REICH COMMUNICATIONS

Messaging During a Crisis -- A Challenge for PR

 

Advertising and public relations help drive business for most companies.  For many non-profit groups, like two that we represent, those marketing tools aren't about sales but more about their mission of getting important messages out.

During normal times. 

These are hardly normal times.

As the global focus now is, understandably, on the coronavirus pandemic, many businesses have changed their marketing efforts.  Instead of hard-sell messages, many companies are using advertising to maintain their brand visibility while saying to the public that "we're in this together" or "here's how we're trying to help" or "better times are ahead."

For those relying on public relations, it's a tougher challenge. Many reporters, editors and producers simply don't want to hear story pitches if they're not COVID-related.

For two of our clients, both in the non-profit sector, we're taking their messages and giving them legitimate relevance to the virus. It's working to get our messages out, even in the midst of the pandemic news.

For the Christophers, who annually honor the creators of outstanding books, films and TV programs, we're highlighting this year's winning books by framing the story as something we can do with all that extra free time as we shelter in place... read a good and inspiring book.

For The National Road Safety Foundation, we normally would be talking about distracted driving, since April is designated as national distracted driving month.  Our approach was to issue a release acknowledging that while most of us are driving less now, we still need to remember not to be distracted when we do drive to the superarket or drug store or to do other essential chores.   Taking that approach got us good traction and our story got good media pickup.

The key here...make your story relevant.  If you can't in these times, then wait.

   

 

What We Do: New Jersey Home & Garden Show

 

 

With the arrival of  the New Jersey Home & Garden Show next weekend, Feb. 21-23, we've been busy arranging advance exposure around celeb interior designer Doug Wilson, who will be appearing at the Home & Garden Show, offering tips to make rooms look great on a tight budget.

 

Doug is best-known as one of the designers on Trading Spaces, the hit on cable's TLC Channel.

 

We have him booked this Sunday on Today in New York on WNBC-TV, and next Wednesday on New York Live, which airs on the NBC stations here and in Boston.  And next Friday a.m., a live spot on Cheddar News, the streaming need channel aimed at millennials.  Plus lots of newspaper stories in the works as well.

Covering the Media... Again

 

While there are many great agencies throughout the country, New York remains the heart of the advertising and PR industries.  Unlike during the “Mad Men” era, they’re no longer huddled together on Madison Avenue, but they’re still here in New York.

Until Stuart Elliott retired from The New York Times a bit more than five years ago, the newspaper of record always gave significant coverage to the ad and media business and, to a lesser degree, public relations.  Stuart’s column was a must-read, as was Randall Rothenberg for a while before him and, for decades, Phil Dougherty. 

Until December 2014, The New York Times had a regular column devoted to the business of advertising and media since 1935.  Now, there’s an infrequent story about an agency or a campaign. 

It seems to me that The Times would want to step up its coverage of the ad business.  The ad column drew readers and sold papers…something that’s a challenge these days for newspapers.

Another popular column in The Times was the “Media Equation,” written occasionally by Jim Rutenberg.  The column became most popular under curmudgeon David Carr, who covered the media from 2002 until his death in 2015. 

The Times announced yesterday they’ve hired Ben Smith, the editor of BuzzFeed, to cover the media.   

I’m looking forward to reading him starting early in March.

Now, if The Times could only get back to serious coverage of the ad and PR business again.  Long overdue.

What We Do: Georgia Media

Was in beautiful Savannah today for a round of media interviews to promote Drive Safe Atlanta, a contest The National Road Safety Foundation does to engage teens in traffic safety messaging.

The theme for the contest this year is speeding, which accounts for more than a quarter of all traffic fatalities.

The local media recognize the importance of what we're trying to do, so I've done 3 TV interviews and a radio spot here.

Tomorrow, more of the same in Augusta and then Thursday in Atlanta.

Here's a clip from WSAV-TV, the NBC outlet in Savannah.

 

Georgia teens invited to create PSA about speeding SAVANNAH, Ga. (WSAV) — Speeding is the number one killer of teens in Georgia, claiming more than 9,000 lives each year. The National Road Safety Foundation is challenging Georgia teens to help crea… www.wsav.com

 

What We Do: Drive Safe Campaign

For The National Road Safety Foundation, we do contests for teens to get them engaged in informing their peers about various safe driving issues.  We do this in partnership with three major auto shows around the nation.

