Insights for Leaders Navigating
Visibility, Credibility, and Growth.
From media strategy to reputation management, we explore the trends shaping public perception and share the approaches that drive measurable results for growing brands.
As you probably know, one of the world’s most elite competitions recently ended. This event featured an incredibly talented group of men and women who dedicated countless hours to perfecting their craft, pushing themselves to be a star among their peers. From your couch, you acted as any good spectator would – cheering them on to victory as they accomplished feats you could only dream of and commiserating when they fell short.
I’m of course talking about The Great British Baking Show.
I’ve been a fan of this British reality show, which features amateur bakers competing for the title of “Star Baker” and an engraved cake stand, ever since my colleague introduced me to it last year. (Thanks, Molly!)
Watching this season, I picked up several lessons that can be applied to the PR industry.
- Manage your time – Like baking, certain PR activities can be extremely time sensitive. With internal meetings and client deliverables to juggle, it’s easy to overcommit and find yourself rushing at the end to complete projects. Try blocking time on your calendar for specific tasks. There are two major benefits to this approach. First, it will help ensure you’ve allotted enough time to complete the assignment. Secondly, scheduling it on your calendar will let colleagues know you’re unavailable during that period of time and limit interruptions.
- Keep your client’s objectives in mind – Most clients would agree that it’s wonderful when a PR firm goes above and beyond to exceed their expectations. However, executives are more likely to be irritated than impressed if a PR firm fails to execute on their original request and instead presents them with extraneous details and eye-catching graphics. On the show, the judges repeatedly admonished and eventually eliminated a baker for failing to follow their most basic instructions. In PR, we’re conditioned to search for ways to add value for our clients, but it’s important not to lose sight of their ultimate objective. Before investing your client’s time and resources on an activity, ask yourself if it maps directly to helping achieve a business or communication goal.
- Try new things – From combining unexpected flavors to brainstorming ways to incorporate augmented reality (AR) into PR, experimenting in the kitchen and the office is a must. One of our firm’s strengths is our creativity, which we rely on when writing proactive pitches, problem solving and developing communication plans. In new business meetings, potential clients will often cite stale ideas and lack of strategic counsel as reasons why they parted ways with their previous firms. Schedule regular brainstorming sessions with your team and explore other mediums (Instagram stories, anyone?) to deliver your clients’ messages.
- Trust your instincts – For the technical challenge portion of The Great British Baking Show, the judges give the bakers a recipe with certain critical information omitted, such as what temperature the oven should be set at or if the dough needs proofing. Often, these recipes are for obscure dishes the contestants have never heard of, let alone know how to make. PR professionals face their own version of the technical challenge on a regular basis, as it’s rare to know beforehand every question a journalist will ask and clients will sometimes provide limited direction. When you find yourself in a situation that requires an immediate response or action, have confidence that your training and knowledge will lead you to the best solution.
- Lend a hand – One of the reasons why I enjoy The Great British Baking Show so much is because of how genuinely pleasant and supportive the contestants appear to be. Yes, they are in a competition and yes, they are often working until the last second to execute their show-stopping cakes, but they still find time to help one another. We all have deadlines to meet and projects to manage, but volunteer to assist when you have bandwidth. This strengthens the team dynamic and your colleagues will be eager to return the favor in the future.
With the newest batch of contestants announced last week, I’m looking forward to another season of over-the-top treats and sharing more PR takeaways with you. Until then, I’ll be spending the rest of the summer perfecting my replica of contestant Paul’s King of the Jungle bake.
Hi there,
Hope this blog post finds you well. I’m reaching out to you on behalf of Communiqué PR, a boutique public relations firm in Seattle. We have broad experience in media relations and content development, and over the years we’ve learned some solid practices in sending email pitches to reporters and editors.
In today’s digital landscape, email is often the first and only communication PR professionals have with reporters. Securing media coverage for brands is at the heart of public relations, so it’s imperative to know how to pitch in a way that generates interest and trust from the journalist.
