pr briefs

Perdido Key’s top crisis communication tool during the oil spill crisis, the daily video, has been simple to implement, costs nothing, and gives the public exactly what it wants during a crisis: the truth.

5pm

tourism marketing, the oil spill and the best PR tool

Located just across the state line of Alabama lies beautiful Perdido Key, Florida. Just a few hundred yards wide in most places, it stretches some 16 miles, with more than half of it located in state and federal parks. One of the few areas of wilderness remaining in northwest Florida, the Key was on high alert as oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill made its way towards the Florida coast. 

As the marketing firm for Perdido Key, we learned early on that the media spotlight was keenly focused on the oil’s impact to the beaches, long before there even was an impact. With potential visitors all over the country watching the news and deciding whether to cancel their vacations, it would be an uphill battle to reassure families that the oil hadn’t made it to Perdido Key yet. At that point our real crisis wasn’t the oil, it was the perception of oil. We knew that we could shout from the rooftops that the Perdido Key coast was still snow white and the waters turquoise, but going toe to toe with the national media coverage was going to be hard.

So we took a different route. Instead of purchasing ad space in the media, we set up an Oil Spill Updates section on Perdido Key’s Web site, and every weekday, someone from the Perdido Key Chamber walked across the highway to the beach and shot about a minute of video footage with a cell phone. With help from YouTube, the videos were then posted to the site, along with the most current information and alerts from several sources. The first month, Web site traffic increased ten-fold.

At first, the Chamber received a few emails that accused them of trying to lie to the public—some people didn’t believe that the beaches were still so white and beautiful! But many visitors kept their Perdido Key vacation plans and the viral marketing began to take hold, with visitors posting their own Perdido Key videos on YouTube.

I’d like to say the oil never made it to Perdido Key. It did, although the BP response team has worked very hard to clean up every day. The beaches are still beautiful here, but occasionally traces of oil still wash ashore. We haven’t stopped posting the videos and information, and it’s still surprising to many who see just how clean the beaches still are. The videos worked because they followed the number one rule of crisis management: tell the truth.

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How to: use annotations to promote your brand on YouTube

If you’re new to YouTube, you may not be aware of Annotations, a new tool from YouTube that can help your videos stand out from the crowd. Catherine-Gail Reinhard recently wrote a great post about Annotations for Mashables, an online guide to social media and one of the top ten blogs worldwide.

There are lots of ways to use Annotations, Reinhard says, from “adding a simple ‘call to action’ that asks the audience to subscribe or do something after watching the video, to creating a series of videos that are linked via Annotations into an interactive game.”

Check out Reinhard’s fun and interactive post to see Annotations in action and learn how the most popular YouTube users have implemented them into their videos.

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5 ways to add value to your ads

Public relations is a top marketing tool, and so is paid advertising. One way to stretch your advertising budget is to “piggy-back” your PR messages on your paid ads. If you’re already paying for ad space on television, radio or in print, here are 5 quick and easy-on-the-budget ways to help your advertising do double duty.

1. For television advertising: instead of producing a full 30-second commercial, consider a 20-second commercial with a 10-second customizable “tag” at the end. Change the tag monthly or as needed to promote your special event, anniversary, sale or promotion, without changing the main part of the ad. While there is generally a charge to change the tag, it’s minimal compared to the cost of producing a completely new one.

2. If you already have a completed commercial, ask the TV station to add a “crawl” that will run along the bottom of the ad. This line of text can promote something new and be changed regularly. *A small charge may apply; check with your station.

3. If you’re advertising in print, a colorful “snipe” or “starburst” that contains information can easily promote your special without changing the rest of your ad.

4. Instead of one full page print ad, consider two half page ads in the same publication, and use one to “lead” the reader to find the second one.

5. Tags also work well on radio ads; have your station produce a 25-second spot and change out the last 5 seconds as you change your promotion.

It’s more important than ever to make your advertising work as hard as possible, and these tips can help you get more bang for your buck.

10am

social network users might be older than you think.

A recent study conducted by Royal Pingdom shows that the average social network user is 37 years old. If you use, or plan to use, social media marketing to reach a specific target audience, the following information can help you select the right social network to employ:

— LinkedIn, with its business focus, has a predictably high average user age of 44.

— The average Twitter user is 39 years old.

— The average Facebook user is 38 years old.

— The average MySpace user is 31 years old.

— Bebo has by far the youngest users with an average age of 28.

