PRBreakfastClub

The other day a client forwarded an email call-to-arms from his president urging Marketing, PR – and by extension us, I guess – to develop a nugget that best described the company’s “differentiators,” to win customers’ hearts and minds.  “I have a better idea,” I fired back. “Let’s ask him. He’s the leader of this outfit and ought to know.” 

I’m fairly certain that no member in good standing of a professional PR organization or advocate of the Stockholm Accords – you know, people with finely tuned sensitivities –would ever talk to a client like that, certainly not in response to a request from the CEO. Only an ex-journalist would be so brash. Having spent much of our careers wading through the guff churned out by government agencies, corporate PR departments, marketing dweebs and the leaders of both the free and less-than-free worlds, journalists have a low BS threshold and get down to business quickly. Read the rest of this entry »

Both the PR and media world have undergone great changes since I first got started in the field in the mid 1990s. When I first started off as a reporter, I spent several hours learning how to use the flywheel to resize photos. And just when I had that figured out, along came Photoshop, which made all that knowledge useless.

Today, change seems to be happening at lightning-fast speed. The advent of social media and the rapid demise of the print media have caused huge strains on PR practioners, who have to keep up with these developments.  I am a technophile, but even I admit that sometimes it gets exhausting trying to keep up with the latest press release platform, social media fad or cell phone app.

Having said that, here are a few things that all PR rookies (and some old pros) need to be doing: Read the rest of this entry »

I have spent a lot of time reading about how birth order determines your personality.

Being a middle child, my personality has always been one of the peace maker and the bridge builder, which is why I want to call for a cease fire in the war between reporters and PR professionals.

Bashing PR professionals is getting quite passé. And at times it seems as trite as complaining about government workers. It’s easy to say government workers are slackers, but I used to work for the government and many government employees work very hard in a turbulent political environment. I just don’t see what can be gained from the endless sniping. For example, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington recently declared, “I don’t like PR people for the most part.” Nice. Read the rest of this entry »

As PR pros, it can be difficult to resist becoming an ambulance chaser. Sometimes, those big shiny openings to pitch a client are nearly impossible to resist. But what about the times when there isn’t an obvious point of entry? When you’re on your own to craft the story from inception to execution?

A recent survey by Middleberg/Ross revealed that 98% of journalists go online daily to generate story ideas and access information. Clearly, the web is working for them, and maybe for some of us as well. Over the past year, we’ve become increasingly familiar with hearing journalists site social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter as sources for story ideas. My question is, where are the PR people getting their story ideas? Read the rest of this entry »

It’s that time of year again – time for reflection over the last 12 months, time to consider our victories and our losses, time for copious amounts of champagne and other adult beverages, and time to improve ourselves for the coming year.  And so, in no particular order (and with varying degrees of humor, sarcasm and (hopefully) wit)… Read the rest of this entry »

Some call it semantics.  Others, being particular.  You might call it wordsmithing.  I consider it one of the few (errrm. . .many) ‘little’ things that grate on my nerves.  So what is this insipid little nudge?  I’ll call them this PR pros favorite ‘four letter’ words.

They dominate press releases.  Taint headlines.  Muddy pitch waters.  And, I would find it unimaginable, that they don’t leave reporters wondering what clown slapped these terms together on a piece of paper and dumped them into their Inboxes.

Allow me to break them down for you: Read the rest of this entry »

With preparations for our office holiday road trip in full swing, I thought it was time to pick some holiday carols for the car ride ahead.  Being the PR loving girls that we are, I thought some updated classics might be just the trick: Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not one to state the obvious but this needs to be said – PR pros are here to help reporters. We’re here to provide information, coordinate interviews and come through with a last minute source when deadline knocks. It’s not just about us touting our clients and promoting our business partners, it’s about being a source, and more importantly, a resource. Read the rest of this entry »

Before I get chased out of my profession by my superiors, I want to make a few things very clear:

• I have great respect and admiration for the arsenal of long-standing media relationships PR veterans have built and maintained.
• I willingly admit there is much that I can learn from my superiors’ successes (and, admittedly, from their struggles as well.)

Now that we’ve laid some ground-work. . .or covered my backside, whichever you find more appropriate. . .let’s get to the reason for making myself perfectly clear (other than abiding by the Co-Communications mantra, ‘Make Yourself Perfectly Clear.’) If veterans of the PR industry don’t evolve, can they survive? Or will they die-off like the newspapers we sorely miss?

Read the rest of this entry »