In the Eye of the Reporter

Reporters hold the key to communicating to the masses.  PR professionals can only go so far before they have to give up the regions to the reporters and hope they decided to broadcast their event.  That is why it is so important as a PR rep to keep a good relation with your media outlets and know how to catch their eye and keep their interest. 

Being a PR a major at GCSU I have learned how pitch to newspapers and radios, but not so much television stations.  The reason for this being the remote location of Milledgeville being stuck somewhat in between Atlanta and Macon.  The closest news station that people are able to turn into is at least 30 minutes away.  In other words in order to get a 'published' on a station your pitch has to be top-of-the-charts newsworthy.  Because most of the events I have worked with so far have not called for news stations and reports to cover, I have had little to no experience when pitching and dealing with tv reports.  Considering this type of media is one that I hope to be working with in the future I am very much interested in learning more about the 'edicate' when communicating with them.

Last week I was looking over my 'tweets' when I noticed one of the PR professionals I follow posted this article about the do's and dont's when it comes to pitching to tv reporters.  The article is called How to pitch to a Busy TV reporter; she found it on Ragan's PR Daily on ragon.com.  In the article a TV reporter is interviewed and asked what she does and does not take when it comes to pitches from PR reps.  I thought it was interesting that the article was written from a reporters perspective.  

The most usefully tips I got from the article was to make a catchy and short subject line.  In life they tell you to prepare a 30-sec. elevator speech because that might be all the time you have when pitching yourself to a future employer.  This concept of short and sweet carries over into public relations.  Reports do not have the time to sit and read a long email or listen to a two-minute voicemail.  And if you are lucky enough get whatever you are pitching a slot on the air, they only have tw0-minutes to develop and explain the story to the viewers.  Keeping this in mind, it is important to remember to keep everything short, catchy and clean.  

Another important point from the article is to make sure the story you are pitching is newsworthy in the first place.  Somethings are just not meant to be on the news or are not that interesting to keep the attention of the viewers.  It is important to keep a good relation with reporters and one way to ruin that relationship is to send them a 'dud'  story.  

There are many more important points in this article.  I recommend reading it and taking in this valuable information.  It be the difference one day in being the saved email vs the deleted one in a reporters inbox.  

The Power of Relay For Life

Relay For Life has been around for 26 years.  It spreads across small towns and big city in this nation.  Although each event is united under the main theme for Relay each year, each individual event has made it their own and customized it to ‘tip’ in their area.  How did they do this?  And how can we as a class make our Relay For Life Kick-off ‘tip’ in a significant way?

 According to Malcolm Gladwell in his book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, in order to create an epidemic and make something push over the ‘tipping point’ it has to contain three main components.  These components are the law of the few, the stickiness factor and the power of the content.  Our challenge as a class is to take this information from Gladwell, apply to the Relay event, and create an epidemic out of it.  Not such a small task, but it can be done.

The law of few discusses how certain people need are gifted with the ability to make things work and get others interested.  Gladwell separates these privileged few into three categories Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen. 

 Connectors are those who have the ability to link others together.  These people know everybody and everybody knows them; their contact and Facebook friend lists are endless and the great part is they remember everyone of their contacts and have good reputations with them.  In terms of Relay,  Kendall Stiles, the director of The GIVE Center, is definitely a connector.  Everyone knows her and if they don’t they have at one point heard about her.  On the reverse she knows everybody and has a contact list a mile long with very valuable names on it.  Considering that she made The GIVE Center tip to the point of epidemic portions in Milledgeville, I think she has what it takes along with all the other connects on the committee to help us connect to the right people and make our Relay event tip. 

 Gladwell defines the word Maven as a Yiddish term meaning ‘one that who accumulates knowledge.’  These people are not necessarily as sociable as Connectors, but they have the ability to retain valuable, useful and interesting knowledge.  They are a walking encyclopedia, almanac and guide.   If you want to know the best place in town to change your tires or what company to buy stocks from you would go to Maven. In terms of Relay these are the people who can help us with knowing where to get black and white blown-up pictures and how to strategically arrange the tables to get the best flow of traffic.  They will be great assets in helping us work out all the little nit-picky things that make up our event. 

 The final chapter in the law of the few is the Salesperson.  These people have the power of persuasion on their side.  We have all seen these people in action and walked out of a store wondering why we felt the sudden urge to purchase a new toaster when we already have a working one at home or sign a 2-year contact to a timeshare in Alaska when you hate snow.  A salesperson has the ability to sell the product to others.  We need sales people for Relay in order to convince people to come and donate money this great cause.  I would like to think that I fit into this category the best.  Between being a double concentration in advertising and pr, selling ads for the Colonnade and being the oldest sibling I have mastered the art of the sales pitch.  I am not afraid of talking and persuading people to do things as long as I have all the facts.  At the Relay event I can use my persuasiveness to convince people to make a card for cancer patients.  Looking at the bigger picture I look forward to helping out with getting people to donate money and raise awareness of different cancers. 

