Face To Face Is Better

We often hear that the public relations business is all about communication. In fact at its best it is all about changing people’s opinions and perceptions through that communication.

We spend a lot of time shaping messages. Then we find an appropriate media through which to send that message. Traditionally we think of newspapers, radio and television doing that job – these days it is websites, blogs, Twitter and the limitless resources of the internet.

But the most powerful way to change opinion is through the most basic form of communication – face to face meetings and chats.

We saw a great example of that this month when Prince William popped round to personally apologise to 109-year-old Catherine Masters after The Queen sent her the same birthday card for the fifth year in a row.

The pensioner had written to the Queen to complain that the monarch was wearing an identical yellow dress on the front of each card. William turned up personally to have a chat and, hey presto…one dissatisfied customer is now very happy indeed.

Now I am not suggesting that businesses send the MD (or the MD’s grand-child!) round to see every dis-satisfied customer – but there is a big lesson for all of us here.

Too often businesses hide behind e-mail and letters when a telephone chat or a face-to-face meeting will pay dividends. At Empica we have been involved in helping one major corporate prepare for public consultation meetings over a major planning application this month.

The people who will have to face the public at the exhibition are understandably nervous but a run through of the major issues that are likely to be raised and a rehearsal of the company line has boosted their confidence.

Simply being there to answer face to face and showing that you are a human being too is a powerful way to get your message across to potential critics.

The people who attend the consultation will feel much more valued and will also feel they have contributed to the plans – and not just been communicated with! By bringing about as many opportunities to meet your customers face to face you will increase your business reputation – and ultimately your income!

News Just Gets Faster

Sitting in a pew in St Bride’s Church, Fleet Street at a Memorial Service for an old friend there was time to reflect on how the media has changed.

On the walls of this London church are countless memorials with “journalist”, “printer” or “publicist” proudly displayed alongside the names of those – both well known and not so well known who have brought news to people.

As I sat in a pew proudly displaying an OK! Magazine logo I remembered how Fleet Street used to be the heart of journalism. This month saw the 97th anniversary of the Titanic and it was from offices just yards from where I sat that writers first broke the news of this momentous event to the shocked nation – days after the ship had hit the ice-berg.

Many of those news reports told how lives had been saved because of the Marconi wireless system installed on the Titanic, which alerted others to its plight. Little did they know that they were reporting on a development that would revolutionise their own industry.

By the time of the events of 9/11 in New York the media had changed so fast that the second plane hitting the second tower was viewed live on television and computer screens across the world – it was just 17 minutes after the first plane had struck.

Our means of receiving news is getting slicker and slicker, which means it travels faster and faster. There is little time for a journalist to consider their words; no time for the printer to present the article beautifully and the publicist has to be ever faster with an answer or an idea.

Back at the Empica office a story we had released on plans to hold a Titanic Memorial Cruise in 2012 was attracting national and international interest. Within a few hours a national newspaper in Norway was on the telephone to me wanting quotes – they had read our press release on-line.

Hits on the cruise website showed that people from 84 countries had not only read the story but had then gone to the trouble of looking up more information on the website. The press release had circled the globe in hours.

Fast reactions are required frequently if you are to engage with the media. But buying time can be more precious if you are to make the right call and present a story with clarity and quality. Time is a resource that gets rarer every day. We need to use it wisely.

Good Bad And Ugly Stories

Probably one of the most frequent questions I get asked by those trying to get their story into the media is: “What kind of coverage do you think you can get?”

Of course if I knew the answer to that every time I would have one of the great secrets of publicity and the job would be a lot easier for all of us.

In fact the best way to gauge whether a story will attract the interest of the media is to ask yourself whether it is the sort of thing you would ever start telling your mates or your family about in the evening as simply an interesting story.

March dawned with some major stories all hitting on the same day: terrorists attacked the Sri Lankan cricket team on the same day that Gordon Brown and Barack Obama invited the media to their first historic meeting as world leaders; there was a harrowing court case over the death of a two-year-old in Scotland and a building collapsed in Cologne causing deaths.

So which story was the one that was most e-mailed by viewers of the BBC website? Which one did people read most and want to view on video online.

Well, actually it was none of these major stories. It was a story about a cat called Ugly Bat Boy that was left at a veterinary hospital in New Hampshire, USA under the headline “Is This The World’s Ugliest Cat?”

Stories do not have to be important to sweep the world and grab attention – but they do have to be interesting and entertaining. Sometimes we forget why people buy newspapers, read magazines, watch TV, listen to the radio and surf the internet.

Rarely they do these things because they want to be lectured at and hardly ever because they want things sold to them. Mostly they want to be entertained, fascinated and inspired.

Ugly Bat Boy may have been a bit of light relief but even I now know that there is a veterinary hospital in Exeter, New Hampshire (well actually I have learned there is another Exeter a long way from the one I know so well in Devon!); I have learned that it has a chap called Dr Stephen Bassett, who will care for an animal even if it is ugly and unwanted and there is a welcoming receptionist.

Some good key messages to get out to an audience and I’m willing to bet that lots of people will suddenly want to take their animal for a check-up just so they can take a peep at Ugly Bat Boy!

Cupid Is Followed By Mum And Bunny

You might think that news is unpredictable – who could have foreseen the terrible scenes of fires raging in Australia or the plane landing on the Hudson River?

Stand up the person who predicted the Credit Crunch.

Now we are all sitting comfortably turn away from the front pages and there is a completely different picture. The beginning of February saw snow on the ground and love in the air. Every year we are surprised by some winter weather (which always turns out to be the biggest, deepest, windiest or wettest since records began) and every year the media get all loved-up over Valentine’s Day.

As soon as that is over the magazines and newspapers will be turning their minds to filling supplements on Mother’s Day and the television and radio will be looking for those “special mum” stories to fill the air time.

Soon after that it will be Easter and everyone from The Pope to the chocolate manufacturers (stand by for record sales of chocolate being announced as the credit crunch turns us all towards comfort eating) will be jumping on the bandwagon. Rabbits will get a chance to make headline news for a day or so and the media circus will move on.

You see much of what appears in the media is highly predictable and by tapping into those milestone events throughout the year the PR savvy businesses will be gaining the most coverage.

Of course timing is everything and in the case of these milestone events in the year it is often “first come first served”. You need to get in early with your hot weather story or your St George’s Day yarn.

Planning is the key and drawing up a list of events throughout the year and how you might make the most of them with a good PR story is vital. Then you can have the story on the stocks and approach the magazines a month in advance with something to interest them for that special edition.

In January Empica achieved three pages in a magazine, including a cover picture, around Chinese New Year for Dynasty and Zen Restaurants – but the idea was pitched to the publication before Christmas.

So….thinking caps on and see if you can come up with an idea for May Day while clearing the snow from the driveway.