who are constantly on the defensive have something to hide.  Reporters do, too.  And they’ll reflect that in the stories they write.  Most of us assume that people who defend the indefensible or say things that are misleading or untrue are untrustworthy.  Reporters do, too.  And they’ll reflect that in the stories they write.  And that’s the very behavior that seems to go with a fortress mentality when it comes to dealing with the media.

You don’t have to answer every question a reporter asks – or even agree to every interview.  But if you’re too evasive at some point it becomes an issue.  And if you have a chip on your shoulder every time you do an interview because you assume the reporter’s only out to “get” you, you’re not going to like most of the stories written about you.

Talking to reporters is different than talking to your neighbor.  You need to understand how to tell your story effectively and stay on message.  That’s one reason why good media training is so important.

But if you know the rules of engagement, have a solid story to tell and tell it clearly you’ll do just fine most of the time.  Or at least that’s been my experience.

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

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The Monday Morning Media Minute is now available as an eBook.  My eStore features five eBooks based on the Media Minute.  To check them out, visit my eStore and buy early and often.  The eBooks come as PDF files.  You don’t need special eBook software to read them.

How does your story benefit me?  That’s always an important question.  It’s especially important if you’re trying to do something controversial.  A lot of things are controversial.

Colorado’s casinos are asking voters to let them raise their stakes to $100 a bet – a big jump from the current maximum of $5.

Colorado agreed nearly 20 years ago to let three old mining towns – Central City, Black Hawk and Cripple Creek – open small-stakes casinos.  Since then, a number of towns have tried to win approval for similar proposals.  They’ve all lost.

So, the casino owners knew they had a losing hand without a good reason for voters to let them raise their stakes.

Their answer?  A ballot proposal, known as Amendment 50, directing that a major portion of the additional taxes they’ll pay on their increased revenue go to the state’s community colleges.  In fact, the campaign for the proposal calls itself Coloradans for Community Colleges.

How effective is their tactic?  We’ll know for sure on November 4.  But I’ve already had two friends who don’t give a rip about gambling urge me to vote for the ballot proposal because it’ll help community colleges – something both of them care a lot about.

Any PR professional worth his or her salt knows about using third-party advocates to help tell your story.  But the backers of Amendment 50 have taken it a step further.  They’ve given people who would otherwise vote against their proposal a reason to vote for it.

The strategy’s a good one.  And one that doesn’t get used often enough.  Do you have a controversial idea you want to sell?  Figure out everyone who can impact the outcome.  Then give as many of them as possible a reason to support you by giving them a stake in you winning approval for your proposal.

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

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The Monday Morning Media Minute is now available as an eBook.  My eStore features five eBooks based on the Media Minute.  To check them out, visit my eStore and buy early and often.  The eBooks come as PDF files.  You don’t need special eBook software to read them.

What do car leases and winemaking franchises have in common?

They’re featured on the front page of the business section of Sunday’s Denver Post.  And they’re good examples of trend stories — a great way to make news that often gets overlooked by people looking for ways to get attention for their story.

According to the Post, car leases are becoming harder to get and more expensive.  And it says winemaking franchises are a “fast-growing industry trend” that’s started to take hold in Colorado.

An editor once told me his newspaper loves trends and added, only half jokingly, “a trend is anything with at least three plot points.”  My experience is that most news organizations love trends.  They love them even more if you can help them tell their audience how to take advantage of it or avoid being hurt by it.

One nice thing about many trend stories is that you can use data your organization has that no one else can duplicate.

An example I often quote in workshops is State Farm, which gets huge news coverage every year with its list of the 10 most dangerous intersections in the United States.  They”re almost guaranteed coverage in every city with an intersection on the list.  And they localize the story even further by releasing lists of the 10 most dangerous intersections in individual states.  They’re also virtually guaranteed coverage in every city with an intersection on those lists — which translates into stories all over the country.  Information for the releases comes entirely from claims filed by the State Farm clients.

And someone from State Farm often gets quoted giving advice for how to avoid accidents.

What trends are there in your industry that you can turn into a story?

