“Change” is an often used word in political campaigns. It’s also a beloved word of PR firms. In both cases, way too often, the word “change” means nothing more than running in place.
A number of years before becoming a senior VP/senior counselor at Burson-Marsteller, I was a reporter and editor at New York City dailies. As a journalist, my beats included sports, police, courts, entertainment and politics. Those beats demanded that I bring a different perspective when deciding what constituted news and how to craft a story.
When working for an afternoon newspaper, I had to write more featurish second-day ledes than when I worked for a morning paper. Today, second-day ledes are largely the norm because papers often have to be more creative in their approach since the advent of the 24/7 news cable channels than in the days of the old five W’s style of writing. “Change” is now the norm for news outlets.
New Names Instead of Change
In my opinion, the media is way ahead of PR firms when it comes to change. PR firms constantly create meaningless new titles to give clients the impression of change. They also create new departments and specialties, which mostly are nothing but name changes offering the same services as before.
They also market themselves in various ways to give the impression that Agency A is vastly different than Agency B. But where it counts most, in the creation of programs with original or new elements that appeal to the media, true “change” is often missing.
Too often, instead of creating new approaches, account teams fall back on past successful programs and attempt to disguise them with a new twist and a celebrity spokesperson. Usually, experienced journalists recognize these “face-lifted oldies,” resulting in poor, few or no hits. PR firms fail to remember that “new” is the essential part of “news” for major media journalists. And if there isn’t new hard news to report, PR programs need to include new feature approaches.
What Works in PR: Consider the Journalists’ View
What works when crafting a PR program is to look at it from the journalists’ viewpoint, providing news and feature elements, some with a long shelve life for long-lead pubs, and making sure the programs work for both the client and journalist. Too often, only the client wants are considered.
Here are a few examples, based on programs I have managed, played key roles in or created:
For the U.S. Army: We restructured a publicity program by emphasizing Army career opportunities in cooperation with career columnists from major media. The program also changed how reserve units from various states were publicized by aggregating the various units as “an army of one” while keeping their individual identity.
For a sports marketing company: The PR program was credited by journalists for being the first to use retired athletes, who were out of the spotlight for years, as spokespersons instead of current athletes who reporters can speak to every day, resulting in substantial nostalgia stories that sports writers love. The program was so successful that it lasted for eight years, until the client decided to go in another direction. Every year we made slight changes to keep the program fresh.
For a sponsor of various televised sports events: The PR program created a multi-year ‘how to watch sports on television” program. This approach continued for nine years.
For a building supply client: We turned a showroom into a “weekend park” for journalists’ children, using only the materials the client was selling, resulting in substantial publicity.
For an insurance company: We created an educational program for insurance buyers, which gained major media coverage.
For a Broadway show: We enlisted the belly dancer in the production to give free lessons to show-going women.
For an encyclopedia company: Using stories from a client’s encyclopedia, we created a “holiday news service” featuring a series of articles sent to “exclusively in your state” newspapers about the origin of holidays.
Importantly, each pitch to a journalist was accompanied with at least three ways to approach the story.
Why PR Programs Often Don’t Work
PR programs have an unappealing “sameness” because too often account teams create programs to satisfy clients without considering how it will play to the media. That’s a sure way to achieve meager publicity results.
Creating a program to work for both the client and the media is not that difficult. Account teams can accomplish this by tailoring specific facets of programs to specific media they approach, instead of using a shotgun approach. But doing so entails being exceptionally familiar with those media and being able to develop strong feature approaches. Having former journalists and people who worked on TV on the account team helps assure better understanding of the needs of consumer and trade publications, as well as TV programs.
When I gave presentations for a media company at New York PR agencies several years ago, I was told that the average stay for account executives was two to three years, two years when the economy was good, three years when it was bad. Adding to the problem, more senior people are under pressure to “grow the business” instead of rolling up their sleeves and helping less experienced staffers get positive results.
A big problem at some agencies is that individuals running accounts are often chosen by management because of their budget control and presentation skills instead of PR expertise. Office politics also plays a role in promotions. Thus, supervisors can’t pitch in and help solve a bad situation. Threatening their underlings with dismissals for not getting desired results is a frequent a tactic, even though the supervisors and high-ranking execs couldn’t do any better.
Fear of the Client Syndrome
Another common problem that prevents programs from working for both the client and the media is what I call “the fear of the client syndrome.” In an effort to satisfy the client, staffers include in programs everything the client wants. This is self-defeating because many client marketing managers who control budgets are not conversant with journalists’ needs. In one instance, the top management person at a prestigious client asked me if I could get a columnist to do a story, even though the journalist had died several years earlier. Needless to say, I failed.
I have always believed that PR teams should be upfront with clients and not be afraid to tell clients that what they suggest will not work. I always have, and have never angered a client. But in order to do this, the PR team must provide alternate approaches and clearly explain why they are better — and be prepared for dire consequences if good results don’t materialize.
There are other reasons that programs fail to get desired results. One is the “big idea” approach.” That’s when account teams become so enamored with their plan that elements of a program that might appeal to journalists are given short shrift. This is especially true when account teams are afraid to challenge the recommendations from their creative departments.
I once challenged the highest-ranking agency creative director when she talked an account team into planning a program around her idea. My ideas were rejected by the account team because they weren’t as imaginative, I was told. After the meeting, I told the creative director, “That will never work” and gave reasons why. Her reply was, “I just give the group ideas. It’s up to them to make them work.” The result was that project was awarded to another of the client’s agencies.
The Wise Person Approach
Another reason for faulty programming is, to use a political expression, “the wise person approach.” That’s when a senior person, who knows nothing about the client, attends the creative meeting and starts throwing out program elements that have little to do with the client’s wants, but are eagerly accepted by the young awe-struck account team because of the individual’s title. To paraphrase Tevye from “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Because you have a high title often means you’re right, even when you’re wrong.”
The bottom line is that the goal of a PR program should not be to show how creative you are, but to have a program that has news and feature hooks, as well as workable creative elements. Since very few PR pitches have hard news value, creative feature angles are needed that work for the media and the client.
Creative ideas that are unlikely to produce good results are bad creative ideas, even if the CEO or other high-ranking execs of the agency recommends them, although in that case you can be assured that the entire account team will be faulted for not being able to implement the ideas. But that’s the way life is in the “blame someone else” PR business.
Arthur Solomon, a former journalist, was a senior VP/senior counselor at Burson-Marsteller, and was responsible for restructuring, managing and playing key roles in significant national and international sports and non-sports programs. He now is a frequent contributor to public relations publications, consults on public relations projects and is on the Seoul Peace Prize nominating committee. He can be reached at arthursolomon4pr@juno.com or artsolomon4pr@optimum.net.
