By Linda Forrest
Typically, when we engage with clients, whether they’ve ever done any media and analyst relations in the past or not, we engage in something we call a ramp up and roll out. This media and analyst launch ensures that all the key target media and analysts for a company are made aware of our client and its offerings, and is usually centred around a news release that either has some sort of “today” hook or positions the company in the marketplace as a thought-leader or ground-breaker in its own particular niche.
The main goal of this exercise is to get a lay of the land for what the media and analyst opportunity for the company is over the long term. Any coverage that we get, and inevitably we do get coverage for our clients during the launch, is, in fact, largely a by-product of this investigative and introductory exercise. What we hope to end up with after the roll-out portion of the launch is a clear view of the ongoing opportunity to tell a company’s story and what sorts of methods we can employ in order to harvest that opportunity.
The arrows in our PR quiver extend well beyond hitting send on news release after news release, and methods we employ and to what degree depend on what will best serve the needs and further the sales objectives of the client. Sometimes, especially when a launch has gone particularly well in terms of garnering immediate coverage, companies tend to think, “We’ve done PR now – look at all this coverage. I don’t have to do anymore for a long time as we’ll ride the wave that this initial push has created.”
These companies are doing themselves a great disservice by losing the momentum created by the launch and by not pursuing the worthwhile opportunities unearthed during this process. Our strong counsel to clients is that the best approach to media and analyst relations is a sustained, on-going conversation with the media and analyst targets who have the potential to greatly influence purchasing decision-makers in your market. Through the launch, we have established a “Rolodex factor” that means that when media are writing an article about a topic on which you have a perspective, there is a much greater chance you’ll be included. Likewise, if an analyst is writing a report about your market and the vendors therein, you will be included as a worthy competitor. Although some mindshare is gained during the launch process, the only true way to learn of and take advantage of these appropriate opportunities is to maintain the conversation with media and analysts and the only way you can do that is to engage in an ongoing PR program. The specific dynamics and budget of the program are variable propositions; we map out what we feel is the ideal program and then, if required, augment it based on budget and other considerations.
Whatever your budget, if you’re going to invest in PR – and it is an investment, not a cost centre – it’s best that you have a long-term view and plan to support the program for more than just a launch. If you wait too long to re-engage after a burst of PR activity, the progress that you made can disappear, and disappear quickly.
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When you have two professional marketers in the family, some casual conversations can take a peculiar bent. Such was the case when my wife, a seasoned marketing communications strategist, and I were driving along a city street here in Ottawa a while ago. Up ahead, I spotted a car, with a canine passenger whose head was sticking out the window, as dogs love to do. Being a dog owner myself who often indulged my pooch’s enjoyment of high-speed scent sniffing, I said, “Hey, there’s a dog lover.”
We got a little closer and saw a flag on the car bumper featuring the French tricolour but with a yellow star in the upper left corner. I’m a bit of a flag nut and a Maritime Canadian, so I was easily able to identify it as the flag of the Acadian nation, people of French descent who settled in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick starting in the early 1600s. In 1755, refusing to surrender the neutrality they had been granted in the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht that ceded their territory to Britain, more than three-quarters of the Acadians living in Nova Scotia were forcibly expelled from their land and deported, many to Louisiana where they became known as Cajuns, a term that is derived from Acadian. It was arguably an early example of what today is called ethnic cleansing. Still, the Acadian culture persists in many parts of Maritime Canada today.