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

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The Monday Morning Media Minute is now available as an eBook.  My eStore features five eBooks based on the Media Minute.  To check them out, visit my eStore and buy early and often.  The eBooks come as PDF files.  You don’t need special eBook software to read them.

Do you find the presidential polls as interesting as I do?

At the beginning of this year, Hillary Clinton was the odds-on favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination and John McCain was broke, his campaign on life support and most people — including me — thought he was done.

And just a few months ago Barack Obama looked like a shoo-in for the White House.  He may still get there, of course, but he’s not looking like a shoo-in right now.

I’m not going to offer any political predictions.  I’ll leave that to the pundits.

But I think the ever-changing dynamics of the political polls are a reminder of two important lessons for those of us who practice public relations.

Lesson 1:  Telling your story effectively is a marathon, not a sprint.  The news release you issued yesterday was a resounding success with coverage beyond your wildest dreams?  Congratulations.  But your job isn’t done.  Your audience won’t even begin hearing your message until you’ve said it so many times you’re sick of it.  So, if you’ve got a story to tell that you really want the rest of us to hear, you need to keep telling it.  The same is true for your setbacks.  They hurt.  But one setback — or even a series of them — won’t decide the final outcome unless you let it.

Lesson 2:  If you don’t tell your story, no one else will do it for you.  I’m constantly puzzled by how many companies either don’t tell their story at all or water it down to take all the sizzle out of it because they’re afraid “something” will go wrong.  Telling your story effectively will often mean you’ll get pushback from your opposition or your critics.  But they don’t even have to bother pushing back if you’re not pushing forward.  Successful candidates — and other successful communicators — start every day with the goal of controlling the message for that day.  Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they don’t.  But you can’t succeed without trying.  And you can’t get anyone to hear your story if you don’t tell it over and over.

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

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The Monday Morning Media Minute is now available as an eBook.  My eStore features five eBooks based on the Media Minute.  To check them out, visit my eStore and buy early and often.  The eBooks come as PDF files.  You don’t need special eBook software to read them.

By now, most of us know who Michael Phelps is.  But what about Jason Lezak, Peter Vanderkaay and Ryan Lochte?

Among them, Lezak, Vanderkaay and Lochte won five gold and four bronze medals at the Beijing Olympics.  But most of us wouldn’t recognize their names.

Lezak’s come-from-behind anchor leg in the men’s 400-meter freestyle relay “saved” one of the eight gold medals Phelps took home from China.  Lochte won individual gold and bronze medals in races that were just 27 minutes apart.

And who can forget Phelps’ amazing finish in the 100-meter butterfly where he beat out Serbia’s Milorad Cavic by one one-hundredth of a second – less time that it took me to type any single character in this Media Minute.

Cavic appeared to have the race won.  But he eased into the finish while Phelps made one last lunge to win.  Seven golds and one silver, impressive as that would have been, isn’t the same as eight golds.  Cavic will always be known, to the degree he’s known at all, as the swimmer who almost beat Phelps.

What’s my point?

Just over 300 gold medals were awarded during the 16 days of the Beijing Olympics.  Some reporters received that many story pitches over those same 16 days.

Most Olympic athletes go home without a gold medal — or any medal at all.  Most news releases end up in the junk pile of the Recycle Bins of newsroom computers.

Getting your story told is the equivalent of winning a gold medal — or at least a bronze.  Getting it widely noticed takes the equivalent of Michael Phelps’ eight golds.

Phelps won his eight gold medals in part because he’s a phenomenal athlete.  You need a good story to get the media to tell yours.

But Phelps also won at least two of his gold medals — the butterfly race against Cavic and the relay Lezak came from behind to win — because Phelps and his teammates wanted to win just a little bit more than their competitors.  Reporters pass up a lot of good stories for other stories that are just a little bit better — or the person pitching them tried just a little harder.

I see a lot of news releases that someone decided were “good enough” to send to the media.  But good enough isn’t always good enough if you want your story to be heard, understood and remembered.

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

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The Monday Morning Media Minute is now available as an eBook.  My eStore features five eBooks based on the Media Minute.  To check them out, visit my eStore and buy early and often.  The eBooks come as PDF files.  You don’t need special eBook software to read them