Take Good Notes

In terms of sussing out the competition, this is one area in which you need ideas on how to learn from what’s been done before. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel here; you only need to get good PR for your product. How did those successes you’ve noted unveil themselves, and what did they say and do to get their public to notice? Was a failure the result of using an approach that was too elitist? Did the company pay no mind to its competitor’s message, or did it just forget to take the public’s temperature and understand what it really wanted to hear? The case studies that follow elaborate on some PR successes and failures based on news hooks that work and those that miss their mark.

Sussing Out the Competition

In late 2001, a weakening economy and a nationwide terrorist scare that was felt across America kept the skies quiet and travel-free. The fleets of the mightiest airlines embarked with their cabins only one-third full. In many cases, the lack of passengers kept them from even making it to the tarmac. Employees at American, Delta, and British Airways were given their walking papers by the thousands, and even some of the most stable international carriers, such as Swiss Air, just closed up shop without warning.

Amidst all of this airline industry chaos, there was JetBlue, the U.S.-based, start-up airline company that found profitability in a period of total disaster. How was a newcomer able to flourish while other battle-tested carriers faltered? They took notes. The airline industry was so set in its ways that it was unwilling to make changes, fearing risk and reduced profits. JetBlue was one of the few carriers—Southwest, Delta Express, and Sun Jet were some of the others—to suss out the situation. JetBlue observed how the competition behaved in the pinch and learned what to do differently and so much better.

The world was watching what the transport behemoths would do, but in fact, they did very little. Passengers wouldn’t board a plane for fear of hijackers, and those who did demanded a few security measures, such as impenetrable pilot cockpits and a flight crew trained in self-defense. As Katie Couric and every other morning, noon, and evening anchor talked about bulletproof security cabin doors, airliners bucked the suggestion, claiming the extra weight would require more fuel (read: more money), and all of this would shave away at the profitability of putting one of their big birds on the runway.

During the debate, JetBlue was calmly rolling its brand-new planes into hangars, preparing them for the company’s big story. JetBlue executives ushered columnists and camera crews onto one of their airbuses to demonstrate the first bulletproof and impenetrable cabin door, guaranteeing the captain and crew stay at the helm while in flight, no matter what. JetBlue said that it planned to absorb the cost of extra fuel itself, without raising the price of admission for its happy passengers. It claimed that this was the least it could do to ensure safety and a feeling that real security alterations were already happening.

What impressions did the media take away from that press conference? Added security with no muss, no fuss. By watching their strangely slow competitors, JetBlue learned exactly what not to do, and although it might have cost the company a few extra gallons per flight, its planes continue to leave the runways with cabins full of passengers a little more at ease and ready to fly.

New Tricks for Old Dogs

Watching the competition doesn’t mean only finding out what others have done wrong. In fact, the best ideas are usually advancements of what others have already accomplished. Just as Alexander Graham Bell found fame with an invention that perhaps wasn’t entirely his (Antonio Meucci’s clan is still waiting for patent infringement checks on his invention), you, too, can achieve success by learning what those before you have done well. Consider the following.

If you don’t live near a good pizzeria, you probably put up with pizza from a chain pizzeria, or worse, from a frosty box in the grocery store freezer section. However unpleasant a meal it might be, there’s big, big money in those freezers and a lot of business at stake. PR gimmickry in the food industry goes a long way, and no one wants, or can afford, to be the outfit pushing the ho-hum meal when their competitor three inches away is offering something new. But pizza’s pretty standard, right? Not necessarily.

In pursuit of that “thing” that drives buzz and gets soccer moms buying their pies for a hungry team, DiGiorno’s PR and marketing guys put their heads together and figured out what would turn their tired pizza into something new and fun—rising dough, bringing it one step closer to the real thing. Now DiGiorno’s had something to talk about, something that was different than what you would expect from a regular pizza. Its “chefs” hit the morning TV talk show circuit, pushing the puffy pizza for parties, dinner, and late-night snacks. Journalists across the country were given wind of the new idea and a whiff of the new and improved pies. It only took a simple difference, but it was enough to take an ordinary, everyday product and turn it into something new for the media.

