Who are the key decision makers and are the spokes people media trained?

Every company has a organizational chart - a ladder of power, but how this structure functions during a crisis must be clarified with all the stakeholders in the company; particularly the communications department. A crisis can hit at any time, and the company needs to determine secondary command structures in case key decision-makers are unavailable at the time.

Not only is it important for those to know who need to spring to action (and how those people are contacted) - it is equally important that everyone else in the organization knows they can not speak on behalf of the company or to the press. Something that is best handled in a company employee handbook.

Organizations also need to decide which situations warrant which spokes person, and plan accordingly.

Most importantly, the spokes people need to be media trained in advance. Effective spokes people should receive professional media training and should be well versed on how to deal with the press. An organization's spokes person need not necessarily be the most senior staffers. For example, in some cases, the CEO is not the most efficient spokes person due to experience, knowledge or geographical location.

PR and the power of a story...

I just read with interest the article that Meg O'Leary wrote on PRNews Once Upon a Time There Lived a Plot: The Importance of Storytelling. I've long been an advocate of storytelling in marketing and public relations. It just makes so much sense.

It's worth understanding why storytelling works. It's in-build into our DNA. We grow up listening to stories and frankly they are a darn sight more interesting than 90% of PR copy-writing out there.

A good story is one that touches people in some way. As PR professionals (storytellers), our mission is to involve the audience, make them interact with us and the story, even if it is just in their thoughts or core. A really good story has a sense of truth and resonates with some basic universal aspects of being human.

But it does more than that. We have stories because they:
- Build credibility
- Unleash Emotion
- Permission to Explore
- Influence Group-Thinking
- Create Heroes
- Vocabulary of Change
- Order out of Chaos

There is a simple way to look at good stories. Back in my youth I was involved in a movie production company and was asked to read my fair share of movie scripts. It very quickly became apparent that stories fell into one of two camps - 'usual people in unusual situations', or 'unusual people in usual situations'. Think about it. Think about your favorite book. Think about the last movie you went to see.

I believe there are six tips to think about when creating a story for PR purposes:
- Know your audience
- Keep it simple
- Stay fresh
- Be honest
- Demonstrate credibility
- Spark interest

There are also eight elements that in essence make a good story, the:
- protagonist
- antagonist
- inciting incident
- call to action
- dreadful alternative
- conflict
- quest or progression
- other characters
- transformation
- moral

You also could look at it another way - the 'wow' factor. Forbes had a great article about this written by Brett Nelson in July.

Lastly, thanks to Professor Brian Sturm from UNC Chapel Hill whom in 2007 had the foresight to record one of his lectures. There is a lot of value in the 45 minutes, and the first 8 minutes are fabulous.



Why not write a story today?

Video - is that what it's all about?

Hear it from NettResults' official spokes person:

25 Essential PR Bloggers You Should Be Reading

Many thanks for our friends at PRweb who have produced an excellent list of the top 25 blogs that PR pros should be reading.

As they say, keeping up with what’s new and interesting in public relations news is important. While a lot of the list are SM heavy, our personal favorite is Journalistics. If you just start following one new blog this month make it Journalistics.

You can view the whole list here.

Enjoy!

Get your Mojo on with PR

In Mojo - How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back If You Lose It (by Marshall Goldsmith with Mark Reiter, 2010, ISBN-13: 978-1401323271) the authors explain exactly what Mojo is (and we though it was not definable). Mojo comes from the moment we do something that is purposeful, powerful and positive, and the rest of the world recognizes it. Mojo is about that moment and how we can create it in our lives, maintain it and recapture it when we need it.

They go on to explain, how our professional and personal Mojo is impacted by four key factors and the questions they ask: identity (Who do you think you are?), achievement (What have you done lately?), reputation, (Who do other people think you are — and what have you done lately?) and acceptance (What can you change — and when do you need to just “let it go”?).

And hence the most obvious segue into public relations. Every corporate client we are work with need to look at:
* What is the company?
* What has the company done lately?
* What do other people (customers, fans, voters, staff, competitors etc) think of the company?
* And, ultimately, when reviewing the media around that organization, what do you need to accept and when do you need to call the crisis communications team in.

De facto, Mojo = PR.

Media Training 101

Why should you have media training?
What will it take to be a successful spokesperson?

All you need to know about media training in under 2 minutes...

