Radio Days that Deserve Capital Letters
I read with interest the article in The Guardian this month about Radio days often being perceived as a waste of time and money amongst PR people.
I just wanted to throw in my two pennies worth.
I agree if you are just re-hashing a press release, based on what the client wants the listener to hear with no regard to the specific demographic or location that the radio station is serving, then yes it's probably a big waste of your clients budget and time.
If you are trying to offer PR for a company who have stores all over the UK and the biggest station that you are running on is BFBS serving the armed forces in various locations around the world, then this probably isn't going to work well for you.
The key to effective Radio PR is to target the stations with relevant content; you have to think about the audience. Radio is such a fragmented market place with very defined target audiences. We have to think about what the audiences want to hear not what we want them to hear. The copy we send out to the Radio stations can't just be a replica of the press release; it has to be re written and targeted for a Radio audience.
You can't expect to get on air across the BBC promoting a specific campaign or trying to receive endless brand mentions, that would be against everything the BBC stands for, and quite rightly so as a publicly funded corporation. If you can go to a station with content that's targeted to their audience and locality then there is every chance they will find a use for the story.
Also think about the guests that you hear on the radio stations that you are targeting, if you're running a story about how much TV the average family watches over Christmas, look for a third party spokesperson that relates to the content, someone who has a family would be a good place to start and also someone that relates to the Radio stations audience you are targeting.
A Radio station aren't going to accept a story where the copy is about a specific product where a survey carried out by that product revealed that the same product is key to everyday life… and the spokesperson well this just happens to be the Marketing Manager for the company that makes that product.
The article says that people who run Radio PR companies will no doubt disagree with the comments made, actually I agreed with most of the points the writer raised, having worked as a presenter for most of my working life, I know how annoying it is to be a presenter on a 15-24 Hit Music Station - Capital FM in London and being sent a story that is clearly aimed at the 40+ market.
In summary listen to the Radio stations that you want to be on, what are they talking about and what type of guests do they have on. This way you can be useful to Radio stations by going to them with ready made content that they can just insert into their running order.
Chris' blog was original posted on his own blog which you can read here....
PR Seminar: Dealing With the Press and Coping With Christmas
I’d like to extend a big thank you to everyone who took the time out of their busy morning to join us for our first ever northern 72Point seminar on Thursday.
It was nice to renew a few old acquaintances, catch up with our best clients from that part of the world, and also network with a whole host of people who we haven’t previously met.
The high-point for me was the bacon rolls, while the low-point was the moment I unwittingly ‘brought the house down’ during Sam’s talk in the form of causing the collapse of one of our banners.
I have obviously apologised to Sam!
I hope everyone who was there took something from it. We will find out soon I guess, once we receive your feedback via our online poll.
I did explain during my talk that I would happily pass on the hints and tips which I discussed at length, so here is a transcript of the interesting bits:
If you do have huge pressure to sell in stories in the run up to Christmas, call news desks early.
When I worked on desks we would start at 6.15am
But bear in mind conference is at 10.30am or 11am, and in an ideal world the news list will be complete by 10am or 10.15.
That means the busiest and most fraught time of the morning is between about 8.30 and 9.45am.
And guess what happens at that time in the morning. That’s when PR people call up.
People always say to me that journalists need PRs.
That’s not necessarily true.
Specialist reporters do. News desks don’t.
There is always more than enough happening around the world to fill 39 news pages, especially considering their over reliance on citizen journalism, social networking sites and Sky News, for their content.
So if you don’t want to be shouted at, ring up between 7am and 8am.
Whether you ring up or not, you must get your story over in the A.M.
After this most stories which arrive on news desks will either be spiked – which is effectively the waste-paper basket – or they will be cut very short to fit into a specific space on a page.
That’s because later on in the day, is not the quality of the story which is the defining factor. Space on the page is.
If you have to create a festive tale, be different. Forget ‘Dads get socks for Christmas’, for example. It’s dull and is probably the most common Xmas PR tale.
Try and think outside the box and try and ensure your story isn’t just a stat. There IS a difference.
Six out of ten dads will be asleep on the sofa by 2pm isn’t a story.
‘Six out of ten dads will be asleep on the sofa by 2pm – after consuming six pints of lager, three glasses of champagne and a creme-de-menthe’ – is a story, because it has the crucial five Ws and the H elements.
