A Quick “Primer” on Public & Media Relations (It Might Not Fit in a Nutshell)
I promised my friends at Startup Health that I would try to help them navigate the wily world of public relations (PR) and media relations (MR), in such a way that actually saves them time, money, and the pain of watching their messages take on a life unintended, with consequences to boot.
As I had a chance to tell one of my colleagues at the recent Startup Health summit, perhaps the most difficult truth to accept about publicity is that messaging is very hard to control – which is fine if what’s being conveyed is simple or innocuous. But in the healthcare world, nothing fits neatly into those categories, whether due to legal/regulatory or scientific reasons, or because our companies are solving complex problems that [no matter how diligently we try or how hard we’re pushed] are simply not conducive to 140-character spurts.
The goal of this primer, therefore – which builds on something like a decade spent in various journalistic roles, from advocate to researcher to editor to publisher to critic to reporter to lecturer to (perhaps most distinctively, in the worlds of MediaPost’s Larry Dobrow) “adept schmoozer” – helps illuminate some “tricks of the trade” for entrepreneurs who aim to interface with professional reporters in a fashion that is at once conducive to relationship-building, by illuminating the road to common ground, and also productive with respect to generating good and meaningful press.
(After all, one might be amazed at just how pointless it is to have one’s name featured offhandedly in the press…being quoted doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t tie back to one’s ultimate business objectives. EXCEPTION: If one’s business objective is to be quoted, and there are people for whom that is a priority.)
It’s amazing how much similarity there is between being a startup CEO and a reporter: both are vocational jobs, both are very lonely at times, both involve deadlines not necessarily within one’s own control, and both are helped by a broad base of knowledge and a general curiosity.
I may add to this primer as time goes by, but to start, here are the “Three Keys” to good press: caffeine, alcohol, and tobacco (I don’t advocate for cigarettes, but a good cigar on a special occasion serves as sweet dessert and exclamation point.) Within the journalistic community, certain addictive characteristics are long-known (and even heralded) and seen as “par for the course,” given the amount of time that journalists spend at their very isolated, often lonely craft that includes long hours. That said, off the cuff while on a plane back to the Bay Area, here are my top tips to securing solid press…consider this a mini-tutorial.
Ode to Newtown, Connecticut
> Identities of Connecticut shooting victims
> A spot-on assessment attributed to Morgan Freeman (but not necessarily made by him)…
There are two “two sides” about 20 children being murdered. The 21st century gun debate in America smacks of obfuscation and dodgery and misplaced priorities. What do we have to show for it? Murder. The lives of bright-eyed dreamers too soon snuffed out.
I’m furious. Passionately pissed off. The principle of “mutually assured destruction,” which held a cold war at bay so long ago (or so it seems by measure of modern memory) has given way to actual mutually assured destruction. Guns over here and guns over there has led not to stalemate, as the Second Amendment likely intended: the guarantee that Americans could defend themselves against tyrants has not made us safer, but rather, placed us all at greater risk. Theory does not matter here – reality trumps all.
Certain business leaders said, “You cannot argue with success.” By similar logic, you also cannot argue with repeated mass slayings, as the President noted: “Can we honestly say that we’re doing enough to keep our children — all of them — safe from harm? Can we claim, as a nation, that we’re all together there, letting them know that they are loved, and teaching them to love in return? Can we say that we’re truly doing enough to give all the children of this country the chance they deserve to live out their lives in happiness and with purpose? I’ve been reflecting on this the last few days, and if we’re honest with ourselves, the answer is no. We’re not doing enough. And we will have to change.”
When those who claim the right to be blind (and then some…) wake up to their tragic folly? I’ve never agreed so strongly with my Israeli friend Kfir Catalan: he’s right. In England, for example, where guns are illegal to everyone but a few specialized police teams, the murder rate is at a 30-year low in 2012.
But let me throw a bone to my conservative friend Greg Vaslowski, and the senator that perhaps best encapsulates his view, Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina.
- Here is Greg’s opinion on gun control, as explicated in a Facebook post: “Guns have been here for hundreds of years with the majority of citizens having no problems with them. It’s the proliferation and acceptance of certain types of behavior or some bleeding heart need to somehow assimilate parts of society with serious illnesses or dark thoughts is the problem.”
- Here is Senator Graham’s opinion, as told to CNN’s Piers Morgan on December 11, 2012: “I enjoy shooting. I hunt. It’s something me and my dad did together. And in the South, it’s part of growing up. Now when people abuse a weapon, I think having additional penalties for a crime committed with a gun makes perfect sense.”
Let it be said, for both of these Gentlemen, that if the one’s concerns it that one will be unable to go out hunting with one’s father – as Senator Graham clearly enjoys and that, as Greg rightly points out, has been going on for a long, long time – then I believe one would be hard-pressed to find a cogent, reasonable excuse for disallowing citizens to hunt using traditional tools of the trade. There is not a good reason that a hunting rifle or shotgun should not be used to do what humans have done for so long. Continue reading →
Democrats for Business 