Pirozzolo Company Public Relations

Boston Globe's Larry Edelman Looks To Digital Future

Larry Edelman, The Boston Globe business editor, offered his take on how one of the nation’s top newspapers—the biggest in New England— is meeting the challenges of new information technology and a rapidly shifting readership.

Edelman told the dozen-plus Boston Public Relations Society of America members assembled in The Tom Winship Room, just off the newsroom, “The Globe is tailored to be an online news operation that also happens to print a newspaper,” except now the overhead and salaries have to come from subscriptions rather than advertising. “When subscriptions pay my salary, we have to give readers something they are willing to pay for.”

The Globe’s online paid circulation is over 70,000, the highest among any regional newspaper in the US and, between BostonGlobe.com and its free regional website Boston.com, the paper garners a million unique hits a day.

The Globe has to stand out Edelman said, “We don't want to be in the commodity news business. We want to cover ideas, not companies with obligatory news stories simply because they are big and old.”

Edelman told the group he believes the Boston economy is well positioned with a diverse range of forward- looking industries such as biotechnology, real estate development, medicine and education. “We’re in a bubble but it’s a lucky bubble.”

The emphasis is also on covering those industries from the perspective of how they impact the lives of people in the region. Explained Edelman, “We are at the intersection of people who create and the money,” adding that Trump’s “preposterous 20-percent cut to NIH [the National Institute for Health] would be disastrous to this area.”

Given the importance of medicine and biotechnology regionally, The Globe last year launched STAT a premium subscription service offering exclusive reporting about the pharmaceutical and biotech industries as well as newsletters, invitations to events, early access to special reports, and other reader benefits.

The Globe is evaluating its news beats to reflect shifting interests as well. “The business of food is an increasingly popular topic that pulls in new readers and is getting more attention editorially.”

Deadlines have changed too. “Our readership swells between 6 AM and 1-2 PM so our best stories have to be up in the morning—when our readers are online. Filing new stories at 4-5 PM in the afternoon should be for the next day’s edition.”

The editorial staff is about half of what it once was during the heyday of print, The Globe is moving to smaller quarters in downtown Boston with the printing plant located in Taunton and run as a separate business. It prints the competing Boston Herald and other publications. The Globe’s emphasis on great journalism and its institutions will continue. Notably The Spotlight Team, which was awarded an Oscar for the motion picture “Spotlight” will remain firmly in place.   

Though The Globe, and other newspapers are moving inexorably to publishing exclusively online, we’ll probably still be calling them newspapers for many years to come.

 No matter. We still dial the phone.

By Dick Pirozzolo

Pirozzolo Company Public Relations

www.pirozzolo.com

Pirozzolo Company Provides Financial Industry Content

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The Boston Globe Business Page: What Publicity Seeking CEOs Need to Know

“Our job is not to promote companies or individuals. We’re not here to make people feel good.” Larry Edelman, Boston Globe business editor, told PR pros at the Globe’s soon-to-be-closed newsroom and printing plant on Morrissey Boulevard.

As Edelman explained to Boston Public Relations Society of America members, The Globe no longer focuses on information that is available elsewhere such as stock summations. “We now live or die on exclusive news,” citing the two-hour leg up his paper got on news about GE moving to Boston. The story garnered 125,000 page views during that time period. GE’s Boston decision Edelman added, “had a lot to do with the schools here and tons of talent.”

GE aside, Andrew Caffrey, deputy business editor, told the group, “We used to cover the tall skyscraper figures of business,” such as Fidelity, to which the Globe had two full-time reporters assigned. “Now, younger, up-and-coming local business owners are getting more attention.”

“So much great stuff is going on with small companies,” said Edelman adding that the industry hot buttons for his department are health, life sciences, real estate development, energy and higher education.

For publicity-seeking CEOs other opportunities for exposure exist. High-tech columnist Hiawatha Bray covers the spectrum of technical innovation and Sacha Pfeiffer focuses on philanthropic young entrepreneurs. Five Things is a regular feature on what you need to know about just about everything. Recent Five Things columns covered home interiors and online marketing wiz Larry Kim who founded WordStream.

