Pirozzolo Company Public Relations

How to get media coverage in The Boston Globe

Larry Edelman, The Boston Globe deputy managing editor, told independent PR agency heads that, while declining print subscriptions portend an all-digital newspaper, building good old-fashioned relationships still counts when it comes to news coverage in New England’s biggest newspaper.

At a recent meeting organized by the Boston Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America, Edelman told some 30 small PR agency owners, “We have 95,000 paid digital subscribers, the highest among regional papers,” which is fast approaching half the total subscribers as “print subscriptions slowly decline.”

The Boston Globe's new newsroom in Exchange Place

With classified advertising for autos, employment and real estate no longer able to support the operation, the Globe has had to increase the cost to the readers for providing them with information. “When we’re charging a lot for the product it really has to be good, and when readers log on they want to get the highest-quality journalism. The paper has to be sold on the merits of quality.”

Given changes in the way people access information, especially international and national news, The Globe has reduced its commitment to staffing bureaus in Washington, DC and overseas. “Our motto is to provide journalism you can’t get anywhere but The Globe.” For media relations pros, that means offering its reporters exclusive, newsworthy information about local business and organizations and their impact on the community.

Larry Edelman of The Boston Globe

At the meeting, run by public relations consultants Hank Shafran and Sarah Leaf-Herrmann, Edelman emphasized, “It comes down to building individual relationships” for both PR pros and reporters as well. “Even though information is available online, reporters still have to get out of the office to cover stories in person and PR folks have to build relationships with reporters. News is a relationship business – a good batting average though is worse than a major league baseball player,” in terms of successful placements.

Edelman urged PR professionals to look beyond your own client for broader stories with greater impact. He pointed out, “A hotel company that was building properties in the outlaying parts of the city such as Allston and Brighten pitched a story about the business.” Rather than publishing a story about this one company, “The Globe did it as a trend piece, which made it a stronger and more interesting article.” Everybody won.

When asked about whom to contact, he recommended sending email pitches directly to reporters since they know more about the topic and editors have too many additional responsibilities to focus on content, though alerting both the reporters and their editors is acceptable.

Joshua Milne, who focuses on sports promotions and media relations, asked whether editorial visits during which company executives visit the editorial staff in the newsroom to provide background information, with no expectation of coverage are still viable.

Hiawatha Bray, Technology Reporter

Both Edelman and Hiawatha Bray, who has been covering technology for the Globe since 1995, encouraged the visits, especially when the executives are willing to come to the newsroom. Bray joked, “I just met with a company and they were all from MIT, so I figured it must be important.” 

Veteran business reporter Jon Chesto is known for taking a lot of editorial meetings. “He meets more people in a day than I meet in a month,” quipped Edelman. Notwithstanding, when publicists pitch stories they need to know the topic. Bray said, “It's disrespectful to call a reporter and not know what your product is or what it does and then fill the void by using terms like ‘best-in-breed’ or ‘disruptive technology.’” 

Bray chided PR people who call at 5 o’clock to pitch stories, and for trying to be creative, “Don’t write a story like ‘Once upon a time,’ just the facts please.”

Other changes at The Globe include The Express Desk, which was started last year and is staffed with 25 reporters and editors to deliver breaking news – “immediate news drives a lot of subscriptions,” Edelman said adding that Express Desk tracks readership and revises headlines if an interesting story isn’t drawing readership.

In addition to the Spotlight Team, the famous investigative reporting unit featured in the eponymous Oscar winning movie about sex abuse in the Catholic Church, Edelman, noted, “We created a subset of the Spotlight Team that, instead of spending months on a story is poised for quick investigations that might take only a week or two. One of its latest accomplishments was an investigative report on a recent Massachusetts State Police scandal over no-show traffic details.

Despite the modern newsroom in the heart of the financial district, the absence of the monster Web press, and a hugely successful formula for a digital newspaper of the future, Edelman said some things in Boston remain constant: “Who’s driving the most subscriptions? It’s still sports.”