This sort of story then becomes about Christmas, booze and dads, not just Christmas. And we all like a drink at Christmas so it flicks a little switch of resonance.
This sort of intro also gives you somewhere to go with the subsequent paragraphs.
When did dad start drinking? What was on telly when he started? How long before that did he get up?
Did he sleep through the Queen’s speech?
How much does he drink over the entirety of the festive period etc etc?
AND this sort of story does not have to be told in a negative way. It’s all about the tone.
Another thing to bear in mind is that the MailOnline DO run Xmas stories, quite a few in fact.
So if you have one which you think will sit nicely on what is now the world’s biggest free news site, write it in the style they prefer.
Include up to six bullet-pointed sentences at the top of your copy.
This way you have a chance of them copying and pasting the copy – which they seem to be a huge fan of at the moment – without changing much of it.
Getting your story on a news wire is also important.
Up until around five years ago I would have said that if you were placing your story on a news wire you wouldn’t really have needed to call up and actively sell it in as well.
But these days there are so few people working on newspapers that it’s likely your story may be missed or overlooked, so I would say call up anyway.
It can do no harm, and might make the difference between success and failure.
When you call avoid introducing yourself. It won’t make a difference. They are busy people and they are under immense pressure. They don’t want to make friends.
So when they pick up the phone and bark at you, bark back. Just say ”I’ve got a story for you”. This will stop them in their tracks and they will take the time to listen to you.
Then read the intro of your story. Don’t use the words press release or survey and certainly don’t mention a brand.
Once you have read them the intro, if they haven’t turned the story down or hung up, read them the second paragraph.
If they then give you their personal email address, you are in. There is now a chance they will use your story.
If they say: ‘Send it to news@the-sun.co.uk’, that’s the bin, or it certainly was when I worked on the paper.
And remember if you get a bauble in the Daily Star give yourselves a massive pat on the back, because this time of the year any news coverage is GREAT news coverage.
Have a wonderful Christmas.
Thanks for listening.
A Picture Paints a Thousand Words
It might not come as a surprise to you that more and more stuff is going digital. This is to some degree spurned on by the sheer speed and quality of technical advancements. It wasn’t that long ago that I had to plug my laptop into the phone line to surf the interweb. Now I can check my emails whilst on the train; 10 years ago that would have blown people’s minds, either that or I’d have been burned for being a witch.
The move to digital is also fuelled by a desire to make people’s lives more convenient. Whether it’s an app that tells you how long to cook your steak for or the e-reader which lets you have all your favourite books in one place. People are reaching out for things that make their life easier.
This trend is becoming more and more dominant in the world of press. As with books, people want all their news in one handy place and in condensed formats. In June of this year (2014), The National Readership Survey estimated a decline of 13% in the readership of national newspapers, yet an article in the Guardian reported an increase in their online readership. Digital news seems to be where it’s at.
I for one am an advocate of traditional methods; I like printed books, newspapers and magazines, but when it comes to finding out about what’s happening in the world my first port of call is to check twitter. I think it’s safe to say I’m not alone. As people get busier and busier, they want things at their fingertips, in small, easily digestible nuggets. People haven’t got time to read massive news articles anymore. You probably can’t even be bothered to read this blog, but as you’re here, you might as well persevere.
Infographics are a good example of how news and press is adapting to modern life. If people can visualise a story and take in the key points instantly, why bother reading a 3 page article on it? To put it another, more simplistic way, how many of you would rather read the Very Hungry Caterpillar over, say, Crime and Punishment?
The move to digital is also fuelled by a desire to make people’s lives more convenient.
A good example of this is the BBC. Earlier this year they announced that they would be launching daily infographics on their social media channels. In an interview with Jounalism.co.uk, the BBC’s editor of Visual Journalism, Amanda Farnsworth, stated that what they were ‘trying to deliver is a really salient, interesting nugget on a big story’. She claimed that the world of infographics was an answer to the question of covering the same story across all media platforms. Farnsworth added that “Visual journalism meets three audience challenges: distinctiveness; a modern and lively way to treat news stories; and an aid to understanding” with infographics ticking ‘all the boxes’.
It’s not just the BBC. More and more news sites are utilizing infographics to tell a story. Since the 6th October we found 8 infographics featured on the travel section of the MailOnline online, most of which were PR stories.