Email and pitching can each be difficult on their own, but together they form a task that requires artistry and precision. We have some insight on this topic that we think will be of interest to you, the readers. Please find below some of our key findings on how to craft successful email pitches:
- Immediately communicate the importance of your story. Journalists are pressed for time – you need to be direct in expressing the significance of your news. Start by having a subject line that reads like a headline, stating what the story is in a way that highlights the key information. For example, “Survey shows 59.1 percent of journalists prefer 2-3 paragraph pitches” is a compelling subject line. An email titled “Contributed article opportunity about journalist preferences” is going to be sent to the trash bin.
After that, use your first sentences to tell the reporter 1) who you’re representing, 2) what news your client has and 3) why this news is important to the writer and their readers. Journalists are taught to start every piece of writing with a nut graph, i.e. a concise introduction that conveys the value of the story. To successfully engage writers, PR professionals must speak in their language.
- Do your research and offer exclusivity. Every day, reporters are inundated with pitches. Thus, they’ve developed a sixth sense that detects whether a pitch has been carelessly sent or mass-produced. First off, send them the pitch specifically using the “to:” line; cc- or bcc-ing is a sign of a group send.
Perhaps most importantly, you need to research both your target publication and its writers. Read some of the publication’s popular articles and take a look at their official guidelines to get a feel for their voice. Then, identify the exact writers you need to contact for the pitch. Get to know their topics of interest and general beat. And if it’s your first time pitching to a specific reporter, start your email by indicating that you’re familiar with their work and therefore know that they are a good target for your pitch.
You could say something like, “I’ve been following your work and I thought your recent piece on the rise of Snapchat was particularly compelling. It was timely and provocative given the recent social media scandal surrounding Twitter and Snapchat. I have some related data that your readers might be interested in, and I am offering it to you exclusively.”
Cite one of their recent articles, give an intelligent comment on it and present your pitch. Then let the reporter know that you have given them the right of first refusal.
- Be considerate of their time. By now we’ve established that time is of the essence, especially for reporters. When writing a pitch email, you need make it as easy as possible for the writer to consume. Send the pitch in the morning, when they have the most time to review your proposal. Format the email so that the information is easy to see: Use bullets, bold key points, include relevant hyperlinks and break the text into short paragraphs.
Finally, end the email with action items for the journalist to consider. Be straight to the point, for example, “Would you be interested in covering this for Forbes? Please let me know as soon as you can. Thank you.”
- Build credibility. Before hitting send, you should thoroughly look over your pitch and reinforce its value. Fact-check all of your statements. Connect your client’s brand to the broader industry. Offer an interview with the related experts.
And don’t forget to proofread your pitch. Read it out loud and have a colleague look it over and give you feedback. Pitch emails are the most important part of the relationship between PR people and journalists. Make them count.
Reporters are a tough breed and can rightfully get irritated if you’re perceived to be wasting their time. As PR professionals, we must pitch effectively and respectfully if we want to maintain strong relationships with our media contacts.
Would you be interested in using some of these tips in your next email pitch? Please let us know and don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions or comments; we’re looking forward to hearing from you. Thanks for your time.
Very best,
Alexa & team
P.S. If you found this information useful, here are some additional resources on the general art of pitching and pitching pitfalls to avoid for your consideration. Cheers!
With the NFL season right around the corner I, along with most of America, have had football on my mind. Will Seattle’s Seahawks make it to another Super Bowl? How will the Denver Broncos play without Peyton Manning leading them on the field? With all my thoughts about the upcoming season, I realized that football and PR have a lot in common. I understand that helmets and pads are not needed in PR, and football games do not take place in cubicles, but PR professionals can still learn techniques from football teams.
If At First You Do Not Succeed, Try Again
In football, you hardly ever see a team give up after losing a game. Instead, they go back to practice the next day with an even more determined attitude. Players will watch game tapes over and over again taking notes of what they did wrong and dissecting what should have happened. Then they will practice the improved plays until everyone on the team knows how to properly execute the play. PR professionals need to do the same thing. If you do not win a client or secure an article, you reevaluate your methods and change them for the future. It is not the amount of wins that defines your life – it is the way you handle your losses and rise above.
