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Media Events: How to Make Them Work for You
(part A)
by
Charles Lamson
Your organization may not always have dramatic new products, hundred-million-dollar new offices or a vital scientific breakthrough to attract reporters' attention. But the basic principals of announcements remain the same for all of us, and you too can hold an event to help your organization generate increased sales and positive media coverage.
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In addition to new product or service announcements, a manufacturing plant opening, hiring a new CEO, an open house or market expansion. All are fine reasons to host a celebration and news conference. These media events are staged occurrences, so you usually control the timing. They are held to promote good news, so you are on the offensive not the defensive. They tend to have a more casual atmosphere to encourage person-to-person dialogue between the news media and your organization's executives.
Working on media events can be fun. The trick is to make it profitable for your organization in terms of increased sales, positive news media coverage, improved public opinion---and maybe also a jump in the stock price. There are two keys to getting the most effective media relations results from these events. First, clearly enunciate your communications objective and then evaluate every idea by whether or not it helps meet the objective. Remember that when management asks what it is getting for its PR investment, it is asking for evidence that communications activities have supported business goals. Second keep running lists that track progress and responsibility for all planned and possible activities. You must think constantly in generalities while at the same time living in detail. Michelangelo is said to have counseled a young artist, "Perfection is made up of details." It will be your ability to keep sight of the forest and every single tree that will make the event a success from a media viewpoint---and well worth the expense from your organization's perspective.
Remember Your Target Audiences
Look at your event from the point of view of the reporters you will be inviting. They get invitations almost daily. So your event must be different in some way to attract their attention. It must be unique, to differentiate it from the competition. It must be relevant to be considered newsworthy or worth being given attention. It must be cost-effective. And, above all, it needs to sell---because that is what we are all here for. As the late advertising legend David Ogilvy counseled his agency. "A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself."
If your company's stock is traded publicly, you also will want to coordinate with those colleagues responsible for investor relations. Reporters frequently call financial analysts and market experts for an outside, objective evaluation---and a quotable quote---to include in their story on a major corporate announcement. Thus it is to your advantage to keep financial analysts who follow your company and industry fully informed about your news, preferably on announcement day. You can have copies of the press kit sent or delivered to key financial analysts who follow your company and industry fully informed about your news, preferably on announcement day. You can have copies of the press kit sent or delivered to key financial analysts. Or you may want to arrange a separate restaging of the news conference for them. (It is normally not wise to invite journalists and financial analysts to the same announcement event.)
Also, remember your employees. Broadcast the event live to employees via your internal video network or on a streaming video on your Web site.
*SOURCE: ON DEADLINE: MANAGING MEDIA RELATIONS 4TH ED., 2006, CAROLE M. HOWARD AND WILMA K. MATHEWS, PGS. 131-132*
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