PR stories are one area of news that have always done well when in infographic form. As PR survey gurus… *cough* …we have first-hand experience of this. The British Airways infographic that we curated alongside our own design team, Drench, was featured on the MailOnline. Likewise the one we created for Monarch Airlines featured on Yahoo, as did our infographics for OnePoll and Tecmark. Both the Monarch and British Airways were also featured on infographic site Visual.ly, with the Monarch example making the homepage.
It is indisputable that infographics are becoming more and more popular, which is why we recommend using them in your campaigns. Visual media can transform a simple survey story into an online hit due to their readability and easily digestible content. Not only that but they can be split up into bite size chunks to either break up text or for use on social media.
We’re so enthusiastic about infographics that we have News-By-Design, our own site dedicated to showcasing both our own infographics and other excellent examples from around the web. The site is a true statement about just how popular infographics are and that is not just us showing off. The site has a huge following on both Twitter and Pinterest, including journalists and PRs within its diverse fan base.
Whether it’s a story about cats or a hard hitting piece about Ebola, News-By-Design really has covered it all. That is for one reason, and one reason only….because infographics work for every sort of story. There’s even one about why visual data works so well which is pleasingly topical. The infographics we have produced for clients have covered everything from yoghurt to back up relationships, from smartphone obsessions to vegetables. There really is no limit. All you need is an idea, some stats, and a design team……now if only there was a company that could do all that….
The Power Behind the Rainbow Laces Campaign
Paddy Power never fail to disappoint when it comes to PR and marketing.
Previous examples of brilliance include their Luis Suarez advert, their break glass in an emergency Alex Ferguson, or their multiple world cup themed pieces.
Their latest marketing campaign however, although less comical, surpasses all previous attempts.
Working with sexuality charity Stonewall, Paddy Power have launched their#RainbowLaces campaign. The idea behind the campaign is to show solidarity for gay footballers and intolerance for homophobia in the sport by wearing, you guessed it, Rainbow Laces.
Although the campaign originally launched last year, it was accused of being merely another publicity stunt and has been redrafted with a more serious approach.
The campaign re-launched on the 8th September and has already found its feet.
The Metro produced a special Rainbow Laces edition of their paper which featured re-designs of well-known ads showing support for the campaign on behalf of dozens of household brands. The issue was even voted as Creative Review’s Ad of the Week.
Intelligent adverts being given a national showcase in the national press in which to convey their message is more than just a clever marketing trick. It’s a statement of how far society has come. It’s a reflection of what can be achieved if you have the right tools, support and platforms.
Notable examples of the above ads include Premier Inn who showed their support for the campaign with a rejigging of their brand name, changing it to Premier Out. Genius.
Smirnoff’s ad featured a rainbow coloured bottle of Smirnoff surrounded by the laces and the strapline ‘We wouldn’t change our recipe but we can change the game’.
This tied in with one of Paddy Power’s own ads which uses the line ‘it only takes two minutes to change the game’ and diagrams of how to place the laces in your boots in a style reminiscent of managerial tactic sketches.
Rather unsurprisingly Paddy Power have based all their advert designs specifically on football giving each a football punned strapline.
As well as the ‘change the game’ line above, other Paddy Power slogans include ‘now more than ever you’ve got the world at your feet’ and, possibly my favourite, ‘We don’t care which team you play for ’.
They even recruited the help of the Arsenal squad. It’s not the first time that Arsenal Football Club have shown their support for equal rights. In 2008 the club launched its ‘Arsenal for Everyone’ campaign to ‘ensure that everyone associated with the club feels an equal sense of belonging’. We live in a culture where, perhaps unjustly, footballers are idolised by a generation of young boys and girls, so who better to spread a message of equality.
The video, which shows certain Arsenal players list personal characteristics they can’t change, is worth a watch if you haven’t already. It not only reinforces the message that being gay is something you can’t change, but it also shows a level of self-deprecation and a sense of humour that, I for one, was unaware existed in football.
Highlights include the diminutive Santi Cazorla’s eyes peering over the edge of the camera unable to change his height; Mikel Arteta using more hairspray than is ecologically acceptable unable to change his ‘perfecto’ hair and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain stating that he is unable to change that he looks like a teenage mutant ninja turtle. Which he does by the way….Like, really does.
