Chapter 3: Power Tools for Building Buzz

Overview

Tactics are the actions and activities that help you attain the goals of your strategy, the “how to” section of any media plan. Characterize it any way you like—nuts and bolts, nitty-gritty, meat and potatoes—it’s the foundation you need to build up buzz. Although tactics take many forms, from straightforward to straight out of the asylum, they all have one thing in common: creativity. Whatever your battle strategy, go to it blazing with flair and innovation, and deploy your plan with a sense of confidence and importance.

For every situation, you can make use of any number of tactics to brilliantly publicize (or downplay) an event. And don’t fall into the one-size-fits-all trap: If you’re trying to reach multiple audiences, organize a separate set of tactics for each one. Here’s a broad array of essential tools and approaches you need to consider to start raising some buzz for yourself.

Analyst Meetings

For companies that are public or aspiring to go public, analyst meetings are those in which executive members of the company discuss their strategy, finances, and investments with research analysts well-versed in that company’s industry or sector. From the PR perspective, a well-conducted meeting will produce three outcomes:

• An analyst who is often contacted by the media will be able to discuss your business knowledgeably and thus generate press for you.

• Equally important, he or she will become a credible third-party endorsement.

• Plus, analysts can make constructive suggestions on the business model you present and put you in touch with potential business partners.

It’s a good idea to have a PowerPoint-type presentation available for the analysts. This is a take-home document, so distribute it toward the end of the meeting to ensure that the analysts are paying attention to your oral presentation and not reading ahead of or behind you. Make sure it’s neat, clear, and well organized, and in general presents a professional image of your company.

The documents, as well as the presenters meeting with the analysts, should be prepared to withstand severe scrutiny. Needless to say, the content of your slides is more important than the graphic artistry. Review the slides over and over, making sure that the story they tell is clear and compelling. Remember, industry analysts aren’t telling investors what to buy and what to sell, as much as they’re reporting on your company’s state of the union, including, where relevant, any advancement of technology. Proprietary information should be referenced as appropriate. Analysts will respect secrets, and if your scheme depends on that special technology or algorithm the company has created, let them in on it to the extent possible. Once your materials are ready, get yourself in presentation shape, too. Practice your own presentation and pay attention to the overall order and flow of the presentations of others. Determine who says what, and go through a rehearsal or two together. You might consider inviting someone who knows a thing or two about your industry to sit in on a dry run of the presentation and poke holes in it before an analyst does. Most important, know your company’s weaknesses; explain how the company is prepared to address them, going forward. Analysts want to know that you’ve considered the worst and have a game plan in place.

Choose the analyst firms you meet with carefully. You should be meeting with the experts in your field. After meeting with the analysts, keep them up-to-date with the company’s ongoing activities. If they know what’s happening with your company, they will be more likely to speak to the press about you. Send press releases on subjects such as updates on technology, a quarterly summary of new clients signed or distribution outlets opened, and so on. Don’t clutter an analyst’s inbox with an update of every little detail, just major milestones. Contrary to popular wisdom, too much is, in fact, too much.

If you feel an analyst is impressed with your presentation, give that individual’s contact information to journalists, at selected times and with the analyst’s permission, of course. As with sending updates, this, too, should be done sparingly and with kid gloves. But if you do have an opportunity to speak with a major press outlet like the Associated Press or Time, an analyst can offer some weighty, third-party validation to your claims.

Beta or Product Testing

Beta testing is a stage in the corporate development of a product. Before releasing a product to the public, the company gives it to selected consumers and/or journalists for testing and a sneak peak. This is a tactic that works especially well for hardware manufacturers, and it can have useful media results. By allowing journalists to participate, you create the potential for some excellent press coverage. Assuming your product stands up to the testing, the journalist should submit a glowing product review.

Of course, this means being fairly certain that you’ve worked most of the bugs out of the product. It should be far along in its development stage, and in both form and function it should be as close as possible to the final version.

To arouse interest in your beta test, send a personalized letter to all of the appropriate reporters who review products for your industry, inviting them to try the product before the public is able to purchase or use it. Include a high-resolution photo with the product. That way, if the reporter decides to review your product, she’ll already have a good photo of it. Once again, you’ve just made her life easier.

Inviting journalists into a beta test is most useful when you’re trying to get coverage in stories they’re already working on. If the Los Angeles Times technology writer is working on a story about wireless phone technology and you are beta-testing your new WAP (wireless application protocol) phone, then let her participate in the beta test. Just make sure she understands that the last few bugs still need to be worked out.

Before engaging journalists in a beta test, double-check that the product or service will be available to consumers by the agreed-upon date. If reporters include a product mention in a story, they want to make sure the availability information is accurate. It’s best to keep launch dates flexible, but it’s better to say something will be available in early spring, as compared to April 10.