Winning Requires Teamwork
The most successful teams — whether they are football teams or PR agencies — realize that strength lies within the team. In football, when one person scores a touchdown the credit also goes to their team, coach, and even fans and family. Same goes for PR firms – just because one person’s name is at the bottom of the email does not mean that other people did not work on the project. Behind every successful person is a team of people armed with strong resources.
Preparation is Essential
If an NFL team was to go into a game without any previous knowledge of their opponent, there is but a sliver of a chance that they will be the victor. Football teams spend hours studying other teams’ game tapes and learning their strengths and weaknesses. As with football, one of the most critical parts of PR is research. We research prospective clients, clients’ competitors and journalists. In PR, knowledge is the key to success. A PR agent needs to be able to familiarize themselves with news circulating about their client so they are able to take the next proactive step.
Evaluate
If a given route or plan does not seem to be driving the anticipated results, football teams will typically either alter the play or come up with a new one. By consistently updating and improving the plays, football teams are confident in knowing that they have all of the proper tools to succeed in a game. In PR it is necessary for agencies and professionals to analyze and evaluate their campaigns to see if they were successful at accomplishing their goals. If there are any areas that they could strengthen for future accounts, then it would be best for the professional to be aware.
While PR might not be a contact sport, and football players’ jobs don’t depend on keeping up with the newest trends, they do have similarities. In the upcoming season, put your thinking helmet on and start attacking the PR world like a football game.
You have been running to meeting after meeting, answering countless e-mails and taking endless phone calls all day, yet when work is finally over you feel as though you have accomplished nothing. Sound familiar? Don’t worry, you just have a case of busyness disease, and it’s incredibly common. Agencies have always had the tendency of being afflicted with “being so busy,” but now a majority of America’s workforce seems to have caught the bug as well. This is because we firmly believe that the busier we are, the more meetings we attend, the more emails we reply to, the more work we are getting done. The problem is that being busy is not the same as being productive.
Marketing and PR agencies are especially prone to this problem because they are used to billable hours. Having every hour of the day tracked causes agency employees to cram as many meeting, phone calls, and emails into their days as possible to increase how productive they appear. Unfortunately, it is having the opposite effect.
What agencies, and all companies, need to do is slow down. Employees need to block out chunks of time each day to do uninterrupted work – no emails, no calls, no meetings. As harmless as replying to an email may seem, it can be surprisingly detrimental to work efficiency. In fact, Microsoft did a study that found it took an average of 15 minutes for employees to go back to their important projects after being interrupted by an email or phone call. That means that if an employee only got 20 emails a day, an average of five hours would be wasted on replying and the distractions that come with it.
Seagate Technology did a similar study using VoloMetrix, a data-mining tool that helps track employee activity, which found that a single consulting firm was using up 8,000 hours of Seagate’s employees’ work time each year from nothing but emails. If productivity is the goal, cut down on the number of emails being sent each day, make sure emails that are sent are only going to people they actually apply to, and make sure the content is clear and concise, to avoid a flood of responses asking for clarification.
In PR cutting down emails can be especially difficult because of the volume of communication necessary when you are constantly talking to reporters and working with strict deadlines. However, it is still important to block out some email-free time during the day, even just an hour, to make sure you are meeting important deadlines as efficiently as possible.
Emails aren’t the only problem though – meetings are just as bad, if not worse. One of the biggest issues is that we like meetings. When we have back-to-back meetings all day, it makes us feel important. This idea brings to light an important factor behind the busyness disease, which is that being busy is a type of social currency. The harder it is to schedule a meeting with an executive, the more important and sought after they must be.
This goes hand-in-hand with the idea that an empty schedule means no work is being done. There is a fear of idle time in the workplace so pervasive that executives and employees are scheduling meetings that are either too long or completely unnecessary. A study done by Bain, using VoloMetrix data of 17 large corporations, found that senior executives devote more than two days each week to meetings attended by three or more co-workers, and that these meetings are, more often than not, scheduled “just because.”
Meetings are an important way to connect with colleagues and employees, but only when they are necessary. Back-to-back meetings all day make it nearly impossible to sit down and actually put the ideas and decisions made into motion, making the entire “busy” day a waste. One way to be more effective is to have a smaller number of meetings each day with fewer employees, followed by a block of time that will allow the attendees to actually implement the ideas discussed.