Like every US paper with ironically named Web presses the length of three football fields and boxy delivery trucks that look they belong in a Gasoline Alley, comic strip, The Boston Globe is carving out its place in a digital world. The Globe continues to produce a print product that has to be tossed on people’s doorsteps before their first cup of coffee or it’ll be hell to pay. That was born out when the Globe’s contract with its home delivery contractor got messed up and the papers didn’t show up. Reporters even volunteered to become carriers.

Despite complaints and cancellations by print edition subscribers, the future is heading away from ink on paper. The number of digital subscribers has been steadily increasing over the past few years and print subscribers are growing older. The Globe editorial staff is moving to downtown Boston and the printing will be done at a facility in Taunton that will offer printing to other publications.

When the trend toward digital news delivery began, The Globe created Boston.com, giving away its content to keep readers in the fold. Eventually the owners made a decision that, online or not, if readers want quality journalism they will have to pay for it. A prime example is the Globe’sSpotlight Team that remains intact despite overall cuts in newsroom staffing. The investigative team inspired the critically acclaimed motion picture Spotlight.

Boston.com has now been cut loose as a separate online publication with its own newsroom staff, collocated with The Globe. The Globe pushes online subscriptions, with readers getting five free stories before a pay wall pops up on their screens offering an introductory paid subscription.

“I ride the trolley and I used to see people reading the paper in the morning. Now their heads are buried in their smart phones. They’re playing games. They’re reading the news,” said Edelman.

Observed Edelman, “We get one million page views between six am and noon,” which is having a big impact on reporters’ lives. Journalists used to amble in in the morning knowing they had until five pm to file their stories for the next day’s edition. “Now they have to come in with a story three quarters written.” They have to “slice and dice,” to file online as the story develops. “The idea now is to get what you know posted online, then add to the story throughout the day with quotes from other sources.”

Sports does the best job of meeting multiple deadlines throughout the day. According to Edelman, this department, “Has fresh stuff all the time. They will get 30 stories out of a Sunday Patriots game. The Business Section needs to work on that.”

For PR folks who represent those CEOs who want to see their companies appear in The Boston Globe, warns Edelman: “When reporters call with questions, speed matters. I’ll get back to you tomorrow is no longer good enough.”

Photo: Larry Edelman, business editor The Boston Globe (c) 2015 Dick Pirozzolo

PR & Crisis Management Pros: Can you handle a SIMAD attack?

At the end of 2015, our financial services industry friends — foreign exchange (forex) brokers, traders, trading platform developers and financial technology companies — were hit by a tsunami of DDoS attacks.

Luckily the DDoS or Distributed Denial of Service attacks that recently shut down more than a few financial and forex trading sites are pretty crude. Says futurist Ted Gordon, “DDoS hackers have been around for a long time. They simply send so much data at one time that they are able to overwhelm the system and bring it, and customer access, to a screeching halt.”

The defense: build a bigger a pipe.

For example, FCM360 (www.fcm360.com), a secure ecommerce network provider and managed cloud hosting service, increased all of its upstream ISP bandwidth to repel attacks of up to 20 Gigabits per second internally.

“Additionally FCM360 contracted with security providers to increase its DDoS prevention capability to over 300 Gigabits per second in New York and London. This means we can withstand and mitigate nearly all current DDoS threats targeting the financial services and e-commerce industry,” says Jubin Pejman managing director

But Gordon, whose clients have included NATO and other international government entities, says that while DDoS attacks can be repelled “by building a bigger pipe, I worry about the future when a sophisticated lone-wolf SIMAD terrorist decides to penetrate the financial sector or the power grid for that matter."

SIMAD stands for Single Individual Massively Destructive.

Gordon, the lead author of “Lone Wolf Terrorism Prospects and Potential Strategies to Address that Threat,” sees us “in a race between the destructive capacity of an individual who can inflict harm on the level of, say, putting out all the lights on the Eastern seaboard, and the tools of detection and interdiction that might be available to thwart such efforts.”

To detect and stop such individuals Gordon believes an algorithm, using data from many different sources, will be developed to asses terrorism risk. The algorithm will produce a “risk number” similar to FICO scores that are based on debt collection and payment information and use a complex formula to determine an individual’s credit risk. “The terrorism database will be much larger, include more factors and, if proven statistically and used cautiously, could serve as a predictor of terrorism risk,” says Gordon.

