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The how-to-do-it e-newsletter for PR and marketing
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Yes, PR inventiveness can conquer the recession
So the recession goes on. And on. But I sense there’s a real determination among PR professionals to help their companies and their clients come through it. Like Winston Churchill’s optimist, “they see the opportunity in every difficulty”.
That’s certainly true of the PR and marketing pros who devised the imaginative campaigns we feature in our first article – the 10 greatest recession PR stunts ever. Thanks for help with this to London Advertising and Textappeal which had the brilliant idea of researching inventive recession-based marketing campaigns around the world for their new report Marketing in the Recession. The report includes nearly 100 examples of what they call “exceptional brand resilience” which, they add, “can be exported or imported in a different form”.
Next up, travel journalist Linda Jones, who writes for national newspapers and women’s weekly magazines, tells us what she’s looking for from PR people in our Five Minutes With slot. Linda wants PRs to treat her as a “human being” rather than a “faceless freelance”. Surely not too much to ask?
Back on the recession theme, some PR people tell me that more clients are looking for hard pay-off for their campaign spend. By “hard pay-off” they mean something more than the warm feeling of seeing their firm’s name in print. They mean real sales leads.
So can PR deliver them? Steve Loynes, who is head of B2B London at Chameleon PR, believes it can. He describes a campaign for Siemens which achieved just that. It’s a way to demonstrate that, even when budgets are tight, wise investment in PR is a sound business decision.
And it all goes to prove that, for individual companies, PR inventiveness can help to replace business lost because of the recession.
Peter Bartram
Editor
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The 10 greatest recession PR stunts ever
A bold claim? You be the judge as we review 10 ways companies around the world have gained PR mileage from original and sometimes plain wacky ideas. Thanks to London Advertising and Textappeal whose new report, Marketing in a Recession, features even more examples.
1. One swallow… does not a summer make, says the proverb. But in Vietnam its nest flavours a tasty soup. So when an estate agent found he couldn’t shift a house, he publicised the fact it had nesting swallows. Their nests sell for £1,200 a kilo making the feathered occupants in the attic a profitable alternative to the student lodger. (Not so much trouble in the bathroom either.) PR tip: publicise unusual features which make a difference when budgets are tight.
2. Some like it hot. Including Kraft Foods which heated 10 Chicago bus shelters last winter. All in the cause of promoting its Stove Top Quick Cups to shivering travellers. Slogan: “Cold, provided by winter. Warmth, provided by us.” PR tip: in tough times “sympvertising” makes consumers feel good.
3. One for the pot(hole). Meanwhile KFC’s Colonel Sanders has swapped his stripey apron for a hard hat. His “bargain bucket” brims with tarmac rather than chicken wings. That’s because KFC has been filling potholes in the streets of Louisville, Kentucky as part of a “public-private partnership” with the local authority. But there’s nothing private about the public relations KFC reaps from the project. It stencils a chalk logo on each filled pothole. PR tip: providing community support when times are hard wins local kudos.
4. Round the bend. In Lithuania, a competition to assemble a lavatory in the fastest time attracted local plumbers – and the media in force. The PR haul: 105 print and online articles, 30 radio reports, two radio interviews, eight TV reports. And a winner who was, ahem, flushed with success. PR tip: A competition plus a wacky idea equals a PR winner when most news is gloomy.
5. Friends disunited. Facebook freaks in America were invited to delete 10 of their “friends” from their contacts list in return for a voucher for a free Burger King Whopper. In all, 233,906 so-called friends got the big E. PR tip: something for nothing (well, only ruined friendships) works well in a downturn.
6. Twitter smarter. But perhaps online help is better than a calorie-packed snack. Smart cars – the vehicle you can squeeze into tiny parking spaces – launched a Belgium website that lets users “park large URLs into tiny spaces”. Their pitch: a shorter URL is easier to use when you’re tweeting on Twitter. PR tip: providing a free online service will win PR plaudits even after the recession is over.
7. Down with recessions: French online store BrandAlley took inspiration from rock band Radiohead, which let downloaders decide what to pay for their In 8. Rainbows album. The store offered 10,000 products in a pay-what-you-like offer with a base price of €1. Result: 5,000 new customers with 85% paying an average €1.37 per product. PR tip: handing power to consumers is even more powerful than cutting prices – the two together are potent.
8. The morning after… Meet former KGB officer Colonel Onovalov, inventor of SpecTab, a Polish hangover remedy (and with their vodka, they need one). Except that Colonel Onovalov is the invention of PR wizards behind the campaign for the product. They placed his profile on Wikipedia, ran videos of his “experiments” on YouTube, and erected an nine-foot statue of him in Warsaw. Result: “endless” free TV on a budget that would have bought only four 30-second slots. PR tip: imaginative ideas can win better results than big spending.
