Monday Morning Media Minute

Media Minute: Make it visual
By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

Is a picture really worth a thousand words? Maybe. But I have a different question for you: Are you using pictures and other visual design elements to bring out the full value of your words?

If not, you’re missing the boat.

With digital photography, high-quality stock-photo services that charge as little as $1 per picture and how easy it is to put pictures and video online, there’s no excuse for not adding strong visual impact to your story.

A few examples (you’ll come up with more) of how to do that:

• News releases aren’t just for the news media any more. If you’re writing a news release, add it to your website or blog with one or more pictures — or even a video — that help tell your story. You can offer the picture(s) to the media, too, of course. Just make sure it/they are professional quality.
• Do you blog? Or use Facebook? Pictures add impact to what you’re posting.
• Do you use PowerPoint for presentations? Word-packed slides are deadly. If you aren’t using more pictures than words on your slides, you’re probably guilty of “death by PowerPoint.” Avoid clip art. And don’t add visuals as an afterthought. They are at least as important as the words you put on your slides. If you do a lot of PowerPoint presentations, I recommend you read presentationzen by Garr Reynolds. It radically changed the way I do PowerPoint slides. And my slides are much better as a result.

Next week: The importance of editing. And a few tips for becoming a better editor.

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

Media Minute: Anecdotes, analogies, examples
By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

Anecdotes, analogies and examples are powerful storytelling tools. Use them whenever possible.

Anecdotes humanize your story. That makes your story more appealing to the rest of us — and more likely to get our attention. They make it more likely that we’ll hear what you say. But go easy on anecdotes that paint you as the hero. And stay away from anecdotes that criticize or poke fun at someone else.

Analogies simplify your story. They make it easier for the rest of us to understand your story. And they’ll help us remember it, too. Have you seen the new “that’s the Egg McMuffin of . . .” commercials from McDonald’s? My prediction is they’ll prove to be among the more memorable commercials of 2012 — and may even become part of our pop culture. They embody a great analogy.

Examples help explain your story. They provide a concrete memory hook that makes it more likely your story will be remembered. The Monday Morning Media Minute is the Egg McMuffin of media tips, for example.

Anecdotes, analogies, examples help get your story heard, understood and remembered.

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

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

Mark Twain once said: “Never let the truth stand in the way of a good story.”

My variation: Never let the facts stand in the way of a good story — including yours.

Those two statements embody a rule every good storyteller knows and follows instinctively. And so should you.

Twain told tall tales. So, for him, it didn’t matter whether the stories he told were literally true. He wasn’t concerned about whether they happened the way he told them — or even whether they happened at all.

Twain was interested in entertaining his audiences. And, often, he was interested in telling a bigger “truth” than the facts he used in narrating his stories. Many of his stories had a moral.

Twain could get away with bending or ignoring the “truth” because of the kind of stories he told.

But those of us in the business world usually don’t have that same latitude.

To be credible, we need to stick to real facts. But it’s important not to let facts stand in the way of our story.

I’m not suggesting you play fast and loose with the truth. You’ll destroy your credibility if you do that. But don’t bury your audience in so many facts that you forget to tell them your story.

Why is the story so important? Because we teach, learn and remember through storytelling.

Your story is like the wrapping that goes around a gift. The wrapping builds interest and anticipation.

Your story is there to keep the rest of us interested long enough to hear what you’re saying and to help us remember your message once we’ve heard it.

A litany of facts is easily and quickly forgotten. Or ignored entirely. A good story will be remembered, and even repeated. Your story is the the wrapping that adds interest to your message. And helps us remember it.

Next week: Three tools you can use to make your story more interesting.

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

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

Tell me a story. And make it about me.

Whether you’re issuing a news release, delivering a speech or using social media, the best way to get the rest of us to hear, understand and remember what you have to say is to tell us a story.

People love stories. People have been telling stories for as long as there have been people. We teach, learn and remember through storytelling.

So, if you want to be heard, understood and remembered, become a good storyteller.

And make your stories about me. Why? Because everybody’s favorite subject is me. Find a way to make your story relevant to your audience and you increase dramatically the chances of getting the rest of us to listen to what you have to say.

In fact, two of the biggest mistakes storytellers make is telling stories that focus on themselves instead of their audience and telling stories that are boring.

I’ll explore ways to make your story more interesting over the next few weeks.