Projected days and times are tough to hold to, and you don’t want to look as if you’ve missed your own launch date. Once you’ve pinpointed a more accurate date (within two weeks or so of the actual launch), contact all the journalists to whom you’ve spoken in the past and alert them to the big day.

Finally, send a final version of the product or service to everyone who participated in the beta test. This often leads to a follow-up story. Or, if the journalist has been sitting on the story, he may decide it’s time for your product to see ink.

B-Roll

A B-roll is flattering video footage that a company produces to complement a news release. Broadcast news services often use the provided B-roll for background in their story and then lay the audio of their broadcast over the video. You can also use a B-roll for live broadcasts. When producing a B-roll, have copies made in different formats. Most news stations still rely on beta tapes, which have become the standard in the industry, but others are moving toward digital equipment, and DVD footage is favored.

A well-produced B-roll will show the product or service being used in its intended setting. For example, a company that produces wireless headsets for cell phones would produce a B-roll showing mobile users en masse, uncomfortably holding phones to their ear (or smashing their cars), quickly followed by a group of people using the wireless headset, looking relaxed and happy as they stroll or drive along.

Typically, a B-roll is silent video, and most of the time, news stations won’t use a reel with text and promotional babble on it. Keep it clean and make sure that the visual illustrates your message through action.

Send interested broadcast news producers a copy of the footage in advance so they can spend the time needed to work it into the piece they are editing without having the pressure of the clock. Again, make a quick call to check which format their studio requires.

Don’t try to borrow your brother’s video camera and do this yourself. A B-roll producer is easy to find and can be located in the yellow pages under camera operators. You can distinguish the pros from the amateurs by asking what type of equipment they use to shoot. VHS is a no-no, whereas three-bit digital is a plus, because it can be converted to almost anything.

Also, quiz them on their creative approach to the piece. If they’re leaving all the ideas up to you and not providing any professional insight of their own, you should shop elsewhere. B-roll production can be costly, but shouldn’t total more than $8,000 or $9,000 from concept to duplication of the final product.

Crisis Management

Your preparation for the unexpected is otherwise known as Plan B. It’s every company’s worst public relations nightmare—the accidental distribution of contaminated food, a delivery truck crash, sinking a Greenpeace boat—you name it. The goal is to be nimble and proactive and to get your positive message out there quickly.

Contrary to what you might think, someone other than the CEO or designated spokesperson can address negative situations. An apology, explanation, or what appears like defensive maneuvering from the CEO will deteriorate the branding among investors and other audiences. It’s best to use a less-senior executive, such as a vice president, to deliver the message. In a crisis, it isn’t so much who says it, but what’s said. It’s a time of quotes and sound bites, and the media will listen to any senior executive, as long as she’s willing to answer tough questions.

When the story first makes the news, never hide from the situation, but try not to take the blame, either. It is usually safe to say, “We are looking into the situation,” or “We are on the alert and will keep you informed as we learn more.”

Also, keep things positive and never alienate potential partners or customers. In the case of upended Fords and flimsy Firestone tires, both companies publicly pointed the finger at each other, resulting in a public tit-for-tat that didn’t alleviate the fears of any consumers. Name calling will only come back to haunt you in the end. It’s best to say that you are investigating the problem; stake out the moral high ground by playing the role of the great avenger, the one who will bring order to things. Statements such as, “It is our goal to provide the best products and services to our consumers, and we work with them and related consumer groups daily on these two fronts to make sure we do so” and “We are working hand in hand with (the police, someone’s family, etc.) to correct the situation in these three ways” are action-oriented and positive, while still acknowledging the gravity of the situation.

Since you can never predict the timing of a crisis, it’s important to have messages on hand at all times that can quickly be relayed to the media, if necessary. Try to consider the worst-case scenario. This might be a fatal accident caused by an intoxicated driver of your company behind the wheel if you own a trucking company, or children being injured in your (as it turns out) not-so-safe safety seat. Write the problems down, as well as all of the possible questions such an event would generate, and put these into a file. Of course, if the hypothetical seems more real than hypothetical, you need to fix it, but that’s beyond the scope of this book.

From there, think long and hard about the right answers to the tough questions. You need answers that will paint you as action oriented and positive and that best minimize the negative impact on your business.

Embargo

Many journalists like to have information before other media outlets do for any number of reasons: Some break only exclusive stories, others have long lead times, and so on. An embargo is the act of giving the necessary information to a journalist beforehand, with the understanding that he will not release the information before an agreed-upon date.

Embargos are most useful when you want information to hit the news with strategic timing, while dealing with multiple lead times and news media. In order for an interested journalist at a weekly magazine to compete with an online news outlet, he needs the information early, as it can take up to three weeks to make it to the news racks.