“The data are likely to use facial recognition in new ways. For example, as someone enters the US, his or her passport photo might be matched to photos from a security camera near a restaurant in Brussels that is a known hangout for terrorists and shows the individual meeting with suspected terrorists.”

He added that law enforcement can also be expected to penetrate trading and ecommerce systems to test for reactions. This can include “fake trades” to learn whether our financial systems can withstand a large scale, sophisticated attack. Sources say TJX, for example, didn’t know its computer system had been breached until the FBI alerted the company. And, even after the company swept its system, hackers were able to leave behind a small bit of undetected code that continued to pirate credit card information.

Though sophistication and risk of devastation may increase, motivations will remain pretty much the same: “Greed, terror, or just proving one can break in to cause embarrassment,” says Gordon.

What does this mean for  the public relations advisor and crisis manager?

As PR pros we have to be astute observers of the shifting balance between organizational transparency, access, civil liberties, and public safety. In times of stress or fear the pendulum can swing toward putting safety above constitutional protections. PR pros need to caution clients against overreach. When the pendulum swings back the organization will face legal and public perception backlash.

One of the most fragile and perhaps outdated systems we have is the power grid. Could terrorists or foreign power take down our electric grid, as Ted Koppel speculates in a new book, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, a Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath. Despite our best efforts to protect our own systems and data, an attack against the power grid will eventually bring down all our access to information and communication.

Think low tech too.

While you may have set up terrific communication systems that take full advantage of twitter and other social media outlets to instantly respond to customer concerns, community worries and employee needs, what do you do if the power grid is down or your data center is flooded? Make sure your disaster plan includes essential elements. Maintain a paper notebook with key political, senior management and media phone numbers and addresses. Establish a prearranged off-site meeting place for management and essential employees in the event of a major disaster. Make sure folks know how to initiate a pyramid alert plan. Have at least one hardwired phone that does not depend on an outside source of electricity as phone lines may be operative during an outage.

Pirozzolo Company Public Relations advises: one of the biggest mistakes corporate chiefs make during a disaster is to respond to media questions that are outside the scope of the organization's responsibility. If the building is ablaze, flooded, or a violent crime has been committed on premises or the FBI is investigating a cyber attack, let public safety and law enforcement officials respond to the immediate media questions. There will be ample time for a thoughtful response to the media on how the company will recover and what protections will be put in place to prevent a recurrence. Learn some simple deflections such as, "The FBI is involved, and we do not want to jeopardize their investigation," or "Let's focus on the fire department getting the blaze under control, I'm glad all out people got out without injury," or, "An arrest has just occurred and, in the interest of protecting the privacy of our employees, please direct your questions to  local law enforcement."

“Lone Wolf Terrorism Prospects,” by Ted Gordon, Elizabeth Florescu, and Yair Sharan, is available in paperback at Amazon.com or as a downloadable PDF file at www.lonewolfthreat.com.

PR Fundamentals Matter If You Want to Woo the Press

Build relationships, offer exclusives and study the media outlets you are pitching.

Those were the takeaways from a recent meeting with The Boston Globe led by Sacha Pfeiffer, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and a veteran of All Things Considered who covers non-profits and philanthropy, and Larry Edelman, the business editor who came back to The Globe after stints with Bloomberg News, The Wall Street Journal and a corporate gig with John Hancock.

Larry Edeleman, business editor, The Boston Globe

 

When The Globe editors say exclusive they mean exclusive. Previous publication by a local TV program or, say, Boston Business Journal are verboten. The editors called for members of the Boston Chapter of PRSA to nurture and preserve their relationships with Globe journalists. Nothing rankles a reporter more than to have supported a local startup company with editorial coverage for years only to have that company offer the really big story exclusively to The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times when a breakthrough, such as an acquisition or venture financing, comes through. 

Tip: When offering exclusives, carefully identify which part of the story is exclusive. A PR representative of a prominent organization or individual can offer an exclusive about a specific development and or angle, but cannot give one media outlet exclusive access to all news about that company or individual over an indefinite period. And, of course, one cannot violate simultaneous release requirements governing publicly held companies.