Coming up next week, a basic rule every storyteller should know: Don’t let the facts get in the way of your story. And, no, I’m not suggesting you be dishonest.

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

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

One of my great frustrations over the years has been watching clients wait too long to respond to crisis situations or take advantage of stories in the news they could use to help tell their own story. Waiting too long to tell your story can mean a missed opportunity or, in some cases, a damaged reputation.

But there’s a flip side: Speaking before you’re ready. That’s also dangerous.

I stumbled across two examples of speaking too soon last week. One involved a promotional email sent out by the New York Times. The other involved a Denver city councilman a little too eager to claim credit for bringing California’s famous IN-N-OUT Burger chain to Colorado.

The Times sent out an email on Wednesday encouraging readers who had canceled their home subscriptions to change their minds and offering them a 50 percent discount for renewing. The email, which was supposed to have gone to 300 people, went to 8.6 million people, including me.

After a flurry of Twitter comments and phone calls to the Times from puzzled readers who hadn’t canceled their subscriptions, the Times put out a message on Twitter that said: “If you received an e-mail today about canceling your New York Times subscription, ignore it. It’s not from us.” Except, of course, it was.

So, the Times had to follow up with another message acknowledging and apologizing for two mistakes instead of one.

A minor miscue? Sure. No one died or got hurt. But the incident generated several negative stories and some embarrassment for the Times. And under different circumstances — a serious crisis, for example — it could have meant a serious loss in credibility.

The lesson for the rest of us: Make sure you know all the facts before you issue a public comment.

The other incident involves a Facebook comment by Denver City Councilman Albus Brooks claiming he had a “great conversation” over the holidays with a relative who has  “close ties” to IN-N-OUT’s CFO and that attracting the popular California burger chain to Denver “will be on my agenda heading into 2012.”

That, in turn, led to a story in the Denver Post speculating about the potential for IN-N-OUT coming to Denver.

Is IN-N-OUT coming to Denver? Maybe. But Brooks’ Facebook comment looks to me like a case of someone speaking out way too soon about something that’s far from certain — or about a conversation with a relative that was nothing more than idle chatter.

Brooks could still have claimed credit by waiting the deal — if there is one — was done. By jumping the gun, there’s a good chance he embarrassed IN-N-OUT’s CFO and his relative with “close ties” to the burger exec. And, if serious discussions for bringing IN-N-OUT to Denver really were in the works, he may have made a successful outcome more difficult. In short, Brooks made a mistake by speaking too soon.

One thing both of these incidents have in common: Comments made on social media. Facebook, Twitter and other social media make it very easy to say things that shouldn’t be said in public. So, beware.

And a personal footnote: If IN-N-OUT does make it to Denver, make mine a double-double, animal style.

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

Merry Christmas. I also hope you have a happy, prosperous new year. Well, prosperous may be a bit of a stretch given the state of the economy.

My greetings extend to those of you who celebrate a different holiday this time of the year. If you do, I hope you have a grand time celebrating whatever you celebrate.

If you’re one of those people who go around wishing everyone “happy holidays,” I’m happy to accept that as well. But I won’t be wishing you “happy holidays.” That’s because I have achieved one of my longtime goals: Becoming a curmudgeon.

My current curmudgery centers around political correctness in general and “happy holidays” in specific. It seems to me that those of us celebrating Christmas should say so, just as those of you celebrating something else should say that, too — and we ought to all be grateful we live where we can openly celebrate different things without fuzzing it all up with a generic label that doesn’t own up to any of them.

Curmudgery is a word I believe I’ve invented, but I’m happy to be a practitioner. When you’re young, complaining — even about things that deserve to be complained about — is often called whining. Later, it becomes a rant. It’s only when people begin to see you as old — we never see ourselves that way, of course — that you qualify as a curmudgeon. So, as one who has whined and ranted much of his life, I’m glad now to be able to curmudge. It’s still the same thing. But it has a better ring to it.

As long as I’m curmudging about Christmas, I’m inviting those few people who are inclined to buy me a Christmas present not to buy me any more “stuff.” I have too much stuff already. I like my friend Adrienne’s idea: If you want to give me a gift, give me a haircut (hint: Adrienne is a great barber) or a massage or something else that will give me pleasure and an American worker the gift of being able to earn a few bucks doing whatever it is they do. Two gifts in one.