Dick Pirozzolo, APR of Pirozzolo Company Public Relations is a Boston communication consultant whose credentials as a professional journalist include membership in The Society of Professional Journalists, The Foreign Press Association of New York and the National Press Club of Washington, DC. He is the author of countless articles on public relations and several books on a wide range of topics. 

On Letting Go - to Move Ahead by The Rev. Sarah Robbins-Cole

It was a distinct honor to have been included in the Easter Sunday homily at St. Michael's Episcopal Church, in Holliston, Mass.

Earlier last week, I was chatting with Sarah—my friend and neighbor—who is otherwise known as The Rev. Sarah Robbins Cole. She told me she was working on her sermon for Easter Sunday, the theme was letting go. I suppose the idea is there cannot be rebirth without letting go of those things that tie us to the past.

"Any thoughts?" she inquired. 

Not missing a chance to plug "Escape from Saigon - a Novel," I mentioned that "letting go" is a theme running loosely throughout the story.  

The struggle with letting go is voiced by Billy Freda, the high school friend, who has to let go of the moment he scored the winning point in the championship game, US Ambassador Graham Martin who cannot let go of South Vietnam that had become intertwined with his identity, the reporters who devoted their youth to covering the war and have to find a new life elsewhere, and of course, the two Vietnam veterans who wrote the book—myself and Michael Morris, who saw combat in the Vietnam War as a young soldier in 1967.

That war ended on April 30, 1975—42 years ago on the last day this month.

Here is what The Rev. Sarah Robbins-Cole, Rector of St. Michael's Episcopal Church in Holliston, Massachusetts told her congregation about letting go on Easter Sunday Morning 2017.

 

 Easter 2017

Marie Kondo of the book The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing is perhaps one of the best known books that has come our way from the field of decluttering and home organization. If you have not read the book, the basic premise of the book is to get rid of things that do not spark joy. Marie Kondo recommends taking out every item you own, in a particular sequence, and touching each item, and if it does not spark joy – out it goes. She has other helpful hints such as not buying more specialized storage containers to hold yet more clutter, and folding your clothes, for example your shirts, in a way that finding a shirt is as easy as flicking through record albums – because they all are standing on end.

The desire to hold on and to accumulate is as old as time and man. Perhaps it’s because we falsely equate accumulation with security. If I just hang on to clothes, household items, food, photos, books, I will never be in want. Who knows? I might need one of these things later.

Or we mistakenly believe that if we throw things away or recycle them – somehow we won’t remember or value what that item represented.

Or sometimes what is harder is we hold on to emotions and memories - something that has hurt us deeply. Maybe you are holding onto a grudge, or an imaginary contract with someone (that is, unless they do x, I will not forgive, move on, or be nice, etc.,). And somehow letting go would be to admit defeat.

When people have asked me this week what I am preaching on this week – and I tell them that I am working on a sermon about letting go – it has been interesting to hear people’s response.

When I told my neighbor Dick Pirozzolo, who has just published the book, Escape from Saigon - a Novel this year, he said, “funny you should say that”. He is himself a Vietnam Vet, but he said in his research and during his book tour, while he has encountered many veterans who live full and rich lives, he also said that he has met a fair number of veterans who live and breathe their days in Vietnam every day—even though the end of this month will mark the 42nd anniversary of the ending of that war. “After all,” Dick commented, “you are 19 years old, your friends are all back home working in a shoe store, and you are in a strange country, surrounded by people speaking a foreign language, and you are getting shot at.”

But he said, the problem is that what happens to some of us is that we get stuck at 19. Our entire identity is formed around being a Vietnam Veteran and that does not allow a new identity to form. Our lives are dedicated to remembering that time – from the stories we share to the social media platforms we belong to and contribute to.

Another friend of mine, who works with students, said to me, “that is such an important message” because she finds that some of her students cling to ideas, ideologies, and identities in ways that are unhealthy because they perpetuate their sense of being powerless victims in a hostile world.