The news you are announcing must be ready and fit for the presses before you offer the embargo. Anything can happen, both internally and externally, but if the information becomes invalid or changes, that journalist will not be happy. The trick is to enter into an embargo only with news that you consider certain. If you’re launching a new product in a month, make sure it’s finished, debugged, and ready to sell. Offer the embargo to the right journalist and then take your contraption, put it in the vault, and speak nothing of it until your agreed-upon date. Until that time, mum’s the word. In a world where everyone has a website and news travels fast, any sort of leak will get back to that reporter, and you’ll have an angry person with the means to influence others on your hands.

Use embargoes wisely. Offering an embargo to a journalist will demonstrate that you are an experienced PR pro and will place you in the good graces of that publication. Offering embargoes and following through with them is the fastest way to build solid working relations with journalists. On the flip side, giving an embargo and then taking it away midstream is the fastest way to get blackballed by a publication.

Events

There are various creative activities to further build buzz. Events take many forms, ranging from launch parties and panel discussions to webcasts or even competitions.

Compare the event’s cost to the potential buzz you can generate. That’s not always as simple as it seems. For example, elaborate launch parties often result in only a small amount of off-message press, while an inexpensive activity or stunt can generate a huge response and illustrate exactly what a company is all about. The best events are visual, creative, and unique, and they offer a new approach to a familiar situation. An example of a potentially inexpensive and effective event would be to gather the nation’s fastest typists in a major city, such as Los Angeles, and then let them compete against a voice-recognition product. Then you can publicize the fact that your technology takes the title.

Another criterion to keep in mind for events is location, location, location. Everyone wants to go places that either are trendy or on their list of places to visit. For the launch of the first online city guide in 1995, we chose the top of the World Trade Center towers, Windows on the World, because (we now look back wistfully) that was a short time after it had been reopened. We knew that the restaurant wanted a party there, and reporters were anxious to see the new post-1993 top of the towers.

But even if you don’t have anything that exciting in your town as the venue for your event, it’s your job to create atmosphere. Do you have a famous or unusual museum with a garden? A historical center? Perhaps a well-known poet from the 1800s lived in a certain rooming house in your town, and it’s now accessible as a cultural party domain. Or you could cheat and just go to the pub where the poet did his drinking!

Launch parties can really be a drag for you and the attendees. If you don’t make it exciting and fun, no one will come. And don’t forget you have to make good on whatever you promise. For example, a local New York magic show that specializes in mentalism (otherwise known as reading minds) wanted to expand its audience. Around that time, a celebrity magician with a budget had publicized his claim that anyone who could deduce his secret (or even stump him) would win $10,000 and the magician’s Jaguar. So the little magic show devised its own contest, live and free to the press, naturally. The point of the contest was to tell everyone that if they could figure out how any of the show’s feats were done, they’d win a token and a bagel! This being downtown New York, everyone in the media laughed. Not everyone came, but plenty of journalists covered this anti-big-hype idea. Suddenly, the event became secondary to the joke, but it still garnered its fair share of press coverage.

Even with small events like this one, costs can pile up fast. Get a strong handle on all of the potential expenses before you go ahead. Our advice about parties will upset party planners. Unless you can get some sort of major sponsor (local restaurants or alcohol manufacturers usually will do it if you can promise press and due credit), a party should be simple and effective. If you’re trying to get people to network, for example, you still need to provide food and hors d’oeuvres for your cocktail party, but you can focus your energies on finding fresh ways for people to connect, rather than on conspicuous consumption.

That said, don’t neglect the logistical aspects. Invite the media with plenty of advance notice. Keep in mind that the average positive response is about 5 percent, so if you want forty people to come to your event, send out 800 invitations. A week after you’ve sent out the invitations, follow up with reminder calls and collect RSVPs. One more “we know you’re coming” reminder is very important. Do it even if you think this is over the top, because people do forget.

Finally, choose the day and time wisely. Events can be a success on Tuesday and a failure on Friday. Many weekly journalists and columnists have a Wednesday deadline, making their days unavailable but their evenings free. Evening events are typically better attended earlier in the week, as social calendars tend to conflict on Thursdays and Fridays. Mondays are horrible for getting TV coverage in major cities. News teams just cannot get a crew to commit to an event over a weekend, and on Monday, everyone starts planning their week. If you want TV coverage, avoid it.

If possible, check to see if any other newsworthy events are occurring at the same time as yours. If they are, change the date if you can. Picking a slow media day increases your chances of media turnout. Yes, you read that right: You want a slow news day. If other exciting (or even not so exciting) things are happening, you’ll get excuses from everyone, especially anyone who counts.