The rainbow laces campaign shows the true power of PR and marketing; using the power and influence of brands and influential personalities to spread a positive message to all age groups and demographics. My only concern is that it limits the campaign to football, after all homophobia has no place in any aspect of our culture or society but hopefully this is a step in the right direction.
All I Want for Christmas
Well, it’s that time of year again – the days are getting shorter, flip flops are being replaced by boots and some shops have started to put their Christmas cards on display.
But while everyone else mourns the end of summer, for the world of PR, this means the start of a flurry of Christmas-themed activity.
It’s a time of year when brands selling everything from toys and food to gadgets and clothes are desperate for coverage.
We have already brainstormed several Christmas briefs, and at least one festive survey has been written ready for some December coverage.
I’m sure this is only the first of many to come in over the next few of weeks.
However, while Christmas is a huge event in the PR world, to newspapers, it’s not a such a big deal.
Although the papers do sometimes get into the spirit of it, they know it’s a time when they are going to be inundated with stories about the festive period – some from brands with an obvious and fitting link to the occasion, but others less so.
All this means is fed-up news editors reading Christmas story after Christmas story, feeling less festive as the day goes on and as a result, probably giving the story less coverage than we were hoping for.
PR as an industry is obsessed with a calendar of ‘key’ dates – Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Easter, Father’s Day, the summer holidays, back to school, the clocks changing, Halloween, Christmas – the list is endless.
while Christmas is a huge event in the PR world, to newspapers, it’s not a such a big deal
But rather than leading to some great coverage, the reality is that your ‘brilliantly timed’ story about said calendar date ends up just one of many similarly themed releases landing on the news desk that day.
The papers are only ever going to run one, or if you’re lucky, two stories around the same theme each day, so the competition for space around these key events is huge.
And at Christmas, although there may be more space dedicated to the day, the most the papers are going to run is one page of festive stories – or perhaps two in the days immediately before the big day.
Coupled with the usual battle survey-based or PR led stories face day-to-day, there are likely to be quite a few disappointed brands this December.
So why do it? Why spend hours working on getting the story perfect, when there are probably hundreds of other PRs working on pretty much the exact same story.
Our advice is simple. By all means, send out a story to get your toy client that much-needed coverage as the present buying rush begins – but try and avoid anything which talks specifically about buying toys at Christmas.
Broaden it out as much as possible – instead of present buying for children, do something based generally on parenting, youngsters or families.
And instead of a Father’s Day story looking at the gifts unlucky dads always get landed with, do something which simply talks about dads.
Doing something which would fit on a page at any other time of the year, rather than only on a certain day, will give it much more chance of being picked up and landing on a page.
Try and avoid anything which talks specifically about buying toys at Christmas.
Not only will it face less competition for those valued column inches, but it will probably be the only release a journalist has seen that day which isn’t piggy-backing onto a ‘key date’.
Hopefully this means your story will be the one which gets coverage at a very competitive time of the year.
So Much for Silly Season
Well, that was that…
‘Silly season’, by far and away the best time of the year to deliver PR content to the UK’s national newspapers, passed by in a blur of war, death, phone hacking and paedophilia.
(By the way, they are not in order of seriousness, they merely read quite nicely in that order).
No room for tales of great white sharks being spotted off the Cornish coast this year – and subsequently very little room for PR stories.
Last year was very different, the country was enjoying a feel good factor, the birth of the young Prince and Andy Murray’s Wimbledon victory gave the nation a huge boost, and opened the door for bucket-loads of PR fun within the pages of the national press.
In PR terms the summer of 2013 was the summer of love. Positivity flowed through the streets of Britain and through page after page. Boasting tans and clutching a glass of Pimms, the media opened their arms to light-hearted content.
Stories which may have squeezed in at the middle or back end of the news pages landed in the first five to seven, leaving the PR industry with a glow as warm as Kate and Wills’.
Fast forward – and this year could not have been more different.
This summer has been flat. A bit like arranging a posh barbecue, inviting 22 friends, spending £300 on steaks, fresh fish and couscous from Waitrose, only for your mate and his not-so-sociable girlfriend to be the only guests to turn up.
Time and time again I have seen good quality PR content, which would have sat nicely up the front of papers, being given a smallish show in the later pages.