But enough curmudging. The whole point of these annual letters is, I believe from the ones I’ve received, to provide a recap of the past year so you can catch everybody up without having to write everyone a personalized letter.

So, let’s get on with it. I’m lucky enough to have nine grandchildren in my life. Four of them are mine. Five of there are Mary’s. But I have the privilege of watching all of them grow up. All of them are bigger, smarter and cuter than they were at this time last year. I don’t know how they do that. It’s magic, I think. But I’m glad they do because I enjoy watching them do it.

I’m smaller (I lost 40 pounds), smarter and no cuter (which is to say not cute at all) than I was this time last year. Like the kids, I’m also a year older. They want to be older than they are. And I’m okay with getting older. Being old enough to qualify as a curmudgeon is an interesting time of life.

If you know the kids in my life well enough to care about the details of what happened to them during the past year, you probably already know the details. If you don’t know the details, you probably don’t care about them anyway. But if you’re curious, then let’s chat. That’s way more fun than a form letter.

I also remain in awe of my grandchildren’s parents — some of whom are my former children. I say “former children” not because I’ve disowned them or vice versa (as far as I know). I’m still their dad. But they’re not children any more. I’m happy to report they all seem to be doing a better job of making it through life than I was doing at their respective ages. I take some credit for that. But not much. They’re mostly doing it on their own.

Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. Much love to all. And don’t forget to laugh at your problems. Everyone else does.

Jerry

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

A basic tenet of good storytelling: Surprise me.

I woke up this morning to find a surprise in my email — an offer for a “free app” for my Kindle Fire. The “free app” is a shameless promotion for a book, The 4-Hour Chef, scheduled to come out next September. The book provides recipes, meal plans and exercise ideas to help readers get through the Christmas season without gaining weight.

The reviews of the app are decidedly mixed. Several users gave it five stars. But there were one-, two- and three-star reviews as well.

The lead review when I checked the offer out in Amazon’s online store gave it three stars and had this to say: “This is basically an ad for Tim’s (Tim Ferriss) next book that’s nearly a year from coming out. This shouldn’t be a surprise as the title clearly states 4-Hour Chef Teaser, but reading the reviews you may think this is something earth shattering and it really isn’t much more than advertising, albeit very clever and well done. . . it’s worth the download for the exploding cow graphic alone.”

I downloaded the app, checked it out and concluded the review quoted above is spot on.

So why am I telling you all this? I’m not selling the book. But this promotion is clever and unusual enough that it’ll sell a lot of books. The idea won’t be nearly as interesting the next time someone tries it. The surprise factor that comes from the promotion’s unique approach is what makes it fun.

Hats off to author Tim Ferriss and Amazon for a clever little surprise that will sell a lot of books.

The lesson for the rest of us? Find a way to surprise me and you’re more likely to get me to at least listen to your story.

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

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

It’s one of the most basic tenets of crisis communication: Get ahead of bad news whenever possible. Herman Cain finally did that last week. Ironically, it was too late.

Cain got to the media first with word of Ginger White’s claim she’d had a 13-year affair him. His effort to get out ahead of this particular piece of bad news stood in stark contrast to how he handled earlier accusations of sexual harassment by several other women.

Cain still made plenty of mistakes in responding to Ginger White’s story. But one thing was clear: He had gotten some coaching in crisis communication between the time of the first set of accusations and the one that ended his candidacy for the White House.

In short, the incident that led to the demise of Cain’s candidacy marked the first time he showed any evidence of getting — and following — good advice about how to handle the ever-increasing problems surrounding his campaign.

Herman Cain’s efforts at damage control were too little too late. But some lessons for the rest of us:

• Prepare before trouble occurs. Like the person who changes their diet after their first heart attack or quits smoking after they get lung cancer, companies and people in the public eye often do nothing to prepare themselves for a crisis until after it happens. That’s usually too late. No matter how well things are going for you right now, this is the time to start preparing for your crisis even though you probably don’t know what it will be.

• Stick to your message. Tell your side of the story if you have something worth saying. But stick to your message. And don’t overdo it. Continually changing your story destroys your credibility. Blaming others almost never works. And, except to provide details the rest of us need to know to protect ourselves, saying more in crisis situations often just makes things worse.
• Actions speak louder than words. What you do (or did) is more important than what you say about it. If you messed up, make amends not excuses.
• Truth matters. Despite what your parents told you, lying does work some of the time. That’s one reason why people try to get away with lying. But it doesn’t always work. And once you lose your credibility, you’ve lost the battle — usually forever. My advice: Tell the truth, even when it hurts or embarrasses you.