Exclusive

A tactic similar to an embargo (discussed previously), an exclusive is an agreement that you make to allow a certain journalist to run your story first. Just as you’re competing with other companies in your industry and other PR pros to get ink in the Wall Street Journal, journalists compete to break a story first. Many publications, such as News.com or the San Jose Mercury News, for example, opt not to run the story at all if they aren’t breaking it first.

But giving an exclusive is tricky. First, you have to pin down the target audience and the news hook for the story. If you’re making a corporate announcement designed to strengthen your company’s position in the Web industry, then break it in the San Jose Mercury News. This is indeed where your peers will read it and weep. If you’re introducing the greatest new gadget to help golfers find their balls in the rough, then place it in Golf Weekly, or even Forbes ASAP, the Forbes supplement that executives read and relish.

Do not offer an exclusive to a long-lead magazine, because it might take six weeks to run, and by then your news will be old. Also, it may not be the best place for a story you think is big. Always check with the editor first to determine the approximate lead time for both feature articles and regular departments and columns.

What’s the difference between exclusives and embargos? An embargo is really a type of exclusive, one that must be held for certain internal reasons, such as investor or SEC requirements, or a pending deal that requires an embargo on the news. As with an embargo, tread carefully with an exclusive, and be as certain as you can that your news will unfold as you planned.

If you do decide to give a journalist an exclusive, spread the wealth and consider noncompeting outlets. That means positioning your news for several different audiences, so you can grant an exclusive to each publication without stepping on any toes. For example, it is definitely acceptable to give USA Today the exclusive that golfers can find your new golf ball in the rough, thanks to a satellite chip in its center, and how the company plans to profit from its magic ball. At the same time, you could grant a mag like eWeek a simultaneous interview that focuses on how the technical wizardry works.

You don’t need to tell either magazine the content of the other’s exclusive (in fact, you shouldn’t). However, it’s important to let both journalists know that you’re giving a related story to a noncompetitive outlet—in this case, that you’re talking with both a daily and a technology-driven magazine. Chances are they won’t care about each other.

The exclusive should work in your favor and be worth the trade-off (the inability to pitch the story to other competing publications). Sometimes publicists have turned down good print opportunities to secure an “exclusive” story with a particular publication only to find out that the article runs as a three-line mention. Before offering a journalist an exclusive on a story, find out the subject and angle of the story and how much coverage you can reasonably expect.

Once your exclusive has seen the light of day, keep the momentum going. Use your time wisely; don’t wait too long after the exclusive has run to start pitching other media. You don’t want to make everyone else feel as if they’re two steps lower on the media food chain. In many cases, press coverage is its own validation. A reporter from a major weekly seeing the story in a minor weekly now understands it from his brethren’s point of view. Likewise, seeing the story in a major weekly makes trade reporters sit up and really take notice.

In-Person Interview

Interviews are always best conducted in person. Speaking to reporters over the phone and online does not make for great connections; you form relationships only once you’ve met someone. That’s why having a brief meeting over coffee or a stand-up discussion is so much more engaging than just one more phone call in the litany of dozens in a journalist’s day-to-day grind. It’s a simple truth, but it is a truth. Here are some basic tips to make your interview successful (advanced users, please read Chapter 6 for more detailed instructions).

• Before you go to the interview—in fact, before you even agree to it—you should fully understand the journalist’s angle for the article. Conversely, the journalist should understand exactly what your company does. Any confusion or misunderstandings on either side will lead to an awkward interview and a potentially unflattering story.

• Go to the interview thoroughly prepped. Prepare a list of speaking points and answers to potential questions. You might even want to read some past articles the journalist has written, so you can get a feel for the reporter’s style beforehand.

• Bring any relevant supporting material with you to the interview. This includes your most recent press release, a fact sheet, headshots, a press kit, and perhaps even a laptop. You should give the journalist a sheet with all your contact information—your phone, beeper, and cell phone numbers, and your e-mail address. Your contact sheet should also display your name, exactly as you’d like to see it in print, as well as your title and your company’s proper name.

• If the interview revolves around your product, bring a live demo with you, if possible. Stay away from canned demos if you have a live Internet product or software or hardware, because they’re exactly that—canned and unimpressive. Finally, the day before the meeting, send a message to the journalist to remind him of the meeting and to double-check that it’s on his schedule.

Leak

Information can be given to the media in an anonymous fashion. It’s a sneaky but often-used tactic that lets companies expose weaknesses in the competition by starting a strategic, and often unconfirmed, rumor best not associated with the source.

Rosie O’Donnell once recounted on the Today show how word of her lover’s pregnancy was leaked to the media. She walked out of the doctor’s office, delirious with joy. An older woman asked if everything was okay. Rosie replied, “I’m so happy—we’re pregnant.” That woman happened to be the mother of a national magazine editor. Well, that’s a leak.