Know the media outlets

Edelman explained that The Globe, like most daily newspapers, has had to grapple with the Web, finding new ways to remain relevant in our online news world. In terms of content, The Globe increasingly emphasizes the local angle of every story it publishes and how the news will impact local readers. As Edelman puts it, The Globe provides, “a sense of community.”

Pfeiffer, who knows her way around Boston’s wealthiest, pointed out that the community has changed substantially. Instead of covering elderly folks, who will their fortunes to local nonprofits, Boston’s digital economy has given rise to a cadre of young wealthy people who actively engage in philanthropy now.

Build Relationships

Reporters at the session, organized by local PR guru Dan Dent, agreed that while they don’t have time for idle chitchat, they do like to receive phone calls with helpful information. Andrew Caffrey, assistant business editor, said that when you call, “Do your homework. Know where we are [editorially]. It’s obvious when I get a cold call that the person has, or has not done, their homework.”

While it’s tough to get a reporter on the phone, much less out for lunch, Twitter has emerged as a valuable media relations tool. The editors advised PR pros to follow the reporters on Twitter and re-tweet their postings with comments. Doing so contributes to keeping ones name and client relationships in front of the journalists—a big advantage when pitching a story or when a reporter is looking for a source.

The biggest turn off? Emails with computer generated salutations.

The media landscape

To thrive in an environment with so much easy access to national and international news online and through 24/7 cable TV, The Globe is banking on its local community focus.

When it comes to actually delivering the news, The Boston Globe has developed a twofold online strategy. It initially produced the free news site “boston.com,” formatted like a website. It has now added a paid online subscription wwww.thebostonglobe.com that looks and feels like the print edition and duplicates its content. The Globe allows visitors to sample a few articles a month for free.

As part of the evolution, boston.com was given a separate editorial team, is still free and has become Globe lite. “There are a lot of pictures of Tom and Giselle,” quipped Pfeiffer, referring to star New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and supermodel wife Giselle Bündchen.

Will the thunk of a daily newspaper tossed on your doorstep become a quaint bit of nostalgia? Even though we increasingly rely on the Web for news where coverage has the benefit of remaining available nearly forever, corporate chiefs still want to be seen in the print edition, and “page one” still counts.

Edelman emphasized, however, “The distinction between print and online is becoming increasingly irrelevant.”

Even though Google has made it possible to do all ones research online, Edelman said he urges reporters to get up from their desks and go out and meet sources. Excellent advice for PR people who need to think more like journalists. Get away from your computer, go out to the client, visit their factories, talk to everyone on staff. Sniff out the news that the CEO doesn’t tell you about. Those are often the best stories.

 

How to Promote Your Company with Case History Articles

A Published Case History is a Powerful Sales Tool

If you want to reach your customers with a credible, in-depth message about the benefits of choosing your company, consider publishing a Case History Article in a trade magazine covering your industry.

 A case history article tells customers that you not only fill their orders but you help them solve their problems. You go the extra mile and then some.

The third-party endorsement from having a case history appear in a respected trade publication is invaluable. In addition to those who read the article in the publication, using a reprint in an email promotion or as a leave-behind is far more powerful than a flier, which is you saying nice things about yourself. Likewise, published articles containing your company URL helps with Search Engine Optimization and Google Rankings to help customers find your company.

Additionally, when a case history is published, it gives sales people a valid reason to contact prospects and existing customers.

Getting Started

Identify a situation in which you responded particularly well to a customers’ need and how your approach might have varied from the expected.

Once you have done so, ask your customer to participate by being interviewed for the article. Most folks are flattered and want to help. Don’t worry about giving away trade secrets – you won’t – or having the competition descend on your customer and take that business away. Customers don’t jump ship after you demonstrate how much you care about their success and value your relationship.

Let’s use a recent case history article in the trade magazine Flex007about client Mass Design, a manufacturer of printed circuit boards for military, medical and aerospace applications.

Click here to read: Customer, PCB Maker Collaboration is Key as Military, Medical Devices Shrink in Size 

Identify the Problem Solved

The article in Flex007 is about electronics manufacturers who invariably press the boundaries when it comes to cramming more capability into smaller and increasingly fail-proof products.