What You See Is What You Get Out of It

This phrase explains basic PR: What the public sees is what it gets out of the message. For instance, there are currently hundreds of financial institutions gunning for your checking account. Some of them are after the multimillionaires, some target new families, and others, like Citigroup and E*TRADE, prefer the emerging rich. Both of these companies are in a PR war to attract the same group of customers, those with $100,000 or more to invest and the desire to actively manage their financial accounts.

Citigroup finds itself forced to innovate in the battle with, of all things, relative upstart E*TRADE. Since its roots are in traditional banking—tellers, early hours, and advisers behind oak desks—Citigroup has needed to publicize its ability to operate twenty-four hours a day online, compete in the trading game, and give its customers the ability to manage their funds on the Web.

On the other hand, E*TRADE, the hotshot, home day-trading company, needed to acquire a bit of wing-tip culture once the economy slowed and any stock worth trading evaporated. To compete day in and day out, E*TRADE maintained its humorous, edgy appeal through advertising. However, it also used the media to hype its other worthwhile products, such as brand-new, physical financial centers throughout the country and sensible mortgage offerings.

E*TRADE and Citigroup continually monitor what each other is doing, to determine which messages are out there in the media and to figure out what they can tell customers to make them devoted clients. In the end, it’s up to the consumer to decide what’s best, but it’s up to the PR professionals to be aggressive in noting what the real differences are.on the web, at www. popular-science.net/ history/meucci_bell.html, this inventor is “Antonio Meucci”

PR gimmickry in the food industry goes a long way and no one can wants, or can afford, to be the outfit pushing the ho-hum meal when their competitor three inches away is offering something new. But pizza’s pretty standard, right? Not necessarily.

In pursuit of that “thing” that drives buzz and gets soccer moms buying their pies for a hungry team, DiGiorno’s PR and marketing guys put their heads together and figured out what would turn their tired pizza into something new and fun—rising dough, bringing it one step closer to the real thing. Now DiGiorno’s had something to talk about, something that was different than what you would expect from a regular pizza. Its “chefs” hit the morning TV talk show circuit, pushing the puffy pizza for parties, dinner, and late night snacks. Journalists across the country were given wind of the new idea and a whiff of the new and improved pies. It only took a simple difference, but it was enough to take an ordinary, everyday product and turn it into something new for the media.

Au: to make this pizza success story work you need to flesh out more about the PR aspects (i.e., paragraph 3 of the section). Please add several sentences of specifics on the PR news hook “tricks” that were employed. Otherwise we need to kill this section as insufficiently germane to the topic of this chapter.

What They Aren’t Doing

While you’re taking notes, don’t just look at what your competition is doing. Take note of what they aren’t doing, too. GQ, Details, Esquire, and Gear were going after (and continue to target) the same Kia-driving, young, male demographic. But features on $1,500 suits, ski trips to Aspen, and 500-horsepower boy toys weren’t clicking with the fresh-out-of-the-frat-house set. Instead, all of these publications appealed to the forty-something group, but not just any forty-somethings: the type who have cufflinks and know all the techniques for slowing down the progression of time on their faces.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Felix Dennis, the British uber-publisher, watched these American magazines battle for the wrong demographic and planned his attack on the group of sophisticates the others were missing. Dennis knew how to win them over. He needed to give the media what would make the magazine front-page material with this crowd, the thing that no other men’s mag was dishing out: breasts. Product-wise, Dennis’s Maxim magazine, bursting with scantily clad women, was passed off as under-achieving porn by the publishing industry, but in two short years he had the last laugh. The cover of Maxim wound up gracing the pages of dozens of other magazines that reported the exploits of his sexy periodical. Soon the buzz on E! and in the papers was that for young, red-blooded men, Maxim was the magazine to buy.

The media lauded Maxim for its cutting content, tongue-in-cheek humor, sex goddesses, and massive circulation. Like David Letterman in Leno’s shadow, Details and GQ have yet to recover from the introduction of Maxim and most likely will not for a long time to come.