Only leak information that you really want to put out there. Releasing protected information can land you in trouble, so make sure the journalist with whom you are speaking is prepared to conceal your identity. In a normal run-in with the media, you never say anything off the record. Here, however, you are giving them usable information but concealing the source. If they want it badly enough, they’ll follow the rules. But you need to follow them, too. The journalist has decided to trust you and your leak, so make sure the information you are releasing is factual, newsworthy, and not based on speculation.

By the same token, carefully choose the outlet to which you leak information. You should choose a daily or weekly publication for the freshest and most timely press coverage. If the news has a closely held expiration date, stay away from the trades—they usually can’t run something quickly. Also, if it’s a trade story, chances are their writers will steer clear from slamming anyone who might be a potential or current advertiser.

Don’t think that hot news is leakable if it’s unethical or illegal to divulge it or if there’s any way in which it can hurt you or your company’s reputations. You might have a fantastic deal pending, one that you’re contractually bound to shut up about until it’s signed. Even if you are not officially attached to the news, the other company’s lawyers will phone you. If a leak is traced back to you, you’re screwed. Before you muster up the courage and phone number of the go-to journalist for the pitch, consider those involved. Are they lawyer-happy, or do they just need a good push? Think long and hard about that one before you proceed.

Despite the obvious dangers, leaks can help you get people off the fence, so to speak. For example, a large Internet company was holding for ransom an online product that really belonged to another, smaller Internet company. It refused to sign a deal that had ostensibly been agreed upon. A strategically placed leak informed the press that the large company was stalling. The next day, the deal was signed, sealed, and delivered.

Media Tour

A media tour involves taking your product, company, or idea on the road to present it to the media in regions that are strategically important for your business. These tours are often done for new product launches, or to announce milestones that a company has reached, such as its first million dollars in sales, ten years in business, and so on.

A media tour works well for companies or services that are region-specific. Local media are always more interested in stories that relate to their readers geographically, so if you have a story about a service that is available to them exclusively, or a company creating new jobs in their region, you stand a better chance of making it onto their pages.

Since you don’t have unlimited time and resources, be selective about the type of coverage you want and choose the region accordingly. For example, most of the Internet trade press is based in the San Francisco region, much of the business press is centered in New York, and a majority of the telecom technology press is located in Boston.

What if you don’t know which region is best? If it’s your business, chances are you read the general trade magazines! Check the magazines themselves or their websites for addresses. If you’re not even sure of that, go to your local Barnes & Noble or a decent newsstand and buy all the magazines related to your industry. Print magazines help twofold: You can check out the who, where, and what of the magazines, and you’ll also get a feel for the writing and the type of articles they’re looking for.

RLM took on pharmaceutical companies (and the trade news that covers them) in 2001, then a relatively new industry for us. The first thing we did was go to our favorite search engine, WiseNut, and search for any ocular (eye medicine) publications. We found three of the four worth going to. Plus, we called doctors ourselves and asked them what publications came to their house. It helped us get a basic handle on the industry.

Once you’ve narrowed down your target publications, start planning your media tour, albeit no more than a month in advance, because you won’t have firm agreements for meetings until the day before. Buy the tickets and go. It’s not necessary to have a general press conference of any sort. The idea is to be more fluid about what you will be doing in each city. But with that in mind, always let reporters know that you are only in town that day.

After you book the media tour and your individual meetings with reporters, you or your communications person must send all the necessary information well before the meeting. This should include a press kit, the most recent press release, the URL to your website (you do have a website, right?), and short biographies of people they’ll be meeting. A fact sheet with all the important figures is helpful, too—revenue, number of employees, date company started, and so on.

Who should go? Only those people who are needed to say something—never more than two. You don’t need more than one PR person in the room during a press meeting. But it is useful to have one, to ensure that people know why they’re there and the focus of the meeting, and to keep everyone on track, rather than jabbering on about the weather.

The spokesperson’s role is to drive home a particular message about your company while answering questions. But bear in mind that the only items that make it into print are conversations that are mutually beneficial. In other words, remember that the journalist is looking for a viable story for the audience. Therefore, if you talk only about your message and don’t address the journalist’s informational needs, your vapor and puffery will never see the light of day in print, no matter how many smiles that reporter offers you.

In general, interesting activities always draw media attention, and this holds true for a media tour, too. Prepare an interesting hook or stunt that’s relevant to each city you are visiting. The importance of linking the product to the region cannot be stressed enough. For example, in many cities the Sci-Fi channel was able to scare the wits out of people, in a comical way, as it branched out to new markets in the mid-1990s. In our stomping ground, New York, Sci-Fi’s gimmick was simple and notorious: It produced printed graphics of alligators on the street arising from under sewer caps. Since this is an “urban legend” in the streets of Manhattan, the gators hit home and really intrigued people enough to make them start watching the upstart channel.