As technological advances continue to make it easier to be distracted by emails, calls and other forms of communication, it will become increasingly important to stress uninterrupted work time. Keep emails, calls and meetings to a minimum and only include those that are absolutely necessary to help cut down on wasted time. The more time that is devoted to spending time on, and completing, one project at a time before moving to the next, the more productive the workforce will be, and saying, “I was very productive today,” is much more satisfying than saying “I am so busy.”
Most people have more power than they realize. Organizations that help the individuals on their teams identify, harness and effectively use their power are more likely to achieve business success.
To identify their own power, employees should ask themselves, “On your very best day at work – the day you come home and think you have the best job in the world – what did you do that day?” according to Facebook’s Global Head of Recruiting, Miranda Kalinowski.
Facebook is an example of what’s known as a Strengths-Based Organization – a company that harnesses the power of its individual employees’ strengths. By helping employees identify their individual strengths where they align with company objectives, Facebook empowers its teams to do work that is meaningful and positions the company to meet its business objectives. But leveraging individual team members’ strengths isn’t solely the work of billion-dollar companiesThe gamut from small family run businesses to global enterprises can each work to harness individuals’ strengths by following a few simple principles.
The first step is helping individual employees understand their power and how to use it effectively. It’s a valuable skill and one that should be fostered and developed – personally and professionally. (See also “Understanding Power Dynamics Can Help You Lead More Effectively.”) By helping individuals understand their power in the workplace, they are better positioned to contribute what others can’t and to complement others’ strengths.
Unlocking individual talents is a two-pronged process: 1) Observe what employees get excited about and where they see success and 2) engage in a discussion with them. Ask what they enjoy and what helps them find meaning in their work. Harvard Business Review offers fantastic tips to get team members to speak up and share their strengths. Helping employees align their work around projects that are meaningful to them will drive results for the company.
Second, transparency about business objectives is critical to empowering the team to act on their individual power. By being transparent about our business objectives and how our business model functions, for example, each individual on our team is empowered to think creatively and present ideas that help the company meet its objectives, as well as ideas that help them meet their individual objectives and goals. We recognize that great ideas can come from any level within the organization – but only if everyone knows and understands the objectives. With a team comprised of individuals with different perspectives and experiences, the way each of us approaches a problem and the solutions we propose may vary widely. Soliciting a variety of ideas increases the likelihood we will get to the optimal solution versus having it dictated from the executive team.
At Communiqué we recently revised our approach to an aspect of our business based on a suggestion from a member of the team, and additional tweaking by the group. The change resulted in renewed energy due to a stronger alignment of personal interests with business needs. It was a great idea that wasn’t evident to me but the impact even in a short window of time has been significant.
Lastly, aligning professional development and growth around individual interests and talents is critical. In terms of an employee’s individual needs and interests, it may not be realistic for a manager to know what an employee is looking to achieve or experience. That employee is better positioned to come up with creative ways to meet their own professional goals/interests, while also demonstrating how it would benefit the business and other members of the team.
Last fall when one of our team members approached us about taking two months off to travel, she was able to articulate how it could work for the business and our clients, as well as how it would make a difference to her. It was a persuasive proposition, which we were willing and able to accommodate. As a result she was able to achieve a lifelong dream and we were able to retain a valued employee, one who returned to work with new experiences that translate into her contributions for our clients and ultimately our team and the company.
As an employer, I want my team to feel empowered, be solutions-oriented, and to be focused on the same organizational objectives. While this can be a scary prospect for some leaders, having an empowered team is more rewarding – emotionally and financially.
Empowered employees also add value to your business: They are more committed, deliver better results, take less sick time and foster a positive and proactive spirit within the organization. In the article, “The Importance of Empowering Employees,” Beth Williams, CEO of Forward Focus outlines five specific benefits of empowered employees:
- Quality of work produced
- Satisfied employees
- Collaboration grows
- Productivity increases
- Employee empowerment reduces costs
Of course with that power comes some responsibility – not to misuse or abuse that power. Ultimately fostering a culture where employees know and understand the power they have to help an organization achieve its objectives and to achieve their individual objectives is a win-win for the company and the individual. It is a lot more fun to be part of a team where we are all working toward the same business objectives, everyone is empowered to contribute to achieving that goal, and everyone shares in the success!