Or another friend talked about a woman she knew who was the team mom of a volleyball team – and she did everything – she organized uniforms, social events, coaches gifts, the booster club – but at the end of her son’s junior year, at the end of season party, when he was not elected captain by his peers for the following year, she was absolutely devastated. She refused to talk to anyone for the rest of the party and her son never played volleyball again – so attached was she to the idea of her son being captain.

I am sure we all have examples from our own lives - elderly parents who cling to the idea of unrealistic independence, or children who can’t seem to quite realize they have actually reached adulthood, a parent who cannot let go of their adult children, etc., etc.,
The subject of letting go is not just a superficial self-help issue. They are deep spiritual concerns – which come to the very heart of our gospel lesson for this morning. Jesus tells Mary – do not hold on to me. Literally – do not cling to me as I am now. I am yet to ascend to the Father. Jesus is telling her that she must not cling to him because his time on earth is done. And why that is important is that first of all, after the crucifixion they can’t just go back to the way things were – and secondly, the ascension is necessary so that the work of Jesus will no longer be constrained to his little corner of Israel – but will spread to the four corners of the earth.

And it’s not just the idea of the physically present Jesus she is going to have to let go of. If she wants to share in that resurrected life of new life and rebirth – she is going to have to let go of everything that is holding her back – she may have to let go of her anger at the Romans for crucifying Jesus, she may have to have to let go of her feelings of resentment at the disciples for handing Jesus over, betraying Jesus, and falling asleep while Jesus was praying when he very clearly asked them to stay awake. She may have to let go of her bitterness toward a world that allows an innocent man to die. She may have to let go of her wrath toward her own people for their maleficent fickleness – who on Palm Sunday lauded Jesus as King – and then jeered Jesus just a few days later when he really needed them.

But let me be clear - there is a big difference between letting go and forgetting. Letting go – means having a willingness to move forward, to not be stuck in the muck and mire of past wrongs. Forgetting is pretty near impossible, and forgiving can be a very long process indeed.

What we celebrate today is the resurrection. We celebrate that when one thing ends – and when we let go and give it to God, and trust that God will do something good and meaningful and life-giving to that of which we let go – we too will live the resurrected life.

God invites us to new life each and every moment of our lives – not to cling to the past – but to be engaged in our lives right here and right now. It is just as Joseph Campbell, the preeminent expert in comparative mythology and religion who wrote: We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the life that is waiting for us.


Along with being coauthor of "Escape from Saigon - a Novel" set during the final days of America's "first television war," Dick Pirozzolo is managing director of Pirozzolo Company Public Relations, an international communication firm based in Boston, Massachusetts.

 

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.

Boston Global Forum—Birth of an Institution in Boston

Guest Blog by Llewellyn King

Executive Producer and Host 'White House Chronicle" on PBS

A while ago, Llewellyn and I became involved in Boston Global Forum as members the Editorial Board. Llewellyn has since covered this new think tank, focused largely on reducing tensions among nations of the Pacific; predominantly China, Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia and The Philippines. With the Transpacific Partnership (TPP) now being vigorously debated among Congressional leaders, the work of Boston Global Forum has gained a heightened level of currency in an increasingly interdependent world of nations. Here are Mr. King's observations.

Do think tanks really think?

It's not that these organizations – mostly centered in Washington, D.C., but also scattered across the country – don't harbor some fine minds among their scholars and fellows. But the problem is we know what they think – and have often known for a long time. The rest is articulation.

Among Washington think tanks, we know what to expect from the Brookings Institution: earnest, slightly left-of-center analysis of major issues. Likewise, we know that the Center for Strategic and International Studies will do the same job with a right-of-center shading, and a greater emphasis on defense and geopolitics.


What the tanks provide is support for political and policy views; detailed argument in favor of a known point of view. By and large, the verdict is in before the trial has begun. There a few exceptions, house contrarians. The most notable is Norman Ornstein, who goes his own way at the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Ornstein, hugely respected as an analyst and historian of Congress, often expresses opinions in articles and books which seem to be wildly at odds with the orthodoxy of AEI.