9. Looking good. Want to join AMCETETCQRMNSVESG? The monstrous Spanish acronym translates as the Association of Women who in Spite of the Whole Crisis Thing Want to Dress Better than Ever to Keep Being Elegant and Feel Pretty. The women are, apparently, recommending Carrefour’s softeners and detergents as a way to keep their clothes smart. And they’ve won PR coverage and fan clubs on Facebook. PR tip: understand how the behaviour of your target audience is affected by the recession.
10. Break out. Société Générale “rogue trader”Jérôme Kerviel – an anti-hero in France - was the unlikely inspiration for a cartoon campaign for Kit Kat chocolate biscuits. The slogan: “the quest for the ultimate break”. It developed a viral buzz which outstripped its paid-for showings. PR tip: take calculated risks to win PR payback that exceeds expectations.
RECESSION NEWS: How to get coverage for recession stories will be a feature of the Perfect Press Release Masterclass in London on Wednesday 22nd July. For more information and online booking go to www.prmasterclass.co.uk
Five minutes with... Linda Jones
Linda Jones is the founding editor of the family travel website www.havealovelytime.com which brings together reviews and reports of family activities and holidays, by parents, for parents. A journalist for 20 years, she has also written for most national newspapers and women’s weekly magazines.
What I want from PR people is…
…clear, concise communication and to be treated like a human being as opposed to a faceless freelance on a long list of people to be given exactly the same information and expected to get excited about it.
The best way to get my attention is…
…to do your job properly.
But please don’t…
… promise me something you can’t deliver or lie that something is an exclusive when it’s not. Also, please don’t send me “news” of some ridiculous survey which basically means you’ve asked your mates in the office what they think.
When pitching a story to me…
…please understand that what I’m most interested in is case studies to back it up. Please understand what a case study is and please understand what information journalists want from case studies.
If you’re sending a press release…
…I want the people featured in it to be available, I want the facts and figures to make sense and be relevant and I don’t want it as an attachment. I want you to tell me what someone “said”, not “commented”, and I want you to realise that use of PR-puffery that cannot be backed up with solid facts will see your release consigned to the bin.
The most successful PR people…
… (working in media relations) are those who understand what deadlines are. It sounds obvious but I never cease to be amazed that it, well, isn’t.
How a "big con" generated good sales leads
Steve Loynes, head of B2B London at Chameleon PR, describes how finding the one key element of a client can drive a campaign that delivers tangible sales leads
PR is often deemed a fairly blunt sales tool. But, on occasion, PR can generate sales leads. A few months back, Siemens Enterprise Communications asked us to create a campaign for its security consulting service.
We needed to promote Siemens’ distinct security specialisms. We researched its security consulting service in an attempt to identify a suitable topic. We followed that with a brainstorming session with Siemens’ security experts. Ultimately, we were looking for an issue that was new (or little covered), with a powerful human interest angle and a case study end-user.
We settled on an often neglected aspect of technology-related security – “social engineering” - or for the sake of quick understanding, the use of confidence tricks. The campaign focused around a social engineering exercise at a FTSE-listed financial services firm. Consultant Colin Greenlees had already targeted a client company for a week to see what level of access to information he could achieve using social engineering tactics.
Without the aid of any specialist equipment, he was able to enter the company’s office without being challenged by security staff and base himself in a meeting room where he worked for several days and freely accessed company data. He was also able to masquerade as an IT employee and glean employee PC user names and passwords.
The PR pitch was focused on the notion that confidence tricks are one of the most effective, and often overseen, ways of stealing confidential data from organisations. Given the intrinsically trusting nature of workers in large companies, this issue was both poignant and topical.
As the FTSE-listed firm could not be named under any circumstances, we requested an anonymous version of the social engineering report to offer exclusively to a technology journalist at BBC News Online and, following filming with the BBC, the story went live. The coverage included video footage of Colin “in action” at the BBC TV Centre.
Given that social engineering is a little understood phenomenon, it was also an ideal stomping ground for a white paper. And with such a powerful security aspect, we had a very media friendly story. Combine the two, and you’ve got a slew of coverage, much of which carried a link to the white paper on the Siemens Enterprise Communications’ website. By capturing data when people downloaded the report, the campaign was able to deliver Siemens a sales-lead database.
Following the BBC News Online exclusive, we pitched both the story and white paper to IT, security and national publications, and secured a large amount of coverage in key targets, such as SC Magazine, Computer Weekly, Management Today and Information Age.
