Full Frontal PR Report
Alan Danzis

Picture this: Two Public Relations professionals (“Roger” and “Milo”) share an office.

Roger’s got his phone headset on and is chatting away to a USA Today reporter while he’s rattling off an e-mail to an AP writer.

His audience: Two people, with the potential to reach millions.

His job: Get these writers to get their audiences excited about a product or service his company offers.

Milo on the other hand has his feet on his desk, leans back in his chair, and doesn’t type a single thing on his keyboard for an hour, maybe more. When he does start typing, it’s a plan for an exciting new grassroots marketing initiative for one of his clients.

His audience: As little as hundreds or as many as thousands or millions.

His job: Get them excited about a product or service his company offers.

Marketing professionals sometimes forget that we must be thinking always about the audience. Whether we’re reaching them directly or through a reporter, your focus should always be on them.

Unfortunately, “get to know your audience” time is often limited to the moments it takes to finish a coffee. Because in this I-need-it-now culture, where a Blackberry and cell phone demand constant looking toward your lap, thinking about the audience can’t take long. Or so we’re told.

After all, you’ve got phone calls and e-mails to answer—now!

Truth is, it can and does take some energy. And that is the most valuable investment you can make in your PR program. The investment of time.

Without it, those phone calls go nowhere, the e-mails are just Spam, and that always-hoped-for audience won’t get the message. Hardcore consideration, serious “noodling,” and deep wrist-on-the-chin thinking about who you’re after shouldn’t just be reserved for when you’re writing PR plans. It’s a key component of everything you do for your company and/or brand every single day. And still it’s likely the first thing we overlook or forget.

Remember: Your audience on Tuesday might not be the same as the recipients of your Monday message.

So any time someone like Milo begins work on a campaign designed to enhance brand awareness or the availability of a product—whether a giveaway, advertising or another replicable tactic—he takes a step back and weighs the cost-per-lead, plus what will actually make the recipient of such an item really pleased.

It should be less “We make this AWESOME product” and more “We understand your problem; here’s how we help you solve it.”

Recently, an RLM client was attending a conference for educators, and they asked us to come up with an idea for a giveaway. We sat down—away from our computers—and asked ourselves three serious questions, all focused on the attendees of the conference:

1. What would an attendee actually like to receive?
2. What would they find useful?
3. What problems are they facing right now that we can help solve?

At no time did we ask ourselves, “Gee, what will make them remember our client?”

After a lot of intense deliberation—without violence or name calling—we settled on addressing the specific issue of Internet citations, the challenge that educators face when most of their students use the ‘Net for research but don’t know how to properly cite found information.

For us, it was important the client own this problem—and the solution—at the show. So we suggested developing a free poster for educators to hang in classrooms instructing students on the proper way to cite online information. 98% of the poster gave detailed instructions and explanations; at the very bottom it subtly mentioned our client.

We meditated, we speculated, and we ruminated until our brains felt like they weighed a hundred pounds. And because of it the posters were a huge success.

In communications, most of us serve many masters…the Board, shareholders, our customers, employees and of course that ole media. Sometimes a Board member insists that a feature in Wired should get all RLM’s attention, despite the fact that such a feature about the client doesn’t fit with the magazine’s editorial mission one bit. Or a business owner will ask why their widget isn’t featured in FHM (that’s his favorite magazine) when the widget is targeted at 35-year-old women.

We have to always remember that in the end our messages and tactics are designed to reach specific groups and are not interchangeable. The right tactic with the right message will not be the same in every circumstance.

Remember: take a few minutes each day to actually daydream… I mean meditate! (One business leader dropped a bonus on the desk of an employee he found with his feet up on the desk. What did he know?!) Sure it can be hard to shut off the monitor and unplug the phone, but do me a favor: just think about it.

RLM’s gifted Account Executive Alan Danzis would like to point out that he put a lot of thought into this article.