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

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

We’ve all heard the cliche: Failure is not an option. But, of course, it is. The real question: What do you do when it happens? Too many people get that part wrong.

We’re going to witness an epic fail this week when the congressional super committee that was supposed to come up with at least $1.2 trillion in federal deficit reductions finally admits the obvious. They couldn’t get it done.

With their deadline looming, the two sides switched gears over the weekend and began focusing on how to announce their failure. At least both sides agree on the answer to that. It was the other side’s fault.

The hammer that was supposed to help the super committee succeed was a stipulation that failure would trigger huge automatic budget cuts neither side would be willing to accept. In short, the super committee was supposed to succeed because failure was not an option. Now that failure is here some members of Congress already are talking about changing the rules to undo those parts of the automatic spending cuts they don’t like. I’m not winning the game. So I want to change the rules in my favor.

Chances are you have a pretty strong opinion about Congress and what went wrong with the super committee. I do, too. We don’t need to debate that here.

But some thoughts about common mistakes people make when things go wrong:

• Blaming the other guy usually doesn’t work. Were the two sides equally to blame for the super committee’s failure? I don’t think so. The other side doesn’t think so, either. But their version of who’s most at fault is different than mine. The fact is neither side presented a compromise they were willing to take to the public as a solution most of us could support. So, both sides will take some of the blame. And the public’s disgust with Congress will get even worse. Blaming the other buy doesn’t help either side. Blaming the other guy won’t work for you, either. It was the other side’s fault? Maybe you’re right. But what’s your solution and why should the rest of us support you? Fixing blame doesn’t fix problems.

• Changing the rules in your favor when things aren’t going your way doesn’t work. Before you draw a line in the sand, make sure it’s one you’re willing to stick to if necessary. It’s like setting consequences for your kids. If you’re not willing to enforce them, your kids will ignore your threat because they’ll know you’re bluffing. If I can’t believe you stand for something I’ll assume you don’t stand for anything. And I won’t respect you. That doesn’t work for any of us.

• When things go wrong, don’t try to explain away your mistake by offering an explanation that’s clearly not true and only makes matters worse. This one may not apply to the super committee. But it’s easily the number one mistake people make when they fail. None of us wants to make a mistake. But it’s okay to make them. We all do. My advice: You screwed up? Admit it. And come up with a credible plan for getting it right from now on.

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

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

Does the Grinch who wants to steal Christmas live at the White House?

No. But the administration announced and then rescinded in a single day last week plans to impose a 15-cent promotion fee on fresh-cut Christmas trees.

Some political conservatives immediately denounced the plan as a “tax” on Christmas trees and one Republican congressman called the President a Grinch.

Ironically, the proposed fee was requested by tree growers and the money was to have been used to promote the sale of fresh Christmas trees.

The episode’s worth mentioning here because the administration made a mistake often committed by organizations in a hurry to implement controversial policies without going through the time-consuming process of getting input from stakeholders who have competing interests — skipping the time needed to listen to people with different views and address their concerns.

Although the proposed fee was requested by tree owners, the industry wasn’t unified. Larger growers generally supported the fee, smaller ones were less enthusiastic. By announcing the proposed fee on the day it was supposed to have gone into effect, the administration appeared to be taking preemptive action in an effort to avoid public debate. There isn’t much time before Christmas trees go on sale, after all.

Building consensus would have taken time, perhaps too much time for the program to work this year. But if the tree growers had been more unified, the White House probably wouldn’t have had to back down. The politicians criticizing the “tax” aren’t exactly known for saying nice things about the guy currently in the White House. As it stands now, the “shortcut” derailed the proposal entirely, at least for now.

If supporters want to try again, they should spend time working with opponents to find common ground. The time it takes to give competing interests an opportunity to air their concerns — and, with luck, reach a compromise that satisfies most of them — is usually time well spent. Skipping that step is like taking a shortcut that adds time and miles to your trip.

So proceed carefully when you find yourself tempted to take preemptive action to prevent your opponents from delaying your project by voicing their concerns. You may be taking a shortcut to even further delays.

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