Full Frontal PR Report

The following was written by RLM’s CEO, Richard Laermer, and VP, Michael Prichinello. It was intended as a sidebar in their book Full Frontal PR: Getting People Talking About You, Your Business, or Your Product, but the vagaries of editing and layout kept it from publication. Enjoy!

Despite the fact that news happens overnight, PR is surely not an overnight process. (To say the least.) In PR, as with so many other things, patience is a virtue.

We hear about “instant gratification” every day. Everything from digital recording boob tubes to Lipton’s cold-brewed iced teabags is engineered to give us exactly what we want when the whim overtakes us. Unfortunately, to really savor both little and big luxuries, you have to earn them. Waiting for the tea to brew and cool is a chore that’s filled with huffing and puffing, but when it’s ready to be served, it’s a brew that’s far better than a scientific teabag could ever be.

The same goes for media and “media-gratification.” Never expect a catchy pitch letter to reap mounds of press just because YOU like it. These pieces of correspondence that you so adore, the phrasings you think are so amazing—the real news is that only you think so.

There’s simply no just add water solution. Great PR takes time, patience and a lot of really talented, time-worthy effort. Anyone can land a story with enough phone calls, but remember, that’s not the goal. What we’re ultimately trying to achieve is to show the media what we believe is culturally relevant by manipulating trends and national conversations with our person, service or gigantic thing.

That’s no small feat. We live in a media-saturated (dare we say, overburdened) society, where all of us are bombarded by information from the TV, the radio, and the Web (darn those pop-up ads), and on the billboards. Few spaces are private anymore with respect to informational bombardment—think about all the advertising you see on the back of cabs and elevators. In this world, elevating your message to important status simply isn’t an overnight job.

Let’s take TiVo as an example of the story behind a seemingly “overnight” success. TV technologists at TiVo starting spreading the buzz well before their apparatus was available. They were smart enough to know they had some perception potholes (in the minds of consumers) that would need paving before any couch potato would plunk down a few hundred bucks to bring one home. “I just got a DVD player, what do I need this for?” “Monthly fees on top of cable?” “Are commercials really the enemy?” And, of course, “Harrumph! Sounds complicated! Is there a manual I got to read?”

And yet, over the course of a few seasons, TiVo “suddenly” were being heralded as the invention of the decade and savior to all those who haven’t fallen, and can still get up. There’s a lot of strategy behind what looks like an overnight success…and strategizing and planning takes time.

The awesome undertaking of a true PR campaign is building brand and awareness on a grand scale. You’re using the press to sway opinions. What’s more, you’re posting a detour sign on the road of the natural progression that the media takes to make a tiny piece into a national phenomenon. It takes a while to make the phenomenon real, so when a first month’s worth of work hasn’t panned out into gobs of coverage, remember that you’re a month closer to the pinnacle of success. Don’t confuse that steady climb with the gorge of failure.

You know, people misunderstand the whole point of PR and at our firm we often cluck at the naysayers. Those are the people who think it’s a quick fix and that everything can be solved with one decent piece of press. The point is, without message you’re screwed. If you go out with a story that serves a dim purpose, you might as well have stayed home and silent.