Our Drive Safe L.A. Challenge, with the Los Angeles Auto Show, just ended.  We had invited teens from throughout California to give us their ideas for a 30-second public service message about drugged driving, which is a growing safety issue.

Our winner, Jasmine Coxley of Redding, CA., spent Tuesday working with our TV production crew to film the TV spot. We arranged for coverage by the local TV station.

Click here to see the story that aired on KRCR-TV. 

The finished piece will air on more than 160 TV stations nationwide on Teen Kids News.

The Upfronts: Paying More for Less

 

It’s a ritual of late spring…the upfront TV marketplace.

Every year, the networks (and in recent years, major ad-supported cable channels) present their fall programming to major advertisers and ad agencies here in New York.  They’re usually glitzy productions at major venues – this year at Radio City Music Hall, Lincoln Center, the Beacon Theater – with lots of star-power from the networks.

There’s a lot at stake.  It’s a chance for advertisers to buy ad time at better rates than if they waited until later in the year, when prices could be anywhere from 10 to 40 percent higher in what’s called the scatter market.

During the upfront period, the networks usually sell as much as 90 percent of their prime time ad availability. 

The numbers are big.  The major networks rake in around $9 billion as advertisers rush to grab up ad time.  When you add in the dozens of cable networks, from A+E to National Geographic Channel, the total take is close to $20 billion.  And it’s almost always a sellers’ market, since the ad buyers don’t want to get locked out.

For major advertisers, TV still offers something other media can’t – a big audience seeing ad messages pretty much at the same time, or in “real time” as the network ad salespeople say.  So even as the total TV audience continues to dip, ad rates appear to be going up again this year. 

Marketers are paying more for less, but FOMO (fear of missing out) still drives the upfront market.

What We Do: The Impact of PR

 

 

Publicity these days takes on many formats and utilizes the whole array of media, from traditional to social.

It used to be all about exposure in newspapers and broadcast, and even when online news and information sites began surfacing, many marketers put little or no value on an online placement.   Back then, it was “Get me in The Times,” then morphing to “Get me on Donahue” and “Get me on Oprah.”

Now it’s more like “Get me trending on Twitter.”

Marketers, especially those with big budgets, continue to put their dollars into advertising.  Buy ads and you know when and where they’ll appear, with a good idea of how many eyeballs (or ears) it will reach.    

But, as many of us in PR have been saying for years (decades, actually), it’s not only about having your message be seen, but more about having it be believed and then creating consumer action – buying the product or service.

A new survey, reported in this week’s ADWEEK, looks at what type of content influences consumers to try a new product or service.  The biggest single influencer, the report shows, is articles and blog posts.  A good chunk of that content is initiated by PR outreach.   More than 28 percent say articles and blogs are what causes them to try to product.

Social media is close behind, at 22.6 percent.

Other things that impact consumers are in-person events, at 15 percent, and celebrity and influencer endorsements, at 9 percent.

Online ads are at 17 percent, and print and other traditional advertising is cited by 3.8 percent of respondents.  Ironic, since the numbers spent by marketers are just about the opposite.  Hmmm.

What We Do: Engaging Young People in Creating Safety Messaging

The National Road Safety Foundation, my client, has been creating materials to talk to young people about safe driving behavior for more than 55 years.  It began with literature and a film about drinking and driving, and it evolved into videos, supported by Powerpoints, literature and lesson plans covering topics ranging from speed and aggressive driving to drowsy driving and, more recently, distracted driving.

The programs are solid and they’ve been used in thousands of classrooms nationwide, as well as in presentations in communities by police, healthcare people and young people themselves through groups like SADD.

For many years, the programs were conceived by us, a group of adults working with our filmmaker.  Except for young people we used as actors, there was little if any youth involvement in developing programs that were aimed primarily at teens.  

That began to change several years ago when we were thinking of creating a video about distracted driving.  We knew what the message should be – don’t talk on the phone or text while driving – but we weren’t sure how to frame the message so it would connect with young people.  Should we focus on gloom & doom – the tragic results of a distracted driving crash?  Should we tell real-life stories?  What about things like music or humor? (Yes, humor, even for a serious subject.)

We pulled together a focus group and spoke with teens to see what kept them awake and interested, what motivated them hear and listen to our message, what bored them and what turned them off totally.  Our video “Generation tXt” proved popular and it’s still in use.