The campaign was delivered on budget, including all campaign preparation and execution, as well as multiple interviews with BBC news to secure all the footage needed for the exclusive. We also secured ten “tier one” pieces of coverage in publications originally deemed to be strategically important to Siemens Enterprise Communications’ Professional Services. More than 150 copies of the white paper were downloaded from Siemens’ website.
The simple yet effective campaign focused on the human element of a very real security threat. By offering BBC News Online access to a full, real social engineering report, we were able to highlight the full extent of the problem.
This is a tangible example of how PR can drive sales leads - 118 of the 150 white paper downloads were identified as credible leads. Siemens expects to convert five to 10 of them into sales. A single social engineering contract, even at entry level, will considerably exceed the cost of the PR campaign.
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Contents
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Diary dates:
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Training events for PR and marketing professionals:
Wednesday 22nd July: Perfect Press Release Masterclass, London.
A journalist’s eye view on how to write releases that make it into print
More: www.prmasterclass.co.uk
Wednesday 12th August: Writing for Publication Masterclass, London.
How to write news stories and feature articles that editors want to publish
More: www.writingforpublication.co.uk
Thursday 1st October: Perfect Press Release Masterclass, London.
A journalist’s eye view on how to write releases that make it into print
More: www.prmasterclass.co.uk
Wednesday 7th October: Writing for Publication Masterclass, Manchester Business School.
How to write news stories and feature articles that editors want to publish
More: www.writingforpublication.co.uk
Wednesday 7th October: Perfect Proposals & Presentations Masterclass. Manchester Business School.
How PR and marketing consultancies can improve pitches to win more business
More: www.perfectproposals.co.uk
Thursday 8th October: Perfect Pitch Masterclass, Manchester Business School.
How to devise article and interview pitches that journalists really want to hear
More: www.perfectpitchmasterclass.co.uk
Tuesday 27th October: Perfect Proposals & Presentations Masterclass. London.
How PR and marketing consultancies can improve pitches to win more business
More: www.perfectproposals.co.uk
Wednesday 28th October: Perfect Public Relations Masterclass, London.
A practical workshop for organisations that want to win more of their own media coverage
More: www.howtodoyourownpr.co.uk
Wednesday 2nd December: Perfect Pitch Masterclass, London.
How to devise article and interview pitches that journalists really want to hear
More: www.perfectpitchmasterclass.co.uk
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Worth knowing:
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Article tips
Journalist Peter Bartram tells what makes the difference when you pitch an article idea to an editor
Every day, editors receive offers of PR contributed articles. Even, strangely, editors of newspapers and magazines that never run contributed articles. So the first step, before submitting an idea, is to check whether the kind of article you want to offer is the kind the publication is likely to publish. If not, turn your attention elsewhere.
In my experience as an editor of a number of newspapers and magazines, most offers of contributed articles don’t make the grade. One reason is that they simply don’t have a sufficiently intriguing idea. Most pitches that arrive in the e-mail are little more than a plea for free publicity tacked on to a slab of background information.
Editors are constantly looking for something new. So the article pitches that succeed are generally those which take a fresh look at a subject. They need to move the subject on. Or they need to come at the subject from a new direction.
The worst kind of approach is the e-mail that says little more than “Would you be interested in running an article on (insert your pet subject here)?” Perhaps the editor might be – but what’s the angle? A good article pitch will offer a sharp angle – preferably something that’s not appeared elsewhere.
On top of that, the editor is likely to sit up and take notice if the article looks as though it’s based on some genuinely interesting original research. Opinions are all very well (and important) but it’s facts that make most newspaper and magazine articles stand up – even opinion pieces. That’s especially true if those facts are truly striking.
Despite the travails of the printed media in the current economic climate, there are still plenty of opportunities for contributed articles out there. But they need to add some real reader value. That, I suppose, is the ultimate test of whether an editor is likely to say “yes” when you pitch.
Learn to write articles like a journalist. To get more insights on how to write contributed articles editors will want to publish, come to the Writing for Publication Masterclass in London on Wednesday 12th August. Full details and online booking at www.writingforpublication.co.uk
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Contact details
We hope you find this newsletter of interest. If you have any queries or would like to make a suggestion about future content, please contact New Venture Publishing using the contact details below.
New Venture Publishing Ltd, 29 Tivoli Road, Brighton, East Sussex BN1 5BG, UK.
Tel: +44 1273 565505. E-mail: info@newventurepublishing.co.uk
© New Venture Publishing Ltd 2010. All rights reserved.
New Venture Publishing Ltd is registered in England & Wales, number 5606789
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