A less-celebrated role of the think tanks is as resting places for the political elite when their party is out of power. Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton, rumored to be favored as a future Republican secretary of state, is hosted at AEI. National Security Adviser Susan Rice was comfortable at Brookings between service in the Clinton and Obama administrations. At any time, dozens of possible office holders reside at the Washington think tanks, building reputations and waiting.


My interest in think tanks and their thinkers has led me to what might be developing into a think tank, although it’s too early to say. It’s so early that it has no headquarters, secretariat or paid staff. But this nascent think tank has gathered a loose faculty from a coterie of public intellectuals, mainly in and around Boston, and abroad in Hanoi, Tokyo and Berlin.


It’s called the Boston Global Forum. Formed in 2012, it’s led by two very different but, apparently, compatible men: Michael Dukakis, former Massachusetts governor and Democratic presidential nominee, and Nguyen Anh Tuan, who founded a successful internet company in Vietnam and now lives in Boston.


The concept of the forum is to study and discuss a single topic for a year. Last year, in forums and
Internet hookups between Boston and Asian and European cities, the topic was security in the South and East China seas, where war could easily erupt over territorial disputes. After a year of discussion, the participants concluded that a framework for peace in the region needs to be established and that current international arrangements and organizations don’t go far enough in that direction. This year’s topic is cybersecurity.


The Boston Global Forum has strong ties to the faculties at Harvard and Northeastern University, where Dukakis is a professor. Most forum meetings take place on the Harvard campus. Two of the forum’s most conspicuous champions are Harvard professors Joseph Nye and Tom Patterson. Patterson’s office at the John F. Kennedy School of Government serves as a kind of de facto headquarters.


This new entrant into the think tank cohort is very East Coast-tony, and very energetic. This year it has plans for meetings in Vietnam, Tokyo and somewhere in Europe, and has attracted media heavyweights like David Sanger of The New York Times and Charles Sennott, one of the founders of the online GlobalPost.


As the Boston Global Forum is a new think tank, questions abound: Will it get funding? Will it find premises and staff ? Will it get public recognition?

The big question about anything that looks like a think tank is, will thinking happen there? Will the Boston Global Forum be a crucible for big ideas? Or will it, like other think tanks, develop its own binding ideology?


Will the Boston Global Forum become, like so many, a smooth propaganda machine? Or will it be a place where the outlandish can live with the orthodox?


For Boston Global Forum's latest report on easing tensions in the Pacific please visit:

Download BGF Report on Framework for Peace and Security
 

Llewellyn King
Executive Producer and Host,
"White House Chronicle" on PBS;
Columnist, Hearst-New York Times Syndicate;
Columnist, The Huffington Post;
Commentator, SiriusXM Satellite Radio

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

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!

           

Storytelling Can Bring Your PR Effort to Life

 Crafting a Compelling Narrative: How  storytelling can bring your PR efort to  life, by Dick Pirozzolo was published in the  February 2013 Public Relations  Tactics, an  official PRSA publication. 

A version of that article appears below.

Question: What do you know about the whaling industry of the 19th century and where did you learn it?

Answer: Most of us will immediately say, Moby Dick.

Whatever we know and remember about whaling is probably thanks to Herman Melville’s story of Ahab and the Great White Whale. We most likely didn’t learn about whaling from thick history books, newspaper accounts and certainly not  trade magazine articles in Whaling Age on the finer points of harpoon selection.

It’s the great story – the narrative ­– that makes the events and reality more vivid and the details stick in our memory.

What does this have to do with public relations?

Consider the value of using the principles of fiction to tell our clients’. Consider the NASA space program for example. Sure, we saw and read about plenty of Space Shuttle launches and have seen scratchy news footage of the Mercury program and the lunar landing. But we got our feeling for the camaraderie, the teamwork and the danger from the stories we read or movies we saw such as The Right Stuff or Apollo 13. Likewise, Tom Wolfe made the roots of NASCAR come alive in his account of Junior Johnson, “The Last American Hero”, that he wrote for Esquire www.esquire.com. Spies? Ian Flemming and John Le Carré made the intrigue — and tools of the trade come alive for us.

