When Katie Johnson of The Boston Globe emailed me to say she wanted to interview Jeffrey Ornstein - the Boston-based international hotel designer - for her regular Sunday Business Section Column I was thrilled.
And, a few weeks Later Jeffrey's interview appeared in: Seven Things You Should Know About Jeffrey Brice Ornstein.
Johnson gave her readers a personal account of how Ornstein founded J/Brice Design International in 1989 and turned it into a hotel design powerhouse with development projects in Egypt, Qatar and Saudi Arabia as well as the US. His firm redesigned the original Queen Mary that lives on as a hotel and wedding venue in Long Beach, California.
How do you get The Globe to cover your business or your client?
Pirozzolo Company pitched Johnson with a well-thought-out email and followed through with an approach based on my Five Media Placement Principles.
1. Find the hottest current issues and pound away at them. In most every case your business or client has some relationship with front page news. In this case, it was the Arab Spring and how J/Brice managed to obtain a contract to design and complete a brand new luxury hotel in troubled Alexandria, Egypt.
2. Get your CEO to talk about personal experiences - make him or her into a 3D personality ala Richard Branson, Tommy Hillfiger or Bill Gates. Think about how many CEOs share nothing of their personal lives and compare that to how much more human one seems when they let us in. Tommy Hilfiger talks openly about his autistic child and Bill Gates introduced us to his wife Melinda and their global activities outside of the office. Jeff talked about his dreams, how he once literally swam with the sharks and the minutae of life - like paying a $1,000 in baggage fees to get samples to Saudi Arabia.
3. Give away real, actionable how-to business tips. While the secret formula for Coca Cola works for Coca Cola, a successful interview has to include actionable advice – tactics a competing business owner can employ. Too many interviews are too vague and thus too boring to have any real impact.
4. Have fun with the interview - it’s not scripture, it’s one story in a spate of articles that, over time, will establish the CEO as a successful personality. Loosen up! Show some warts.
5. Don’t be a helicopter parent to your CEO. If your job is to promote or, for that matter, protect your CEO, remember he or she did not get to be the boss because someone hovered constantly. Let your CEO and the reporter develop a personal relationship without your being present. Too many CEOs revert to PR speak when the head of public relations is sitting at the table.
Here is an excerpt from my note to Katie Johnson at The Globe that was the springboard to her Sunday Business Section feature. The note relies on a headline and bullets to quickly make the point without a lot of preambles or pleasantries.
It gets in makes the point and gets out. And it works!
J/Brice Design Creates Luxury Hotel Interiors in an Uneasy Middle East Where Arab Nations Compete for High-End Business Travel
• While others may see only conflict, Jeff Ornstein finds opportunity.
• The center of hotel innovation has shifted from Europe to the Arab World.
• Hotel Designer Ornstein is recognized as a Cultural Spy, who gets access to people, places and opportunities seldom available to Westerners
• He’s a preferred consultant to Arabian Royals, Saudi Sheiks and Egyptian Generals
While U.S. political leaders mull war in Syria, Egypt convulses from the Arab Spring’s power
vacuum, and Libya, Lebanon still feel its aftereffects, Jeff Ornstein is sought after by the region's leaders to design hotels and resort properties in the Middle East.
His latest project is the new 1,200-room, $160 Million Royal Tulip Hotel in Alexandria, Egypt overlooking the Mediterranean.
Months of demonstrations and Egypt’s regime change might seem like the wrong time for an American to get involved in the incongruous business of developing new luxury hotels to support Egypt’s troubled tourism industry, just now beginning to recover....
By Dick Pirozzolo, Pirozzolo Company Public Relations
