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Media Relations Matters is a regular podcast designed to provide professional development insights that media relations practitioners can use to enhance their skills and serve their clients more effectively.
Program suggestions and ideas for future interviews are always welcome. If you have any ideas for interview topics or media relations case studies that could be featured, please pass them along
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In this show, Sue and Eric chat about everything from Eric's recent trip to Shanghai on behalf of IABC and the accreditation process to Sue's research into FEMA's recent news conference (and her idea that a simple disclaimer may have saved the day).
This is a slightly edited recording of a presentation delivered to the Canadian Public Relations Society (CPRS) national conference in Edmonton, AB, on June 15, 2007.
The presentation makes the point that the most important skill to teach spokespeople is to pause, answer the question and stop talking (P-A-S). For an article that outlines P-A-S in greater detail, click here.
For those interested, the 2008 CPRS conference will be held in Halifax, NS, and the 2009 conference will be held in Richmond, BC (a suburb of Vancouver).
This conversation with Gary North, copy editor at Variety, reviews some basic information about the preparation and dissemination of news releases, and includes some interesting new information about the evolution of the news release and how three releases may actually be better than one.
According to Sheila Consaul, who will be speaking at Bulldog Reporter's Media Relations Summit 2007 in Washington, D.C., in June 2007, there are a number of habits that highly effective spokespeople should possess:
- Be honest.
- Get back to reporters in a timely fashion.
- Stay on message in defensive situations.
- Negotiate the interview in advance.
This conversation with communication strategist David Henderson portrays the handling of the Virginia Tech crisis response as responsible and an excellent example of how things should be done.
In this conversation, New Orleans-based consultant Gerard Braud is very critical of the response of Virginia Tech to the recent crisis faced at the university. He believes that management was slow to react and they didn't get the word out to staff, students and faculty in time.
In this conversation, Jennifer McClure of the Society for New Communication Research talks about why she believes that staying "on message" is quickly becoming an outdated paradigm in an information-driven world.
A few years ago, Southwest Airlines embarked on a strategic effort to optimize and encode news releases announcing fares between cities the airline serves. By measuring click-through rates, they were able to determine that the news releases on their website had generated more than $1 million in sales.
In this 10-minute conversation, Gary Schlee, ABC and I discuss the advantages of the social media news release, beginning with questioning why it was ever called a "press" release and ending with our belief that the more things change, the more the fundamental principles of effective media relations stay the same.
This 10-minute conversation with Tanis Shortt discusses her 2006 IABC Gold Quill award of excellence. She developed a proactive media relations campaign to fend off potential negative publicity when the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, featured a three-month showing of Rodin: A Magnificent Obsession, Sculpture from the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation.
This conversation with Barbara Gibson, ABC, examines her process of assessing the strengths and weaknesses of spokespeople from two perspectives: the journalist and the communication professional.
This short discussion with Natalie Lavigne, ABC, covers a case study in which Natalie won an IABC Gold Quill for her media relations campaign to introduce the board game Brin de Jasette (or, in English, A Bit of Banter) to the Quebec market. Natalie established objectives and measured her success in three areas: output, outgrowth and outcome. When we spoke, she was manager of public affairs at Carlton University, but has since left to focus on developing international markets for the game.
In this conversation, the third of three parts, Wilma Mathews, ABC, discusses a case study that underscores the importance of linking behavioral outcomes to media relations inputs.
In this conversation, the second of three parts, Wilma Mathews, ABC, discusses the importance of linking business objectives to media relations outcomes. She also expresses a strong belief that, if the outcomes are behavior-based and the evaluation is focused on impressions, the media relations practitioner is engaging in unethical activity.
This is the first of three parts of my conversation with Wilma Mathews, ABC, IABC Fellow, director of constituent relations at Arizona State University and author of Media Relations: A Practical Guide for Communicators.
In this segment, Wilma talks about the difference between evaluation and measurement. From her perspective, in media relations, you evaluate your process (such as convincing an editor to run a story on the front page of the business section), but you measure whether what you did had an effect on attitudes, opinions and behavior.
As always, Wilma was insightful and entertaining.
This 10-minute conversation with Mark Weiner, president of Delahaye and author of Unleashing the Power of PR: A Contrarian's Guide to Marketing and Communication, takes a close look at the myth of the media relations multiplier.
This discussion is based in part on Mark's study, co-authored with Don Bartholomew, entitled "Dispelling the Myth of PR Multipliers and Other Inflationary Audience Measures," which was published by the Institute for Public Relations. But our conversation extends beyond multipliers, and Mark discusses his research at Delahaye that puts a value on media relations as part of the marketing mix.
And that's the paradox of our discussion. You'll learn that multipliers cannot be blindly applied and should not be used, but that studies indicate that media relations provides one of the highest returns on investment of any element of the marketing mix.
Andrew believes that media relations measurement should generally be conducted in three areas: exposure; awareness; and attitudes.
Although they don't measure attitudes or behavior, MRPs are a good place to start if you're: 1. Canadian, and 2. Determined to get away from advertising value equivalencies and advertising multipliers when attempting to measure the ink and electrons you've generated.
The system is quite simple to operate. You can download the Excel spreadsheet for free. Audience circulation data is then supplied by News Canada for an annual fee of $725.
As a "measurer of marketing," Logan provide his insights into the communication measurement process and his view that the ultimate goal is "to measure changes in behavior."
If you're interested in bringing Logan's perspective to a future media relations campaign, you can contact him at Tribal DDB's office in Dallas, TX, at +1 214-259-2737.
This 15-minute conversation with Andrew Laing, president of Cormex Research Inc., Canada's leader in media content measurement and analysis, will help us take the next step along the continuum of media relations measurement.
Media Relations Measurement #2:
A conversation with David Jones on
Media Relations Rating Points
This is a 20-minute conversation with David Jones, senior vice-president of Fleishman-Hillard in Toronto, in which we discuss the development of Media Relations Rating Points (MRPs).
Media Relations Measurement #1:
A conversation with
Logan Flatt, CFA
This is a 15-minute conversation with Logan Flatt, CFA, president of ROI Solutions, a unit of Tribal DDB Worldwide.