Storytelling is intrinsic to every culture. From creation myths to legends and folk tales, it’s at the core of what makes us human and how we relate to others and our world. According to the Evolution of Storytelling and Fairy Tales by Princeton Press, as soon as humans developed the capacity for speech, “humans began telling tales” and “may have even used sign language before speech originated.” Moreover, from an evolutionary perspective, “Telling effective, relevant stories became a vital quality for anyone who wanted power to determine and influence social practices.”
Storytelling is also at the core of effective public relations, as we seek to influence reputations, perceptions and behaviors. To meaningfully relate to journalists and our target audiences, we need to tell compelling stories. We can’t simply announce news or offer a quote – what we share with target audiences needs to be in the context of a larger story to help us connect with others and show why our clients’ news matters. Though plots may differ, effective stories tend to have the following narrative components, in varying order.
Exposition – Often the opening of a plot, exposition introduces the characters and the environment they inhabit. It’s the opening shot of a movie, where we see the Shire and Bilbo Baggins celebrating his “eleventy-first” (111th) birthday. Rather than explaining this information, effective writers bring the context of the story to life. They use a character’s actions to illuminate his/her traits and offer colorful descriptions to help the reader picture the environment, from its physical appearance to its social order. When we reach out to media, for example, we provide exposition when we share background information on our clients that demonstrates thought leadership in their respective categories. We also highlight the landscapes in which our clients operate to set up the conflicts of their stories.
Conflict – All gripping stories have conflict. The conflict drives the story and usually provides motivation for the protagonist to achieve his/her goal. The scale of a conflict can vary widely, from personal quests to societal-level issues of oppression. In public relations, we identify a compelling conflict and position our clients as the protagonist who’s actively working to resolve the problem. Conveying the conflict and positioning our client as the protagonist happens over a period of time, in what writers call rising action, as we conduct strategic media outreach and build up to the climax of the story.
Characters – Joseph Campbell, who studied and wrote about myths extensively, argued that we are each the hero of our own story. According to Campbell, “A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.” Compelling stories have a heroic figure who’s working to solve a conflict for the betterment of others. To tell stories people want to hear, we need to consider in what ways our clients are the heroes of their own stories – what problem are they solving, and why does it matter? Furthermore, who’s the villain in the story? The villain could be a literal person, but more likely the villain is metaphorical in nature – resistance to change, antiquated products, a crowded marketplace, or misunderstanding of the client’s product or service.
Climax – Imagine an action movie, in which a protagonist finally meets the villain to deliver one final, crushing blow. The knight slays the dragon, the big battle reaches its pinnacle, the guy finally proposes to the girl. This is the climax, and the story wouldn’t be nearly as satisfying without it. It’s the turning point in the story, when our hero finally confronts the conflict head-on and we approach resolution. In public relations, the climax of the story could be when our client achieves a certain momentum metric, beats a competitor on earnings, or achieves a successful exit. The key? The story builds up to this moment, making it all the more exciting once we reach it.
Denouement/Resolution – Denouement is derived from the French word “denoue,” which means to untie. Once the climax is over, we’ve reached the wrap-up portion of the story, where we “untie” a complex plot and the action comes to an end. In The Great Gatsby, for example, the denouement occurs when the protagonist Nick returns to Minnesota to seek refuge from the people he thinks are morally reckless and unfaithful. While the denouement serves an obvious function – to end a story – it also reinforces the themes of the story and allows it to resonate with the audience. In public relations, it’s crucial to consider what theme we want our audiences to walk away understanding after an important announcement.
Though it’s easy to get laser focused on a particular announcement or contributed article, effective public relations pros see the forest through the trees. What’s the broader story we’re trying to tell? And how can we use narrative elements to effectively tell that story? As U.C.L.A. professor Robert McKee said, “Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.”