Whilst this time last year was the summer of love, we are now in the midst of our very own annus horribilis.
Thinking about it – why didn’t we see it coming?
Should have gone to Specsavers, perhaps.
The tone of the year’s news seemed to be set quite early in March when within six days three massive global stories kicked off, pushing PR-based content off the news list.
First the Oscar Pistorius trial began in South Africa, and the world hung on every piece of evidence put before the court.
Page after page of coverage followed for days on end as the grim final moments of Reeva Steenkamp’s demise were made public.
The trial of publicist and all-round Mr Fix It, Max Clifford, dubbed the showbiz trial of the decade, followed and again took up page after page of the papers.
An art and sub desk’s dream, maybe. Having a string of belters to place on the flat plan after the morning news conference. But a complete nightmare for the PR industry.
They always say things come in threes, and just when we were all hoping things would quieten down and free up a few pages reports started emerging of a missing passenger jet.
And so the greatest mystery in the history of aviation was born.
Never before has a packed passenger jet just vanished without a trace – but it did this year.
Malaysian Airlines MH370, which took off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing, lost contact with air traffic control less than an hour into its flight.
The aircraft, a Boeing 777-200ER, carrying 12 Malaysian crew members and 227 passengers from 15 nations, left Malaysian airspace with a casual ‘good night’ from the co-pilot and is still missing.
Search and rescue teams from around the world joined the hunt for the doomed airliner, hundreds of ships – including dozens of naval vessels were scrambled to the area where experts pinpointed as a possible crash site.
Harrowing photographs of friends and relatives of the missing passengers collapsing under the sheer weight of their grief filled the pages of the world’s media.
Around a month later Britain was stunned by the initially mysterious death of Peaches Geldof at her home in Kent, hours after she posted a photo of herself as a child with her late mum Paula Yates.
From grief and disbelief, the nation’s emotions quickly turned to disgust and deceit and even the feeling we were all duped, when the trial of Rolf Harrisbegan.
Surely at some point there would be some respite for the PR industry, a shard of light at the end of the tunnel – or even a triangular-shaped fin off the coast of St Ives.
But no, the death destruction and mood of media misery continued, this time when after a thoroughly public laundering of the industry’s own dirty washingAndy Coulson was found guilty of conspiracy to hack phones of celebrities, royals, grieving families and even fellow staff from the now defunct News Of The World.
Sandwiched between the Harris and Coulson cases came the sad and untimely death of comedian and all-round good guy, Rik Mayall.
More recently – and right smack bang in the middle of our beloved ‘silly season’ – came another potentially fatal blow for Malaysian Airlines.
The mid-air annihilation of MH17, a packed passenger jet, amid the disputed skies over eastern Ukraine, in what looks likely to be an attack by pro-Russian guerrillas, left the world shocked to the core.
Again, alongside stories of those who died, subsequent tributes and heart-breaking family photographs, those who should have been on the flight but weren’t for one reason or another, told their stories. Within hours graphic images of charred human remains amongst the twisted fuselage of the downed jet, the most haunting pictures of the year in my opinion, began to filter through.
As the ramifications rumbled on, and President Putin did his best to distance himself from the rebels who will surely be held responsible for the atrocity,trouble escalated in Gaza.
Hamas troops launched rocket after rocket over the border at the Israelis, who responded in kind, devastating buildings and leaving hundreds dead, including dozens of schoolchildren. This again providing news outlets with a plethora of horrific images with which to fill their pages and illustrate the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding before us.
Social media and instant news and images have also helped give these stories a shelf life far longer than would have been the case in years gone by.
Each one of these stories has held great images. The visual element of most of them has been gripping to say the least.
Bar the missing Malaysian flight every story, even Harris’s trial in the shape of his arrival at court each day with his wife Alwen and daughter Bindi, and his final trip to court by boat, enabled the media to splash photographs across the pages to accompany the copy.
And each one of these stories has been what we call a ‘runner’; a tale which focuses attention on a ‘day two’ and a ‘day three’ and so on, leaving us PRs facing an uphill battle to snatch a page lead or two.
So – as I write we have around three and a half weeks to go before the PR industry begins to focus on Christmas.
Perhaps there is still time for some good news – or even a shark or two,
I live in hope…
Hang on, seems a global Ebola epidemic may be brewing.…