A J.C. Restoration Large Loss Catastrophe Bus “Give the media what they need, and you will get what you want.” I’ve uttered that so many times to my clients that it’s become a mantra. What the media need: legitimate news. What clients want: to get their name “out there” in the various media outlets. […]
Category Archives: Media Relations
We’ve all heard the expression of “raining cats and dogs.” In the arena of news releases, however, there is an all-too-common experience: yawning cats and dogs. That’s an expression for the lifeless, bland collections of words that do a disservice to the word “news.” This came to mind a few weeks ago, when a college […]
If you are opening the doors to your new business on a Thursday, it’s a good idea to spread word of it to the media by Wednesday. Of course, by Wednesday, I mean the one that falls on the calendar at least four weeks before your Grand Opening. Such advance notice gives the media enough […]
Relying on e-mail alone to communicate news releases to the media is Public Relations Malpractice. Pick up the darn phone and make a phone call, among other things, and you’ll separate yourself very rapidly from the PR pack. Sending e-mail is among the easiest acts anyone can perform. So is deleting that very same e-mail. […]
“Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.” In other words, don’t get too greedy. From the standpoint of creating something that is a legitimate, well-rounded piece of news, rather than a wholly self-serving PR piece that may turn off the media, the pigs/hogs axiom certainly applies. There simply are times when it’s best to share the […]
Last week, I received a marketing letter from a financial adviser who listed “played for the Chicago Cubs” among his bulleted background points. Hmm. I didn’t recognize his name, so looked him up on the authoritative Retrosheet and Baseball Reference websites. He wasn’t on either site, though I did find some minor-league stats for him […]
What’s your story? If you run a business, do you have a well-written biography on your website and in any other communication materials? I am continually astonished by the prevalence of successful professionals who don’t have a bio. Then there are those who have poorly crafted bios that appear to have been scrawled hurriedly as […]
Playing basketball over the years, I’ve been pretty adept at offensive rebounding, even if I was no Dennis Rodman (pictured). Often, it’s because I’ve known better than anyone else on the court exactly how that shot I just took was going to careen wildly off the rim. I try to adopt the same mindset in […]
For the first time over a six-month span, encompassing story pitches for four different clients, I reached one particular reporter yesterday at the Chicago Sun-Times. She had never responded to any of my prior messages, neither my well-crafted and eminently timely e-mails nor my professional and succint voicemails directing her attention to those e-mails. Of […]