trendSpotting Report
Marissa Hermo

They say to never bring your work home…but when you work in PR, doing so can often be beneficial. I never anticipated an overlap between what I learned on the job and my parenting methods — until I took a hiatus from the professional workforce to take care of my twin daughters.

Here’s what I learned. Italics all mine…

1. To pitch a story properly, you must get into the other person’s world. No one cares that you think your idea is the best one since Alexander Graham Bell said “It’d be neat if we didn’t have to walk all the way over to Jim’s house just to talk to him.”

Ordering one of my daughters to finish her vegetables is as effective as using sign language to communicate with a blind person. However, my explanation of how eating vegetables makes people healthier — thus minimizing the potential for future visits to people with needles — works wonders.

It’s the reporter’s job to write the story. It is your job as the PR professional to show the reporter why he or she should want to.

2. Keep up with trends. Otherwise, you’ll be left holding last year’s Yu-Gi-Oh cards while your kid cheers about the Nintendo DS game your least favorite cousin gave him.

If you don’t keep a sharp eye on trends, you won’t know how to tailor your pitches so that the reporter understands why it is relevant to what’s happening in the news. Piggybacking off the latest news stories requires that you’re actually informed about them.

3. When faced with an uncomfortable question, “no comment” is as good as saying “Yes, we screwed up and will continue to do so.”

The other day, my daughter ran up to me and said “Mommy, you said not to say that word, but yesterday you said it to the TV.” Rather than going into a long-winded explanation of how sometimes using that word is necessary (because what good was it to bring back Instant Replay if the refs are still going to blow calls), I pretended I didn’t hear her question. Not the best game-time decision in the world, because a minute later my darling daughter repeated her new vocabulary word to MY mother.

“No comment” leaves the door open for speculation which normally includes the worst-case scenario. Worse, “no comment” encourages the reporter to find someone who will comment, perhaps one of your competitors.

4. Be proactive and imaginative at all times. As a parent it’s not enough to toss a few child-proofing gadgets around and call it a day. Set up those baby gates then think “Okay, what dangerous items need to be removed from the kitchen, in case she drags the LeapFrog Learning Table across the room, climbs onto it and over the gate, rappels down using her Dora the Explorer pajama bottoms and then crawls down the hallway?”

What’s true for the Boy Scouts is true for PR. Be prepared. Crisis communications starts with prevention, visualizing what could possibly go wrong and formulating a plan for how you would handle it.

5. Be thorough with your follow-up and don’t make assumptions. If you hand your toddler a plate of food then go back to washing the dishes, chances are in two days you’ll lift up the couch cushions while vacuuming and find four pieces of broccoli and a chicken nugget.

PR people often lose stories because the reporter requested additional information and didn’t get it in a timely manner. Just because the reporter accepted the pitch doesn’t mean it’s time to rest on your PR laurels. Follow up and make sure they have everything they need. Most important, anticipate what they themselves may not have thought of yet. Like a martini. (Just kidding.) (Sort of.)

6. Be real. The media can sense BS — so can kids. This woman I know used to tell her 5-year-old son that she was going to work, when she was really going to a bar. Your kid is 5, not stupid. Even he knows that you’re not going to work at 10:00 p.m. on a Tuesday wearing a miniskirt and clear heels.

Steer clear of the B.S., and that includes the jargon that makes most people cringe when they hear it. You don’t need to tell them about this “cutting-edge” company that has created a “revolutionary paradigm” for “the wireless world” that will “change the face” of technology “as we know it.” If the reporter doesn’t throw up on you, I will.

Marissa Hermo is an RLM Account Executive who always calls it like it is – and never talks down to her kids…or anyone. It’s not her way.