Sometimes there seems to be no client news worthy of coverage. That’s when the savvy PR pro digs deep into the old bag of tricks and pulls out one of these ideas to perk things up:

* The List
* The Index
                                                     * The Hall of Fame.

Best of, worst of, most of, least of, top and bottom lists can be great ways to get coverage. Designer Mr. Blackwell made a career out of his Worst Dressed List. Country Music Television has turned this into an art form by not just developing the list but making a TV show out of it. Consider its 40 Best Drinking Songs.

You can use these lists to engage your own customers or readers. Do a survey and have them vote. I always like using odd numbers like 11 or seven instead of 10 for my lists. It seems to me they get better coverage. If you are going to develop one of these lists, don’t be boring. Come up with something that has some controversy attached to it to ensure greater coverage.

The Consumer Confidence Index is one of the most well known of the indices. The CCI is an index that requires some heavy lifting to prepare, but you can develop one that is purely for publicity purposes. The National Association of Realtors developed the housing affordability index, an easy-to-compile index that shows how much income you need in order to afford a home of a certain purchase price.

My initial thought when I worked with Carolinas AGC to develop the Carolinas Construction Barometer was to come up with a publicity tool. However, when we enlisted UNCC to help us develop the methodology it quickly became a real tool that required a lot of work. So, be careful with this one or it can get away from you.

Finally, there is the Hall of Fame. You don’t need bricks and mortar to have one. It can be virtual like Bill Stoller’s PR Hall of Fame that exists online and in press releases but nowhere else.

So, the next time there is no news, do some media relations magic: create some out of thin air.

Harry Hoover is a partner in My Creative Team. He has 30 years of experience in crafting and delivering bottom line messages that ensure success for serious businesses like Bank of Commerce, The Bray Law Firm, Brent Dees Financial Planning, CruisingTheICW.com, Duke Energy, Focus Four, Levolor, North Carolina Tourism, TeamHeidi, Ty Boyd Executive Learning Systems, VELUX, and Verbatim.

Article Source.

Tags: news, public relations, stories, PR

Although it seems less common these days, there are still a fair number of us
public relations practitioners who enter the business by crossing over from the
journalist’s side of the notebook.

When you make that transition, you become something of an oracle.
Colleagues and clients expect you to be the walking, talking answer to the
Rubik’s cube puzzle of how to gain the attention of the media. If only it were
that simple!

Landing media placements is at least as much about art as it is science.

But it’s also about you and who you are as a PR person. What did I learn in two
decades of writing and editing for newspapers, magazines and news services?

First of all, a PR pro doesn’t need a journalistic pedigree to succeed with
journalists.

But you do have to possess something else: knowledge of what journalists
really want from PR people. I’m not talking about what journalists want from
your story – that’s another subject.

I’m talking about you. Do you know what journalists want from you, as the
individual who’s e-mailing, faxing, calling and (too often, I fear) pestering
them?

Here’s my short list of attributes that will get you a hearing from journalists
(and that’s all you want – your story will sink or float on its own merits):

1. Honest brokers

Journalists know PR people have something to promote – a company, a
product, a point of view. That’s not the issue.

It’s whether the journalist trusts that the story is coming from someone who
won’t waste their time – someone who has invested the effort to understand
them, their organization, their boss, and whether the story might interest the
audience the journalist serves.

Trust is fundamental – but it’s also earned. Becoming an honest broker
requires more than one conversation with a journalist. It requires enough
dialogue that a relationship and a history of honest dealings can be
established.

2. Facilitators

Face it, journalists don’t want to talk to PR people – at least not on the record,
and not as newsmakers.

Good PR practitioners know they’re not newsmakers. They recognize that their
role is to make stories happen, not be part of them. So good PR pros focus on
being matchmakers, putting journalists together with the sources who make
stories come alive.

For the PR pro, as well as the journalist, it’s all about the story. It’s not about
you, or the institutional challenges you face in making the story happen. It’s
about making the story real. And that leads me to what journalists really,
really want from PR practitioners (and what we should strive to be):

3. Advocates for communication

No journalist wants to deal with a PR person who’s primarily unavailable, and
when he or she is available, has a vocabulary limited to phrases such as “no
comment.”

All other things being equal (including working for an organization or a leader
who doesn’t communicate) journalists still give the benefit of the doubt to a PR
person whom they know to be an advocate of communication.

That doesn’t mean someone who’s going to speak at inappropriate times about
subjects that aren’t in the best interests of their organization. It means
someone who understands deadlines, editors, the competition and the other
pressures that journalists face while trying to do their jobs.

It means someone who understands that the best interests of their
organization always include good relationships with the news media, the
trusted purveyors of independent information for the customers, employees,
investors and other audiences that the PR pro wants to reach.

In the end, that’s what all of media relations is really about: A good journalist
and a good PR pro want to serve their audiences first.

It’s not always possible for journalists and PR pros to achieve that objective
from their respective viewpoints in every interaction. But over the course of
time, in a relationship of trust, respect and understanding, honest brokers who
facilitate the story and advocate for communication will succeed in landing
media placements.

Paul Furiga is president of WordWrite Communications LLC, a Pittsburgh-based public relations agency that harnesses the timeless power of storytelling to share its clients great untold stories. He is the former editor of the Pittsburgh Business Times, and has also covered Congress, the White House, edited magazines and written for publications ranging from Congressional Quarterly to Frequent Flyer magazine.

Article Source.

Joe Biden

Joe Biden’s Hedge Fund Ties

In an effort to cover the top 2-3 hedge fund centric news stories each day related to hedge funds here’s a piece on Joe Biden’s family and their ongoing legal battle regarding a hedge fund business.

A son and a brother of Sen. Joe Biden Jr. (D-Del.) are accused in two lawsuits of defrauding a former business partner and an investor of millions of dollars in a hedge fund deal that went sour, court records show.

The Democratic vice presidential candidate’s son Hunter, 38, and brother James, 59, assert instead that their former partner defrauded them by misrepresenting his experience in the hedge fund industry and recommending that they hire a attorney with felony convictions.

The legal actions have been playing out in New York State Supreme Court since 2007, and they focus on Hunter and James Biden’s involvement in Paradigm Companies LLC, a hedge fund group. Hunter Biden, a Washington lobbyist, briefly served as president of the firm.

A lawsuit filed by their former partner Anthony Lotito Jr. asserts in court papers that the deal was crafted to get Hunter Biden out of lobbying because his father was concerned about the impact it would have on his bid for the White House. Biden was running for the Democratic nomination at the time the suit was filed.

Hunter Biden was made president with an annual salary of $1.2 million, despite his inexperience in the hedge fund industry, the lawsuit said. Before that, he had been part of the Washington law firm Oldaker, Biden & Belair, which earned $1.76 million in lobbying revenue in the first half of 2006, according to Congressional Quarterly’s CQ MoneyLine. One of its biggest clients is the National Association of Shareholder and Consumer Attorneys, a District-based group representing law firms specializing in investment and corporate law….Read the rest of this article here.
__________________

Update: Here is another article excerpt on Joe Biden:

According to Joseph Biden, the hedge fund industry and private equity deserve the blame for the global credit crisis.

The Delaware senator and running mate of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama made that assertion in a primary debate last year when he was himself running for president. Obama, a senator from Illinois, is running for president against Arizona Sen. John McCain.

During that debate Biden, named vice president on the Obama ticket over the weekend, characterized the hedge fund industry and private equity as “no transparency, no accountability.” Read the full article here.

- Richard

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