In this case it was a new generation of wearable radios for soldiers. Mass Design used an elegant solution to make sharp bends in the flexible circuitry so that it would fit in the allocated space – called flex to install.

The solution was not as grand and complicated as landing a man on the moon. It didn’t have to be. A simple problem-solution scenario, to which colleagues can relate, will often win the day.

Is Your Solution Different?

Your solution need not be vastly different from others. The article relies more on the specifics of your particular solution in a specific application and how it benefited the customer

The Flex007 article covered a clever technical solution that other engineers may learn from.  Its overall  theme though was to underscore the value of face-to-face collaboration. At a time when engineers almost exclusively communicate by teleconferencing, computerized 3D models and digital document transfer, Mass Design, instead, met face-to-face with the customer’s engineers. Instead of computer modeling, The Mass Design engineers made mockups out of Mylar called paper dolls to test the fit, something we see less frequently. It showed the reader that Mass Design is willing to go against the tide to solve customer problems.

The article hit readers on an emotional level too. This was old-fashioned, hands-on, trial-and-error engineering – like Edison inventing the light bulb. It’s why engineers become engineers – they like to design and build stuff. It was fun.

Write a Pitch Letter

Once you have the problem-solution scenario down, identify the relevant publication and editor. Write a one-page email letter suggesting the article. Tell the editor the problem, how your company solved it and how it benefited the customer. You might want to include a customer comment supporting the value of your solution.

Mention why you are qualified to write the piece such as having been the design engineer on the project or you have a writer in mind with experience covering the industry.

Having photos to illustrate the solution helps and can be attached to the pitch letter or sent as a link.

Conclude with a sentence saying, “Your editorial suggestions are welcome,” to indicate your flexibility and willingness to meet the editors requirements.

If you feel you don’t have the writing chops, hire an experienced PR pro or freelance writer. This individual will typically prepare a pitch letter based on your verbal description, “sell” the editor on the idea, write the article and handle photography and graphics. Here are some writing talent resources:

• The Society of Professional Journalists runs a directory of freelancers listed by state and specialty 
• Media Bistro’s Freelance Marketplace offers a stable of writers around the world
• Smaller PR firms will often take on ad-hoc editorial projects. O’Dwyer’s lists firms by specialty.  

Include Experts

To make the article more credible and powerful, include authoritative voices in addition to the problem solver and customer to support your theme. Academic or government leaders are often willing to comment or may be quoted from their published articles relating to the subject. Bringing in other voices also improves the piece by making it read more like an article than a long advertisement or advertorial. Full credit is a must.

Fit Into the Big Picture

In Mass Design’s case, the piece incudes DARPA, the government agency that supports futuristic defense projects emphasizing how this small radio project relates to broader defense policy – the US military is relying increasing on smaller, more versatile fighting units that operate independently but still need to be linked to one another and to their commanders.

In addition to covering the specific technical solution and defense policy trends, Mass Design is supporting an economic turnaround by bringing jobs back to America. Aside from the obvious – the Department of Defense does not like developing military equipment in foreign countries  – proximity to the customer simplifies collaboration and cuts way down on turnaround times during the prototype stage of product development.

The article states, “Being part of the Route 128 Technology Highway community and located in the shadow of MIT and [defense contractor] Draper Labs offers an environment that encourages innovation.”

Explain the Technology

This is where the rubber meets the road. Explain how you did it in simple terms that your neighbor would understand if you were chatting over the back fence. Explain every term and spell out every acronym in the first reference. Even if you think everyone knows what a flexible circuit board is, offer a brief explanation. Those who already know won’t be put off.

Take a lesson from The Wall Street Journal. Though the Journal has a more savvy business readership than The New York Times its editors explain business terminology more clearly and consistently than the Times.

Here is an example from the Flex007 article: “While printed circuit boards (PCBs) used to be made with a photo process akin to the way magazines produce printing plates, this has changed with implementation of direct laser imaging (DLI), which allows for far tighter tolerances than with photo imaging processes.”