 The stickiness factor is what makes the message or content that you are trying to convey stick in people head.  If the message does not stick then what is the point of getting it out there?  In order to create this stickiness for Relay we have to look at who we are trying to get the message out to.  What makes a message stick depends on who is getting the message and if it applies to them or not.  Our objective for the Relay event is get team leaders and cancer survivors to attend the kick-off and get them excited about Relay For Life in the spring.  We have chosen to appeal the message to by incorporating it all through-out the event.  Every inch of the kick-off from the moment they receive invitations to the lighting of the birthday candles will be about Relay and will hopefully stick with them and get them excited about fundraising.  Also how we present the message to them through slideshows, symbolism, and even in the decorations we hope to touch them in such a way that the message sticks with them.  In return after the message sticks they can help us spread the epidemic by sticking the message to other through word of mouth.

 Cancer is a very powerful word.  In this century, it is very rare to find someone that does not know someone who has been affected by cancer.  The power of this particular content appeals to people because they can relate to it on some level.   The power behind Relay For Life is that people can relate to one another through the common factor of the same content.  By establishing a relationship through the same content we hope to unite our audience and get them to understand the importance of Relay, why we do it and why they should get involved.  Relay For Life is a powerful thing and when done right we can help make a big impact on the lives of cancer patients just by presenting the content to the right people and creating an epidemic. 

 Relay For Life has been successful in creating an epidemic in fundraising for cancer research because they have had the right people, strong content and a method that makes their message stick. I believe that my class has a good mixture of connectors, mavens and salespeople to make this event tip and spark the epidemic of Relay For Life in Baldwin Country.  I look forward to making this event happen and seeing the difference our ‘little things’ made.  

Climate Change from a PR perspective

From the moment the earth was formed it has been changing.  In terms of the age of the earth it is relatively young.  The world will one day end that much is inevitable, but we as the only species with the ability to think should help prolong this day.   As the world grows older the temperature of the Earth slowly increases.  Climate change is going to happen to the Earth naturally, however because of the way humans are choosing to live is greatly affecting and speeding up this process.  

The question that should be on everyone mind is how they can help and change a little bit of their lifestyle to increase the quality of the Earth.  What does this mean for a PR professional?

It means that that we should us our ability to communicate with the masses to get the word out on climate change and what people can do.  On almost every website of any organization that promote 'green' living there is a press or news room link.  Companies all around the world are trying to 'go green' and need pr pros to get the message out about their changes.  This summer I worked with Greenway Medical as pr writer.  They needed someone to write their press releases, PSAs and web material that covered their 'Going Green' campaign.  It was a great opportunity and one way that I was able to contribute to raising awareness about climate change.  

It is important to live eco-friendly and be environmentally conscience about how we our lifestyle affects others.  Not everyone has this attitude nor is educated in what is truly going on with the Earth.  It is our job as pr professionals to supply the outlets and information necessary for people to further understand about their environment and what they can do to help.  Climate change is going to continue to happen, but every little bit helps.  Just by participating in Blog Action Day I am already taking a step in the right direction in terms of raising awareness for climate change.  

Go Team Cupcake!

My PR class this semester is responsible for the planning, promoting and running the Relay For Life kick-off.  This kick-off happens in the fall and is the beginning of the fundraising for the big event in the spring.  I am a huge supporter of the American Cancer Society and was extremely excited when I found out that we would be putting together one of their main events!

Our class broke up into 5 groups of 3 (through the method of PR fantasy football) and came up with five different pitches to present to the RFL committee.  The ACS overall theme for this year was 'celebrate another birthday'.  Each group did a spin off of the theme and created a slogan, logo, invitation, menu, decorations, and budget that was presented to the committee in a packet.  

My group (aka team cupcake) came up with a creative idea to have a fun and simple birthday celebration.  Our slogan was 'Pin the Cure on Cancer' using the logo as a birthday button.  Everything that we came up with was personal, simple, and completely incorporated what Relay For Life is all about.  We designed a special lighting ceremony using cupcakes and birthday candles.  For decorations we used 26 3-foot birthday candle replicas to represent the 26 years RFL has been around.  We also came up with a 'hassle free' menu option and created a birthday card making station where guests could make bday cards for cancer patients.  I thought our group did a wonderful job thinking, organizing and presenting the pitch.  

In the end the committee ended up picking a little bit from every group because they liked all the ideas.  I felt honored that after combining all of the groups, the majority of our ideas will be used in the actually kick-off dinner.  

In terms of PR I thought this was a good learning experience of how to put together a pitch a present to a client.  In real life I do not think a client would pick 5 companies to merge together to do an event, but I do believe that it is also a good learning experience on how to fit together different puzzle pieces in order to get the puzzle that the client wants.  

I am very excited to see the end result and to frost over 100 cupcakes!!