As everyone knows, the Internet bubble went “pop” in 2000. In keeping with the new, more sober times, E*TRADE, which had amassed thousands of users and massive name recognition on the Web, needed to change its image from online stock-swapping facilitator to all-encompassing financial services firm. To do that, it decided to go ape with a media tour.

A year later, E*TRADE was advertising in the Super Bowl with an infamous chimp for the third straight year. Not only was the ad meant to be a star of the game, as it had been in years past, but it was also going to introduce the world to E*TRADE’s new image and brand expansion. The E*TRADE chimp was used as a device to build hype and anticipation for the upcoming Super Bowl ads. The chimp was chaperoned on a “photo celebration tour” of New York, where he was photographed at several New York City landmarks. The photos were then sent to the media to create pre-Super Bowl buzz and to tease reporters with the news that E*TRADE would be making a big announcement on the day of the Super Bowl.

Press Conference

A press conference is a staged forum in which journalists are invited to hear and witness a news announcement being made firsthand. A press conference is also the perfect mechanism to announce something important to a number of journalists, both print and broadcast, simultaneously.

Press conferences are tricky. You are asking someone who doesn’t even leave his desk for a bagel to schlep somewhere that may be hard to find and to listen to you for two hours when he could be sitting across from you at his comfy conference table.

But don’t despair. With a good hook, a conference can generate tremendous buzz. You need to do something truly original and different to entice journalists away from their busy work schedules to hear what you have to say. One surefire hook is a celebrity. Journalists will always come to see a known personality and take a photo with them—a living, breathing visual.

If you can’t find a celebrity, do the next best thing: Devise a powerful way to deliver your message, preferably visually. Consider the following case study. In 2000, StarBand Communications, a high-speed, satellite Internet service, had been operating in “stealth” mode for more than a year, in order to develop its satellite technology behind closed doors. At that time, cable modems and DSL (digital subscriber line) owned the consumer market for quick connections amongst consumers in general and, more specifically, bandwidth “fiends.”

According to the media, these two technologies were the answers to a surfer’s prayers. Unfortunately, more than 50 million households lie outside a wire’s reach, however. The idea behind the press conference, therefore, was to make an immediate media splash for StarBand by letting journalists (and, by extension, readers/consumers) know how limited the competing modes of DSL and cable access truly are.

To attract the consumer Internet market before the cable and DSL coverage had a chance to spread, StarBand’s launch had to be big—and it was. A large press briefing was organized in Washington, D.C., StarBand’s headquarters, where StarBand not only lifted the curtain on its satellite system but also showed the media just how incomplete broadband penetration had been to date. An oversized digital display shattered the high-speed myth by presenting a map of the United States, clearly identifying how limited broadband’s reach actually is. Most of the United States was dark, until the satellite image lit up the rest of the country, bringing StarBand coast-to-coast and everywhere in between.

Just in case the media were still a little skeptical, StarBand brought in Sally Tilousi, a representative of the Havasupai tribe living in the Grand Canyon, where radio doesn’t even reach. Ms. Tilousi explained how she uses StarBand technology to teach the tribe’s children in school—before, the closest Internet connections were eight hours away—and how the police station and village hall were using dishes to tap into outside resources as well. Within forty-eight hours, articles about the press conference began appearing in dozens of both technology and general- interest publications.

What are other ways to shine? Community connections are one way to assure that local (and often national) reporters will visit your conference. Donate your product to an appropriate and appreciative organization, for example. When Polaroid invented the first-ever desk printer to make instant, photo-quality prints in 1998, it donated all of the first models to the Boston police for quicker “perp” identification and publicized this generous donation with a press conference. Technology journalists might not have understood the value, but Boston’s local and city hall press got in the mood quickly; for them, this was something new and interesting.

Also think about bringing in information that reporters might learn from. For instance, a big draw at press events is showcasing well-known speakers in your industry—third-party validators. They will give a framework to the news that you’re bringing to the press and answer reporters’ questions. It’s an endorsement from someone who speaks your language—and the journalists’ language, too.

Be different in a different place. Unique locations are a media draw because they make for a much livelier background. For example, suppose the Transit Authority of the City of New York was announcing wired subways with high-speed Internet access. Why conduct the press conference in a faceless hotel conference facility when it could crank up the buzz by having it on one of the networked trains?

Now that you have some ideas about how to get the media flocking to your press conference, you need to get down to the nitty-gritty (sorry). The best way to book a press conference is to send out a media alert. This is something like a press release, but much shorter. It should say who, what, where, why, and when. It should also mention whether there will be a photo opportunity, and it should include your contact information, should anyone have questions. The media alert should be sent out to the media the day before the event and followed up by phone to encourage attendance.