So the next time you do a great job for a happy customer, consider telling the story to the people in your industry. It just might lead to more happy customers. dp

How to Get a Case History Article Published

Identify the problem. Don’t look for ending world hunger or landing on the moon, simple advances tell a more relatable story.

Identify the Solution. It need not be unique, just a little different from the norm in that specific applicationwill do. 

Relate to the big picture. How does this problem-solution scenario fit into a larger industry, economic or financial trend, such as recovery, employment, government regulation or latest international business trends. 

Include experts.  Quotes from government or academic leaders lend credibility to your assertions. You might even give a nod to competitors. An article about Ford’s Euro styling won’t be diminished by mentioning Audi or BMW – the readers have heard of them anyway.

Keep technological explanations simple. No matter how smart you think the readers are someone who picks up that magazine may be in finance, procurement or administration and not directly involved in engineering. Explain technology as you would to those outside the industry. Both lay people and technical experts love inside information if you make it easy and fun.

By Dick Pirozzolo of Pirozzolo Company Public Relations, Boston 

How to Get a Major Newspaper to Profile Your Company CEO

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

USA-Canada Merger Coming? The Power of a Bold Assertion

The other day I had the pleasure of promoting author Diane Francis who came to Boston to introduce her latest book "Merger of the Century."

Francis is a PR powerhouse whose willingness to make the Bold Assertion is PR gold.

Simply put: Francis is calling for the US and Canada to merge and she makes a compelling case on every front: geographic, economic, political and cultural. And, she has the numbers to back up her assertion which makes her argument even more compelling.

She's gotten positive attention of notables like Hilary Clinton and Jeb Bush and...her book is a best seller in China. A US-Canada merger think tank could be in Francis's future.

Francis, told 80 attendees at the New England Canada Business Council (NECBC) luncheon at Boston’s Hampshire House that by working as one nation we could establish a “security perimeter” much like that of the European Union.

 She pointed out that culturally Americans and Canadians have grown more alike since the mid 1960s. 

Francis is touring the US on the 20^th anniversary of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

She is the author of nine books, including the #1 bestseller, Who Owns Canada Now.  An award-winning journalist, broadcaster and entrepreneur, she has been a columnist for Maclean’s magazine, The New York Sun and the Financial Post, and is currently Editor at Large at the National Post and a blogger for The Huffington Post.  

Francis was a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University’s Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy and a Media Fellow and participant at the World Economic Forum for 20 years.  She is currently Distinguished Professor at Ryerson University’s Ted Rogers School of Management.  A native of Chicago, she divides her time between Toronto and New York.

Diane Francis  with NECBC President Robert Good in Boston

Is The Press Release Dead?

Not by a longshot!

Even though the Tweet seems to be getting all the attention, don't send the press release to the graveyard just yet. It's as relevent today as it ever was.

 

1. News releases have evolved into direct stakeholder communication tools. We often skip the media gatekeeper by using PRNewswire to populate the Web with our client's message. Any media pickup is a bonus. My client who serves the high frequency trading industry tells me traders make stock and foreign exchange buying and selling decisions in nano seconds based on "machine read" news releases. 

 

2. A news release gives the CEO and PR professional an opportunity to focus on and condense complicated information into less than 400 easily comprehensible words. In so doing the Press Release often becomes a blueprint for other media initiatives such as feature articles and video as well as Tweets and Facebook posts.

 

3. A big part of our job today is inbound public relations. We need to make our clients much more visibile on the Web and we need to communicate to journalists that we understand their requirements.  Having published press releases in the environment helps. It helps even more to have an up-to-date News Bureau Webpage apart from the "official" Website. This site can make available print and TV journalist-friendly resources such as access to in-house experts, "B Roll" and high resolution images.

 

4. A press release differs from an editorial pitch letter. With a pitch there is an implication of some degree of exclusivity – you've told The Boston Globe but you haven't told The Boston Herald. With a  release, journalists know at the outset that the information is dispersed to all media equally. And fair access is absolutely essential when dealing with a crisis, upcoming events, new product announcements and, of course, regulatory requirements for timely and simultaneous release of any information that could impact stock prices or profits.