We then took it to the next step, to engage young people in actually creating the messaging and the videos.  We’ve been doing a series of contests where we invite teens to submit a script, storyboards or a written treatment describing a 30-second video (a TV public service announcement) on various safe driving issues and our producer works with them to film the public service message. 

Sometimes we also go directly to schools to work with students to create videos.  Earlier this year, we wanted to do another student-driven video, and I pushed to go to my alma mater, Mount Vernon High School.  We met with the TV Production teacher, Steven Galazzo, and he was excited to give his kids a chance to work with us  and our Emmy Award-winning director Alan Weiss, who produces the nationally-syndicated weekly show “Teen Kids News.”

After a couple of meetings with the class, a theme was selected and a script developed.  The idea was to talk about drinking and driving and the importance of not giving in to peer pressure.  Kids were selected to act in the piece, and other students served as extras, a student director and videographer.

I spent last Thursday at Mount Vernon High School, watching some great kids as they rehearsed and then did take after take until we got the footage we needed.  After a full day, the kids cheered when the student director, Stephan Johnson, a senior who conceived the spot with fellow seniors Jayda Pickett and Jannah Sharpe, called out “It’s a wrap!”                                                                                      

The video will be edited down to a 30-second spot that will air on 160 TV stations on “Teen Kids News” and also on other stations around the country when we distribute it for broadcast.     

When the piece is ready for air, I’ll post it here. 

I’m happy I was able to bring a this project to my old school and I hope the young people involved learned something while having fun.   

 

 

   at right, from The Journal News

When PR and Marketing Converge ... Cause-Related Marketing

 

PR and marketing converge in a tactic known as cause-related marketing.  A marketer ties its marketing efforts to a cause -- a charity, a social cause, a cultural organization or even a social movement.

Sometimes, the logic for a tie between marketer and cause is tenuous at best.  And every so often the tie is so perfect that it borders on brilliant.

I'm fortunate that early in my career I was involved in a cause-related program that made perfect sense.  In the late 1970s when I ran PR for hosiery pioneer L'eggs, we developed a tie-in with women's running, just as it was becoming "acceptable" for women to exercise and sweat.  A series of 10K women-only races in ten cities led to the L'eggs Mini Marathon in Central Park. With several thousand women participating in what was then the largest women's sporting event anywhere, it solidified the relationship between many women and what became the best-selling hosiery brand.

Yesterday, another cause-related related marketing campaign launched, with a brilliantly logical connection.

Wyndham Hotels, the world's largest hotel company, announced #JourneySafe, a new program from its Super8 hotel brand, to educate people about something that claims as many as 5,000 lives a year in the U.S. alone -- drowsy driving.

It's so logical for this company, which has thousands of clean and safe places where a fatigued driver can stop and get some sleep.  But after talking with some Wyndham execs, it's clear that this effort is also a highly personal one, which be makes the connection even more genuine.  Like about a third of all drivers, some Wyndham execs have experienced drowsy driving to the point of actually dozing behind the wheel.  So they know first-hand how scary and sobering it can be, not to mention how dangerous.

The #JourneySafe campaign will build awareness of dangers of drowsy driving, with signs to recognize fatigue and tips on how drivers can avoid driving drowsy.  A key part of the campaign is a cute video that uses dashboard dolls to warn drivers.

It’s good business when marketing and an important cause combine.  

And the winner is... ABC

 

Big events like the Super Bowl, the Grammy’s and the Oscars traditionally were must-watch TV, pulling in giant audiences for the nationwide live broadcasts.  But for the last several years, these events have not been a guarantee for a huge audience, which has been troubling for both the network carrying the event and for the advertisers spending in the millions per 30-second spot. 

The Academy Awards last Sunday proved to be a winner – not only for Green Book, Bohemian Rhapsody and Roma, but for ABC as well.

The ratings were up by 11.5 percent over last year’s Oscars telecast, drawing in 29.6 viewers.  And the event was profitable for ABC, which sold out all its available time in the telecast.  The network earned about $120 million during the program, with 30-second spots going for more than $2.8 million.

For comparison, the Grammy’s brought in about $95 million for CBS.  Approximately 30 million tuned in for the broadcast.  Super Bowl, which was the least-watched Super Bowl in ten years, still drew a super audience of 98.2 million – dwarfing the Grammy’s and Oscars combined.  Ad revenues for CBS were down five percent from a year ago, but still came to a hefty total of more than $385 million. The typical spot cost between $4.6 and $5.2 million.  

Pfft… a bundle, gone in 30 seconds.