Send your alert via e-mail, wire service, fax, and carrier pigeon. Each journalist has a preferred way of receiving news, so leave nothing to chance. When it comes to calling and following up, the more people you have working the phones, the better. A good PR person calls seventy people a day, if the list is relevant and the pitch second nature. If you are a one-man show, however, don’t sweat it. Get a good chair, grab a drink of water, and dial for dollars.

As a final tip here, remember that the way to the media’s heart is through its (collective) stomach. Order snacks, and let everyone know lunch will be served. It sounds simple, and it is! Simple human nature.

Press Kit

A press kit is a collection of materials that contain all the necessary background information on you and your company that journalists need to write a comprehensive article. Let’s run through the important elements.

• First we have the company backgrounder. This should give information about the services or products the company provides, why the products are important and noteworthy, and the markets in which the company competes.

• The fact sheet is next. This is a one-page sheet with bullet points that highlight the key facts about your company: the full address, whether it is public or private, when it was established, how many employees it has, how much money has been raised (or if it’s an older venture, any recent financial announcements or client deals), and a brief description of the service or product.

• The kit should also include brief biographies of the founders and/or executive management team. These descriptions allow journalists to better understand the executives’ professional background and the management strengths they bring to the company.

• Press releases are another important element. Use all the major press releases that you’ve distributed in the past few months, and perhaps one or two milestone releases in the past year. These inform reporters about milestones in the company’s history and help them develop a larger, more in-depth picture of the company.

• Articles are crucial to the press kit. Therefore, include a few news clips that explain different facets of the company. But don’t go overboard; limit the number of clips to four. Too many articles might work against you and discourage a journalist from writing. That is, a journalist who sees a stack of newspaper and magazine articles might conclude that you’ve had plenty of exposure already and that any article he wrote wouldn’t be newsy. That’s not the message you want to convey.

• Graphics or visuals help round out your story for reporters by giving them an understanding of the product’s form, as opposed to the function you’ve so gorgeously described. Always aim for high-resolution photos (digital is preferred) of your product, because reproducible quality increases the chances they’ll use it in an article.

Press kits should always be on hand and available to questioning reporters at any kind of an event, such as a press conference or media tour. But it’s also a good idea to periodically mail kits with a pitch letter to targeted journalists. Even if you’re not of immediate interest to them, they’ll often file interesting stories and save them for a rainy day (one with no news in it).

Press Release

A press release is the backbone of any corporate news announcement, the document that will either entice or turn away a reporter. It’s a standard written announcement distributed to the media that clearly announces information you wish to place in the news. The most successful releases are written very much like a story, and include the pitch, the necessary background information, and an interesting news hook.

It goes without saying (or perhaps it doesn’t) that the news you are announcing should actually be newsworthy. A vapor release—one with no news of substance—will garner only unfocused news coverage. That doesn’t help your cause at all. Plus, journalists will learn not to rely on you for “real” news.

The best way to translate your press release into a newspaper or magazine article is to target the journalists who will find the news most interesting and send the news release to them personally, with a pitch letter crafted to address their audiences’ informational needs, as well as the journalist’s particular news beat. And by the way, if you can avoid the press release, then just pitch it.

Surveys

Surveys can be a cheap and effective tool. Surveys of any kind are a great boon to magazines and newspapers, such as USA Today, that love to report on facts like “50 percent of us are eating more mayonnaise.” And surveys are easy to do … trust us.

A company we’ll call Fungible produced downloadable audio versions of books, magazines, theater, and so on onto portable machines that allowed you to listen at home or in cars. For them RLM devised a simple-to-enact survey that polled 1,000 users on their favorite celebrity voices to listen to. Talk about an angle: It’s all Hollywood, all the time. If you can’t locate a celebrity tack, go over to the dark side, Luke: a survey on the worst problems one faces, for instance, when dealing with a telephone service rep. You can devise brief, simple surveys yourself, but for more complicated endeavors, it’s probably worthwhile to use a market research professional, who will have expertise in survey methodology.

Trend Story

A trend story is a story pitch that encompasses more than just a particular announcement. It investigates recent developments in an entire market or industry. Trend stories are generally culture stories about what we commonly refer to as cultural phenomena. These are the type of stories that look at an emerging, newly social trend and wind up influencing those not yet in the know to follow suit. It’s the way movements in business, fashion, and art—you name it—start. If you are part of a trend story, the media—and thus consumers—perceive you to be at the top of your game. Once you begin appearing in culture stories frequently, the public starts remembering your name, and sales become a breeze. Trend stories make more detail-oriented journalists take note. They will latch onto you and answer your queries faster because suddenly you’re a “name.”

