With circulations and ad sales down, staff cuts up and red ink flowing out of control, it’s easy to draw the conclusion that the coroner has official pronounced mainstream media dead.
However, only a handful of corpses, like the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Rocky Mountain News, have turned up at the morgue. There are still tens of thousands of dedicated, though deeply worried, employees at print, broadcast and Internet newsrooms who have yet to receive the memo that instructs that last one out to turn off the lights.
With newsstands selling newspapers, TV stations airing the six o’clock news, cable networks programming shows around the clock, and radio producers booking guests for talk shows, the public relations profession continues to define mainstream media placements as the Holy Grail.
Clearly, the more progressive PR firms and companies are using Twitter and Facebook, and communicating directly with consumers and influencers through social media. But it’s the crisis situations – like the unfortunate YouTube video by bored employees at a Domino’s pizza shop or the outrage expressed over Motrin’s mommy-sling ads – that come anywhere close to equaling the giant audience delivered by mainstream media.
At PR firms across the world, smiling and dialing, pitching and bitching, continue at this very moment in quest of a hit on NBC’s Today Show or a CEO profile in the Toledo Blade.
But the sad fact is most “professional” communicators are not agile or spontaneous enough to take advantage of on-the-fly opportunities to garner coverage for their clients or employer. There’s too much advance scripting of pitches, most of which are not relevant to a reporter at that moment in time, and not enough help being offered in the coverage of the big event of the day.
This week, swine flu is the hot topic. You don’t have to be the Centers for Disease Control to become part of this story.
CVS should be donating soap and paper towels to schools to promote proper hand washing.
Deloitte and Mercer should be placing their practice area experts to discuss the importance of corporate planning for heightened absenteeism.
IBM, Google and GoToMyPC.com should be talking up the fact that commerce does not have to stop in today’s age of telecommuting.
Even Hasbro and Nintendo have an angle. With students staying home in Mexico and at the Queens school hit by swine flu, parents will want to stockpile more than facemasks and antibacterial wipes. Wii, Monopoly and Scrabble seem like good choices.
Any authors of parenting books out there? Their publicists should be offering them to assignment editors today to discuss 10 tips for keeping kids calm during pandemic mania.
In short, the only reason the news hole disappears for many PR pros during big stories is because of their lack of creativity in giving the media what they need when they need it.
Recently, while judging an awards competition involving the employees of Makovsky + Company, I was impressed to hear the agency has a daily “war room” session where the media’s focus is prioritized over prepared client pitches. A number of Makovsky’s biggest hits came because they swiftly matched client experts with the media while a story was at its peak.
If swine flu does not dominate the airwaves all week, dig deep into your roster of clients to see if you can help the media cover the other biggies: Obama’s 100th day in office, Chrysler’s likely bankruptcy and Italian wedding, Bank of America’s shareholder meeting, and how the jobless will celebrate Mother’s Day this year.
Pounce now!