The list goes on. “We remember a wealth of details and identify with the heroes because the events are knit together by the narrative, the story. As children, we even learned important life lessons about planning, prudence, trust and self-reliance from the three little pigs, Goldilocks and Little Red Riding Hood,” says veteran TV journalist Barry Nolan, a former Hard Copy anchor.

Explains Nolan, “A compelling narrative makes stories stick. A love of stories and the ability to recall narrative is probably hardwired into our DNA. Cavemen hunted bison and afterwards told stories of the hunt around a smoky fire. If a group was lucky, it had a good storyteller who retold the story of the hunt and helped spread valuable information about what worked and what didn’t. Remembering the details of the successful hunt would mean the difference between survival and starvation.”

Add emotion to a story, and the details are even stickier.

Too bad PR professionals so often chuck "story" and instead sell the blah, blah, blah benefits of new products or services in ho-hum announcements and press releases with contrived quotes when a great story can make their message so much more powerful.

Let’s consider the power of "story" to pitch the media on behalf of the organizations we represent. Think of the memorable corporate stories. They are about Jobs and Wozniak, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill and Melinda Gates, Jack Welch.

We can incorporate the elements of “story” that made Apple, a Vermont Ice cream company, Facebook, Microsoft and GE come alive by making sureour pitches have the same elements that make fiction so powerful and — memorable

Character - who are the people and what makes them interesting? I want to get to know about the iPhone 5, not because it is thinner, but because of Steve Jobs’ legacy. Is your client a Steve Jobs or Richard Branson ready to be unleashed on the public? Don’t hold back, make cultivating personality part of your strategy.

Story Arc - is there a beginning a middle and end? Is there continuity? If so it will support your brand and build equity. What would the Trump brand be if it were nothing more than another developer slapping his name on another skyscraper?, The Trump brand is inexorably tied to Donald Trump, a character whose saga continues to evolve and surprise us. Love him or hate him, we see him get knocked to the canvas a few times, and come back with a right hook. We keep watching, wanting to know what’s next for The Donald.

Conflict - where is the tension in your story? Jobs’s and Wosniak’s conflicts made the Apple story even more compelling. And if anyone in PR thinks we can only tell good news, be mindful: all art – literature, music, sculpture – is the resolution of conflict and with conflict comes suspense and surprise. That’s what sucks us in till the end. As Nolan calls it, “a reveal.”

Relationships – every movie is at its core a love story. “Casablanca’s” Rick and Ilsa have endured for over 70 years. Why not find the love story in your client pitches?  Bill and Melinda, Ben and Jerry, Barack and Michelle are three examples that make us want to know more about these people because love is such a universal emotion.

How does it end - do you have a happily ever after? How were the problems of the Volt or the iPhone 5’s maps resolved? Who solved the problem? What was their vision? Who stood in the way? Don’t shy from conflict and problems. It makes your story and your characters real and your organization respected.

Think Visually – “All media, including print, are becoming more visually driven than ever before,” Nolan reminds us. How did we know how hard Rocky trained? Because they told us? No. We know, because we saw him pounding a side of beef into hamburger in that classic meat locker scene.

Props – In Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie the props – the glass animals, the fire escape, the portrait of an absentee father ­– drive the story and reveal the characters and their development. How do you set the stage for your CEO’s press exposure. For examples, consider the White House beer summit or how burgers, subs, corn dogs and your name it make presidents and politicians look and feel like just plain folks to their constituents.

 If you still think “story” and a great narrative do not matter, remember, without story Casablanca would be but a pushpin on a map, and Ben & Jerry’s would be just another ice cream stand. 

###

 Dick Pirozzolo, APR is the founder of Pirozzolo Company Public Relations in Boston, Massachusetts He delivers seminars on public relations practices to executives in the US, Malaysia and Indonesia. Pirozzolo Company figured significantly in fostering reconciliation and the opening US trade with Vietnam.