This may all seem time-consuming, but the truth is that a trend story is what the journalists in weekly or monthly business magazines want most. Their publications don’t move as quickly as the daily news, and information gets old quickly.

Coveted trend stories closely examine an aspect of “the story of the season.” Consider the following hypothetical example. Wireless has been a hot market, and a great trend story for a magazine like Fast Company would be how local content through wireless devices is changing the shopping habits of young consumers, or how Western companies are using Japan as a test market for future technologies.

Before pitching a trend story, arm yourself with ample statistics and information about all of the major players in your market or industry, not just your company. The more data you can provide, the more likely the story will run. Naturally, there’s nothing to stop a journalist from deciding that one of the other companies in the story is more interesting than yours, but that’s just a risk you have to accept.

Video News Releases and Satellite Media Tours

Video news releases and satellite media tours are related strategies that are used similarly. Video news releases are undoubtedly much cheaper than satellite media tours, but they are both good tactics to consider, depending on your needs. A VNR is a taped video announcement that is distributed to multiple broadcast outlets. Prominent public corporations or politicians use this technique when they need to address many people across multiple markets quickly and efficiently.

Companies that produce hip, trendy products also do “evergreen” stories in VNR format. These are stories that are not tied to a particular event or date. That way, a news or informational TV show can drop in part or all of the video release at their leisure, without the pressure to ensure that the information is timely.

A satellite media tour is the release of live-broadcast information via satellite to multiple broadcast outlets. A tour must be scheduled approximately one week in advance. Remember that broadcasters have a limited amount of time in each program, so they need at least this much lead time to fit in a satellite tour.

It costs a minimum of several thousand dollars to do a satellite tour, capping out at about $25,000. But note that as technology gets better, this price is likely to fall substantially. Cities in or near most major markets will have satellite media groups listed in the yellow pages that can arrange one seamlessly.

For a satellite media tour to be effective, you need a notable public or corporate figure, because otherwise producers will not devote a segment of their broadcast time to airing it. The CEO of your firm (or inventor of your product) might count if he’s compelling as a star in his own right, or if he’s already out there in the press.

Trying to get someone of note to star in your video release is probably not a good idea. If there isn’t a natural celebrity angle, forget it. For instance, in 2001, Kim Catrall (star of the mega TV show Sex and the City) did a satellite media tour to promote a new Cannon camera. She was so completely unnecessary to the news broadcasts that picked up the feed that the rest of the media lampooned the campaign. Cannon was laid out on the carpet for pursuing the media in this manner.

A satellite tour is best used to reach multiple markets at once. Most often, public companies use satellite tours to disseminate sensitive investor information quickly and in accordance with SEC regulations. The story you are promoting should be very newsworthy. Otherwise, few, if any, networks will pick up your feed.

A traditional press release should quickly follow the satellite broadcast to encourage the print media to carry the information as well. And in a new twist on sour grapes, send the same press release to those who didn’t see the satellite tour to show them what they missed.

Wire Services

Wire services are news distribution outlets, such as Business Wire, PR Newswire, and the AP Wire, for corporate information. Journalists in search of potential stories visit them often.

The best way to use a wire is not to depend on it. They are helpful if you are a major company releasing information or if you are announcing a never-before-seen technology, but as with any other type of information, you’ll find yourself lumped in with thousands of other announcements made every day.

That said, wire services are useful for establishing the history of a company. In other words, if you run a series of wire releases about your company, any reporter looking to find out more about you can turn a simple search into a chronological list of documented events and announcements.

To rise above the clutter, try attaching a photo to the release. Anything from a hardware device to a new-hire photo will help. We recommend Business Wire in most cases, because it carries the national business and Internet trade lists. E-mail your releases to newsroom@bizwire_.com and indicate whom you are targeting—general reporters, business writers, and so on.

Getting a Handle on All of It

OKay, at this point in considering our soup-to-nuts listing of tactical approaches, you’re exhausted, and you may not even know where to begin. We thought of that. To help you out, here’s a timeline of what a typical media plan might look like. This sample plan could have all sorts of permutations, of course, but it will give you a basic framework and an idea of the work flow.

Ninety Days to All-Out Buzz

This is a proposed ninety-day (one annual quarter) plan for a customer relationship management product that is just launching.

The whole process starts with a kickoff meeting, where all parties will sit down and delve into every aspect of the business, competitive landscape, and industry positioning. Following that discussion, outline your business objectives and discuss these in depth with your executive management team. Get the necessary buy-ins and sign-offs before you begin, because it’s important to give the overall strategy an opportunity to succeed, without being hamstrung by corporate politics.

The last process, tactical identification and development, incorporates most of the media strategies outlined below. Clearly, the dates and timing below are only suggestions.