 

5. Lots of journalists complain about being inundated with  releases that do not pertain to them.

Of course targeting releases is essential and papering the world with your company's "news" will harm long-term relationships with media decision makers. However, media databases afford us with the opportunity to discover and reach out to new media outlets that we may not be aware of and that seem to emerge on a daily basis and are interested in our story

 

6. Press eleases are biased. You betcha. A release makes it crystal clear that we represent our client's viewpoint and that our job as spokesperson is to present that viewpoint as effectively and convincingly as we can. We absolutely want to be heard and want to win the day with our perspective. But we do  recognize that our role often includes fostering  vigorous public debate on matters of public concern.

 

Watch this space for how and when to use faxes, postcards and snail mail for extra attention and greater impact.

 

 

Use Next Level PR to Build Your Company Brand

Richard Branson, Jack Welch and Mark Zuckerberg are among the savvy CEOs who get better and more powerful press coverage.

It’s because they use Next Level PR principles that rely on these factors to generate news:

• controversy,
• humor,  
• story,
• consistency and
• simplicity. 

Use these principles to promote your company. For complete details check out my article in
 First America Startup  or read these excerpts below.

Next Level PR Principles

 

Controversy –

 A Colleague just told me that medical PR was tough now because of all the controversy over the Affordable Care Act – Obamacare.

What! Now is the time to jump in with two feet and take full advantage of the controversy over the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare to generate news for those who want to become leaders.

More than anything, journalists love controversy. We recently got a cover story in The PCB Magazine on how manufacturers of printed circuit boards for medical devices and an automated medication monitoring system will benefit from the Affordable Care Act with supporting comments by the nation’s leading medical ethicist Dr. Zeke Emanuel.

Funny –

There are times when funny will get you a lot more positive exposure than deadpan. Think New Jersey Governor Chris Christie eating a donut in front of David Letterman or Michelle Obama getting her groove with Jimmy Fallon.

Washington Post humorist and syndicated columnist Gene Weingarten once interviewed our client Hilla Ovil-Brenner, founder of WhiteSmoke, a turbo-charged spellchecker.

Weingarten quipped that Ovil-Brenner probably didn’t like it when people learned to spell because it would hurt her business.

She quipped back, “If I sold plus-size fashions, that would not mean I want women to be fat, it means I want them to feel good, look good and be successful in their lives. Just like WhiteSmoke helps people….”

The interview was hilarious and got picked up by newspapers nationwide. Product sales soared.

Story – 

Too often organizations forget that their CEO is a real-life character whose heart, skills, challenges, obstacles and conflicts make for far more interesting reading than canned quotes about how, “Delighted we are to announce Jean as the new VP engineering at Techno Pants Corp.”

Stop sanitizing CEOs. Let them be human, let them talk about how they resolve conflicts with the board of directors, investors or the government and their personal and business relationships. Make them come alive. We love knowing about Ben and Jerry, Jobs and Wosniak, Bill and Melinda and Richard Branson because we see them as real people.

Quick, who knows the CEO of Dell or American Airlines?

Consistency – 

While representing institutional investment managers, a journalist once mused, “How come 75% of all money managers are in the top quartile when it comes to their performance news releases?” That’s because the poor performers hide in the weeds when their numbers are down and emerge only when their numbers are up.

Want to win the respect of journalists, build credibility and generate positive press over the long haul? Be accessible when the news is bad. Get it out, get it over with and move on. When it’s time to deliver good news, you will be far more credible and will have a bond of trust with the editors and reporters that results in positive press.

Simplicity – 

Keep it simple. How many times do we use jargon like OEM, Forex or Q4 without thinking that the journalist who makes the first cut on our news release might be new to manufacturing or finance to say nothing of the reader. Journalism critics note that The Wall Street Journal, whose readers are supposed to be mostly business types, explains every term that is likely to be unfamiliar to the layperson.

Kim Wallace of the market research firm Wallace & Washburn in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and author of “Why People Don’t Buy Things,” puts it this way. “Liken new concepts to what we already know. Let’s say you want to reach customers who had never seen snow tires before and wanted to explain their benefit. If you say, ‘They are like snowshoes for your car,’ everyone will get it instantly.

Consider these news-making tactics when it comes to creating the kind of awareness that establishes your company as an influential leader and building greater awareness and brand equity.

That’s Next Level PR!