 

 

Yes, You Can Get International Press on a Budget

Part I of a two-part series covering global media relations strategies and tactics 

Want to get press for your trade fair booth in Jakarta? Did your company do a deal in Tokyo that would be news in Asahi Shimbun? Is there an international angle to a company achievement here in the States?

 If you think it takes a big international PR firm to generate international media coverage, think again.

PR pros who have an international orientation can launch successful global media campaigns. It takes developing word-wide relationships with local PR firms and journalists outside the US, along with a few unconventional approaches and a lot of legwork. For example, we were named the Boston affiliate of HFN Komminikation in Frankfurt a few years ago and maintain ties with PR firms in the UK, Tokyo, Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh City and Hong Kong. Additionally, the personal relationships we've nutured with correspondents from Agence France Presse to Japan's NHK and Qatar's Gulf Times have paid off in news coverage around the world.

PR firms in foreign cities are often willing to work on an ad hoc basis – say for a trade fair presence or CEO visit, which keeps the scope of work and budget sharply focused. If you are starting from scratch, PR networks, alliances and individual firms are easy to find using LinkedIn, Google or references.

United Kingdom-based Ranbir Sahota, for example, works with us on overseas projects.  Sahota knows the media terrain in the UK, Europe and India. Her Vitis PR, Ltd.(www.vitispr.com) is part of a network of independent PR firms such as Globalcom and ECCO international Communications. 

 Where to Start

While alliances are extremely helpful there are other avenues available to generate international press coverage.

A good place to start is with the US State Department’s Foreign Press Centers in Washington, D.C. and New York.

Contact the media liaison sections, which will, depending on overseas news value, contact the foreign press corps for you. It’s not automatic; one needs PR skills to persuade the State Department’s media liaison people that the event, issue or news will interest the foreign press.

The State Department is particularly keen to promote US events with an international angle rather than, say individual media interviews. For example, the State Department helped marshal the foreign press corps for  us when we promoted a news conference on Carbon Offset Trading in New York that had international implications and the International Boston Seafood Show that draws government-sponsored exhibitors from 95 nations.

 Tip – For stories with a public policy angle, contact The Washington Foreign Press Center, National Press Bldg., Suite 800. For business stories – since New York is the media and financial center of the nation – contact the New York U.S. Department of State New York Foreign Press Center 150 East 52nd Street, Fifth Floor

                
        Pirozzolo Company promoted US-Vietnam trade. (Dick Pirozzolo © 2010

Outside New York and DC, The State Department has International Press Centers in Chicago, Seattle, Houston, Atlanta and Cleveland that will help facilitate foreign journalists' coverage of the American scene. Visit http://fpc.state.gov for State Department contact information.

Another approach to kicking off an international PR campaign is to contact the foreign consulates in major cities. The consulates promote economic activity and cultural exchanges and can be a treasure trove of introductions to journalists from their respective countries.

Other ways to build overseas press relations include contacting the local bureaus of major international outlets such as Associated Press, Bloomberg and Reuters and ask for the names of the bureau chiefs and contact information for their overseas offices. Most news agencies are glad to help.

Don’t forget old-fashioned legwork. Check the online telephone classified listings in New York, Washington and Los Angeles for foreign news bureaus, usually listed under news agencies, news bureaus and TV broadcasters. Doing so will provide contact information for the major US bureaus of Agence France Presse, BBC, Japan’s NHK Broadcasting, Wall Street India and numerous other international news outlets. Typically the bureau chiefs and editorial staffers will be more than willing to introduce you to their counterparts back home.

With ingenuity you can generate media attention anywhere in the world – without busting the budget.

Check back next month for Part II covering more international media relations tactics and journalism traditions in Asia that can help break through the PR clutter.

This article by Dick Pirozzolo, first appeared in its entirety in PR News Media Training Guidebook - Volume 4.  Pirozzolo Company Public Relations (www.pirozzolo.com) offers global Public Relations services and PR executive training in Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and the US. Pirozzolo Company represented the Vietnam government during reconciliation and Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in the US. Other international engagements include serving clients in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Germany, the UK and China as well as Japan, Singapore and Indonesia.