10 Reasons to Fire the Client

I've wanted to write this article for a long time, but of course didn't want to offend any previous client. Now, thanks to The Bad Pitch Blog, I don't need to. A big thank you to Richard Laermer for listing the ten reasons:

10 - You don't trust them as far as you can throw them!
9 - Everything they demand is in direct contrast to what you know to be right.
8 - Client company is on its way down.
7 - You keep sitting in on meetings with them that are at once pointless and breathless.
6 - You get the creeps when an email from this client crosses your in-box.


5 - You dread their responses to your questions because you know, once again, they aren’t paying attention to you but instead, are following their own agenda.
4 - Getting their bill paid is tougher than the toffee at carnivals.
3 - The client keeps making you think about going into a new profession.


2 - You daydream about working with their competitor(s).


1 - The person paying you is sure that everything they do is fantastic, despite having no notion of what fantastic is. And no vision whatsoever.

Read the full article here.

And if you have more to add, we'd love to hear about them.

Five changes in journalism and what that means to the way smart PR agencies are working

Thanks to our friends at Burrelles Luce for putting the journo insight together. We couldn't agree more... in fact we believe that any good public relations agency worth their salt is changing the way they are working.

1. Long is now shorter. Rand Morrison commented that "Long is shorter than it used to be," at the Bulldog Reporter 2010 Media Relations Summit.

NettResults Takeaway & How Smart PR Agencies are Adapting: Be succinct. Understand your message and be able to share it in a compelling manner with a few key bullet points.

2. Slow is now faster. Stories break on Twitter live as events unfold. Getting a story right is challenged by an increase pressure to get it out.

NettResults Takeaway & How Smart PR Agencies are Adapting: Anticipate journalists' needs and serve as a valuable resource. Maintain an accurate, up-to-date, and comprehensive online newsroom or press center. A quick responses and immediate follow up is essential.

3. There is a need to be more resourceful with resources. Cuts in newsroom operations means that journalists are working longer hours, with heavier workloads and a heightened sense of concern regarding job security.

NettResults Takeaway & How Smart PR Agencies are Adapting: Passing along tips and information that will benefit the journalist (publication and readers), whether or not it is for a specific client, will be appreciated and help to build a strong relationship. Likewise, those who are able to help journalists save time by bringing together multiple resources have a distinct advantage.

4. The brand of a journalist is not always limited to the publication. Many journalists now have Twitter handles, Facebook pages, and personal blogs.

NettResults Takeaway & How Smart PR Agencies are Adapting: There are now numerous opportunities to listen, engage, and build stronger relationships with influential journalists.

5. Competition is more competitive. Social media has also increased the challenge of being the first to break a story or add a new and unique angle.

NettResults Takeaway & How Smart PR Agencies are Adapting: Exclusives are more valuable than ever. When you can't offer an exclusive, consider whether you have a special angle or resource to pitch. What value can you offer the journalist to help him or her provide unique value to readers?

What changes in journalism do you think are shaping killer PR?

There is no such thing as bad publicity...

...except your own obituary - according to the Irish author & dramatist Brendan Behan.

It might seem contradictory that any kind of success might follow from scandal: but scandal attracts attention, and this attention (whether gossip or bad press or any other kind) is sometimes the beginning of notoriety and/or other successes. Today, the often-used cynical phrase "no such thing as bad publicity" is indicative of the extent to which "success by scandal" is a part of modern culture.

BP used to be British Petroleum. Then it reinvented itself as Beyond Petroleum, extending the enterprise beyond black gold and becoming a major investor in new energy technologies.

All that counts for little now that the full extent of the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe is becoming clear. BP is now the acronym for Bad Publicity.

No doubt, like in many crisis situations, within the first few frightening hours, BP's lawyers and public relations teams presented to BP's board their views on how the company should respond. It's clear that the lawyers won. "Shift the blame onto someone else." And that is indeed what BP did in the immediate aftermath of the story breaking. BP blamed their contractors.

So, the continued interest/disgust in BP, their actions and their disaster-prone crisis communications begs the question, when does bad publicity become detrimental?

The cost so far:
* BP has agreed to create a $20 billion fund to compensate those affected
* An alleged $50 million on a television advertising campaign
* About $1 billion off their brand value according to some studies
* More than $100 billion in market value
* Stock is worth less than half the $60 or so it was selling for on the day of the explosion
* Oh, and who knows what on-the ground cleanup and PR support is costing?

Three years after the cleanup operation has completed its work - what will be the perception of BP?

When will BP (or will it ever) break even from the costs occurred and the missed opportunity cost? We will probably never know.

Maybe there is such a thing as bad publicity or at least a cost for bad publicity.

How do you value bad publicity?