10am

Responding to media inquiries—5 “don’ts” from a journalist’s perspective

Stephane Fitch, Chicago bureau chief, Forbes, participated on a panel of journalists and writers at a webinar, “Responding to Media Queries: How to Stand out from the Crowd,” hosted by ProfNet on Nov. 11, and provided a great list of do’s and don’ts for PR professionals, including:

• Don’t reply to a query with, “What’s the story all about?” He doesn’t know before he writes it.
• Don’t offer an e-mail-only interview. Fitch prefers to talk to the expert via phone or in person.
• Don’t send a “form letter” offering a story. Custom-pitch him, explaining why you think the story is right for him and Forbes. Fitch said he throws away about 95 percent of the pitches he gets, because they’re obviously not targeted specifically to him.
• Don’t worry about “sound bites,” which can be useless. Just tell your story; he’ll find the sound bites.
• Do contact him to set up a coffee/lunch meeting. If you or your CEO is passing through Chicago, let him know. He values connecting with people/companies, and has never turned down an in-person meeting with a PR person who wants to find out more about what Forbes does.

10am

Cheap Tricks—media kit for beginners

You’ve published a book, launched a new product or started a new company. You want to snag some free publicity from the media but you don’t know how to get their attention. What you need is a media kit, and you don’t have to spend a lot to develop a package that will help put your business in the media spotlight. A basic media kit starts with the following 4 important components, packaged nicely in a presentation folder:

1. Backgrounder: this is a fact sheet of general information about your business.

2. A news release announcing the accomplishment or product you want to highlight.

3. A sheet of testimonials from customers, if applicable.

4. Contact information: name, phone number, email address and Web site.

Some companies include samples of their product or a CD or DVD of photographs to help tell their story. The aim of your media kit is to get the attention of the media, so be creative. For a press announcement about a new waterfront development, for example, we packaged all our media materials into a child’s sand pail with a sticker of the project’s logo on the front. For a very minimal cost, we were able to set our media kit apart from the rest, and the project received wide-spread regional coverage.

10am

the editor got it wrong: can I get a retraction?

If you’ve ever been quoted in a news article you’ve probably discovered that your words don’t sound quite the same in print as they did when they were leaving your mouth. Reading them the next day can bring all kinds of grief and pain, especially if you were mis-quoted. Should you request a retraction?

My general rule of thumb is to only request a retraction if the information could be potentially hurtful to someone. Most mis-quotes are annoying to the person quoted, but in the grand scheme are insignificant and quickly forgotten. And, since retractions aren’t often printed in large type in the most prominent locations, most times you’ll find that, while seemingly thousands of people read your quote, very few, if any, will notice the retraction.

Mispelled name, wrong title, even an incorrect fact that doesn’t change the integrity of the article—those are generally not reasons to request a retraction. Instead of asking for one, ask the publication to change their archives so that the stored information is correct.

10am

another free pr tool: online community calendars

One way to extend the mileage from news releases you distribute to announce events is to post event details on public community calendars. 

Television and radio station and newspaper and magazine community calendars are great venues on which to post events. But there are a number of other calendars that are available in most markets and should also be part of your distribution list:

— Church Web sites

— Local college Web sites

— Chamber of Commerce calendars

— Local “City” sites

Keeping relevance in mind, your event could also be posted on more specific sites: a pet adoption event could be posted on local humane/pet adoption sites, and a bridal expo could be posted on bride and social magazine sites. The list of opportunities is virtually endless and as long as your event appeals to a Web site’s publics, you should have no problem getting it posted there.

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Who are your company’s best advocates? 6 traits to seek out

I was fortunate to hear a presentation this week about building and motivating advocates, given by Terrie Glover Ard, senior vice president of Moore Consulting Group. Important not only to non-profits, advocates are individuals who care enough for an issue, cause, policy or product to influence others to support it. Her company has mobilized advocates in support of everything from Florida tourism to a brand of beer, using social media as the central communication platform.

So how do you leverage advocates, and find those who can help to expand your organization’s of influence? Ard says the first step is to identify the right people to become your advocates, and there are 6 attributes to look for:

1. They have a track record of contributing—they’ve influenced others with past boards, associations and networking circles

2. They are well respected and influential.

3. They are helpful, passionate and trustworthy.

4. They possess strong communication skills.

5. They have existing communication platforms (e-newsletter, blog).

6. They are committed to your program.

Ard says to select your advocates carefully, give them a plan, build two-way trust, provide a platform in which to use their voices (blog, Facebook, etc.) and integrate them with your business by involving them in planning, special events, launches and communication efforts. The result can be an “army of influencers” who can take your message out to a broad circle of potential clients, donors and volunteers.

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