The Fallacy of Target Marketing with PR

Marketing and advertising professionals talk about target demographics, focus groups, narrowcast messages and guerilla marketing tactics to reach small audiences.

While a lot of people think that PR works on these principles, in my opinion, not so!

I believe that good PR isn’t about shrinking the message to fit a smaller audience, but rather, about expanding the message to reach the maximum potential audience.

My mantra has always been the mass media and for PR, that landscape has changed so dramatically. You see, about 30 years ago, if you wanted to reach the masses, you had very few choices: three TV networks, four major national consumer magazines, two newspapers per town and no Internet. Read more →

How Seeing Through the Customer’s Eyes Can Help Open Sales Channels

Famous restaurateur and former TGIFriday’s CEO, Daniel Scroggin, was always intently focused on the customer experience. “The only way to know how customers see your business is to look at it through their eyes,” is a famous quote that has blanketed the Internet throughout his career. And he makes sense!

The customer experience is often the golden nugget that gets lost when companies work on trying to perfect their message. But as the CEO of several restaurant chains, Scroggin knew he was selling more than food. He was selling the experience… and all the metrics and demographic studies in the world can’t supplant the simple, satisfied feeling a consumer has after having a great time and meal on a Friday night! Read more →

Most writers can relate to a statement made by the brilliant statesman and author, Winston Churchill, concerning the life cycle of writing a book. He once said, “Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public.”

Okay, Churchill can be a little dramatic, although I can absolutely identify with some parts of his description! But in my day-to-day world of speaking with authors, the real issue that concerns me is their despair once they’ve published their book and the public’s response is less than enthusiastic. Read more →

One of my staff recently told me a story about when he was working at a big PR firm in New York during the explosive growth of the Internet in 1996. He found himself in a boardroom filled with top music industry executives and magazine editors, to pitch them on getting online.

“We don’t care about the Internet,” was the overall general response. “It’s never going to have an impact on our business.” Well, today with iTunes, Yahoo and other music service providers, the music industry is a shadow of its former self. Thank goodness the book industry caught on before that happened. Read more →

The holidays are upon us, once again, and as retailers try to get in gear sooner each year you can never start planning too early! After all, more than 70 percent of all consumer goods sold in the U.S. are sold in the fourth quarter of the year. For marketers, it’s the opportunity to meet and expand sales projections, and set the stage for the New Year. Read more →

I’m always asked the question about how long a good publicity campaign should last. Invariably in the media business, more publicity is always better. Still, the question is a good one, and it bears answering.

To do that, I want you to think of the consumers you’re trying to reach as a quiet pond in the wilderness. If you want to make the pond ripple, throw a pebble in it. Big rocks make more waves than small pebbles, but even so, the ripples eventually end if all you’re doing is throwing in one rock at a time. Read more →

As the dog days of summer wind down, I think it’s only appropriate that I tell a dog story of my own.

It starts with a client of mine who is a dog crusader with a cause. She’s written seven books about it, and just released a new one. Her passion, as if you haven’t figured it out by now, is animal rescue – specifically dogs from animal shelters. It’s a reasonably narrow cause, but she has been getting a great deal of attention, and October is going to be even bigger for her. You see, October is national Adopt-a-Shelter-Dog Month, sponsored by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA). For our client, it’s a month made in heaven for her message. Read more →

“What may be done at any time will be done at no time.”
– Scottish Proverb

Okay, don’t ask what the Jewish grandmother from New York is doing with a Scottish proverb. My chief strategist found it for me, and it fit the tone of my message today. Read more →

There’s More to It than Just Sending Out a Press Release

In the past few months, I’ve covered a lot of ground with regard to how to do your own public relations campaign. I’ve explained how to make yourself or your company appealing to the media, how to write pitches and why articles work better than press releases.

But I haven’t yet explained some crucial elements with regard to orchestrating a PR campaign and more specifically with regard to landing TV appearances. Radio and print publicity definitely require attention to details – but the number of logistical issues you have to deal with for TV exposure is far greater. Read more →

Over the years, I’ve always advised my clients that if you want to get in the news, you have to watch and read the news. I know it sounds a little like “bumper sticker” advice, but it’s really not meant as a sound bite. In fact, we use a practical application of that advice every single morning at our agency.

It’s actually a very simple list of easy steps that anyone can do, and it can get blockbuster results. Read more →