Journalists are always getting poorly targeted and poorly written press releases. This is an annoying waste of time-the working equivalent of junk mail-and certainly does not improve their perception of PR people.
It's simple to forget that journalists are human beings. They've names that need to be pronounced properly, they've particular areas of interest within their jobs and outside work, and they resent timewasters as much as any of us do.
Get hold of copies of the journalist's last 5 stories and read them. Make notes as you go. This is unlikely to take more than five minutes per story, however it will give you a good understanding of the individual you are dealing with.
From your reading, you will know the type of stories the journalist is interested in, and also the style of his or her writing, and you will have a set of conversational topics for any meetings using the person. All of this will make it much more most likely that information about your organization will be published, and is in any situation no more than polite behavior.
Having this kind of understanding shows that you're taking an interest in the journalist and the periodical, and enables you to produce something that will probably be of real interest to its readers. This dramatically increases the chances of its being published.
Breaking through information clutter is a perennial issue. Numerous corporate communicators (marketers or PR individuals) attempt to cut via by being louder or more prolific than other people, while others attempt to be more fascinating than anyone else.
With audiences being exposed to literally thousands of messages daily, it's no surprise that most people quickly discover to filter out undesirable messages. If we were not in a position to do this, we would quickly suffer from information overload. This does, needless to say, leave corporate communicators having a problem.
Starbucks is the world's largest coffee shop chain, but it uses virtually no advertising. The business is frequently in the news, nevertheless, and lately managed to produce a controversial story simply by changing its logo.
Starbucks is represented by a mermaid having a forked tail. The mermaid appears on the front of the shops, on the cups, on the letterheads, on the staff's aprons, and indeed everywhere in the coffee shops themselves. Since the business was founded, the logo has changed several times, but probably the most recent version brought on a furore simply because the mermaid now reveals rather more of her breasts than was the situation on previous logos.
This new logo provoked the wrath of the born-again Christians in America: San Diego religious group The Resistance mounted a campaign to have the logo changed or withdrawn, despite the fact that the original Starbucks (dating back to the first coffee shops in San Francisco) actually showed the mermaid's nipples.
Although it might appear a little odd that individuals get so worked up about a cartoon mermaid's breasts, there's no doubt that the controversy has helped maintain Starbucks in the public eye, and also the fact that the objectors are who they're has most likely been a positive for the brand.
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Note: This article was sent to us by: Claire Stutton at 01232011
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