Draw the subject matter out
It may sound obvious, but the photographer must draw the subject matter out. If you are taking a product shot, don't make the photo so busy, or the backdrop so complicated that it's difficult to make out what the subject matter is. Take care that the background will not merge with the subject when reproduced as a black and white picture. The colours may appear to be contrasting but could end up as one blur in a black and white photograph. Similarly, an interesting, light-coloured background could end up as a dull pale grey when produced in black and white.
The value of human interest
PR product shots should enhance the product to their best advantage and appear eye-catching. You can bring a product to life by adding human interest so that it catches the reader’s eye. If you have a cuddly toy, show it photographed with a child - it will make the shot far more appealing. (They say never work with children or animals, but picture editors love them.)
Ideally, editors like to receive a variety of shots, so they can select the best one for their page. However, this gets very costly, so make sure that the picture you send can be easily cropped to fit all combinations of shapes on the page, such as landscape, portrait or square areas. But don't let the picture editor have too much scope for cropping the photo, because it could end up unrecognisable!
More and more newspapers and trade magazines have the facility to accommodate colour photos now, so do take colour transparencies where possible. If you have a good colour transparency to accompany a product release then you stand more chance of it being used than if it is black and white. Be warned that a number of trade publications charge a small fee to cover the cost of colour separations, and although the PR industry has campaigned against this, it remains an issue.
Cost effective distribution
Incidentally, on the question of cost, rather than sending prints to 750 regional newspapers round the country, send half-tones: they’re a fraction of the price, but give editors a good idea of what is available and are often good enough for reproduction.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that photos can be sent over PR Newswire’s Picture Wire. Our high-speed satellite network transmits photos directly to 130 picture desks in Britain. Pictures can be sent with a brief caption story, or alternatively can be cross-referenced to stories or features transmitted over PR Newswire News Network.
Some final tips
• If you are taking shots of people shaking hands or receiving a prize, avoid large gaps between them, or extraneous heads hovering in the background. Try not to have groups of people standing in a row. Bring movement into the shot, ideally making use of the products you’re aiming to promote.
• When you take photographs to show how small a product is, such as a microchip, then have a coin or similar object in the shot as a scale reference. And don’t send your latest product shot to the news editors of the nationals - they take their own pictures and generally don’t use pack shots.
So, you’ve achieved all this and have some sensational pictures ready to send off. Finally, do make sure they are captioned and have a contact name and phone number printed or affixed on the back of every photo, as they will inevitably become separated from the accompanying text.
Competitions
Local newspapers’ competitions present a novel way of promoting a company at relatively low cost. So why not contact your local press and try to get them to run a competition for you?
Firstly, approach them with a format such as “spot the difference”; a crossword; questions with multiple answers; word grids, etc. Secondly, you'll need to negotiate the prizes. Prize value can vary according to the publication's circulation. Remember, the objective of running a competition is to get as many people entering as possible, so keep it simple and easy to enter.
Once a competition has been agreed, write some short, snappy copy with appropriate details of the prize (which, ideally, will be one of your products - giving you the excuse to exploit its benefits!)
In your covering letter to the editor, remember to attach answers on a separate sheet of paper and enclose any necessary artwork or photography. Don't forget to list the full details of the prize and total prize value.
Once the competition has been judged, don't forget to arrange a photo shoot to maximise the promotional opportunity. It may be appropriate to organize nation-wide competitions. There are literally hundreds of local papers in the UK, so the most practical way of approaching this is to mail details of the competition, asking them to respond with their name, address and required prize value if they are interested. PR
Newswire offers a cost-effective and efficient method of distributing this type of promotional material via our weekly Newspac service. The total cost of this service is less than the postage alone, and includes media selection, fulfillment, typing labels, media checklist and postage!
Consumer magazines also welcome competitions, but will demand that the value of the prizes given to their readers is significant and will vary to the circulation of the magazine.
You may want to consider using a fulfillment house for the receiving and handling of competition responses. PR Newswire offers a complete fulfilment service which includes competition handling, mailing services, order processing, telephone response and fulfillment.
For rules and regulations relating to competitions please contact The Periodical Publishing Association (PPA) on 0207 404 4166.
Competitions
Sponsorship is a way of offering support, either financial or material, via some independent activity, not usually linked with the company’s activities. Sponsorship can be categorised into:
Publication Sponsorship
• Supplements
• Advertorials
• On the page
Event Sponsorship
• Exhibitions
• Conferences
• Awards
• Sport
• The Arts
• Community interests
• Environmental schemes
Sponsorship can be less expensive method of reaching specific audiences than advertising and can be highly effective for achieving a wide variety of objectives such as increasing awareness, improving brand or company image, building relationships, creating opportunities for integrated communications campaigns, etc.
However, care must be taken to ensure that the right message, image and values are promoted by the choice of sponsorship, and that it will be maintained and developed by other communications activities. And remember that while one particular audience may be attracted to a company or product through their sponsorship of their chosen pastime or cause, yet another audience may be alienated.
Part 3
Getting to
know the media17
The more you know about the media the easier your job will become.
The main media categories are as follows:
• National Press
• Regional Press
• Freesheets
• Consumer Magazines
• Trade & Technical Publications
• Broadcast Media (Radio/TV)
• Internet
As each media sector has very different requirements, editorial material should be carefully targeted to match specific needs. A story that is of interest to the Bristol Observer, for example, will be more than likely end up in the bin if it is sent to a national newspaper or TV station. Precise targeting also has cost saving benefits, eliminating the cost of mailing your release to irrelevant media.
Broadcast Media
Radio and television newsrooms may produce audio and video output, but like newspapers and magazines they generally start from the written word. News editors and editorial departments receive and handle press releases in the same way that publishers do. At smaller radio stations, there may be no newsdesk as such, in which case individual programme presenters should be contacted direct.
National news coverage is generally centralised: at BBC radio and television in London, ITN (for all commercial TV news programmes), IRN and Network News (which supplies feeds to almost all commercial radio stations) and Sky News. It is seldom worth sending a national story to individual stations and channels unless there is an obvious regional angle, e.g. where the national story is about an invention or technological breakthrough but the local angle may be on the person or factory which made it.
However, often the most effective way to get broadcast coverage is to supply not the written word but audio or video material.
Radio
Local radio stations have for some years accepted radio tapes in the form of broadcast quality interviews with an expert, recorded in a studio with professional assistance. As you would expect, stations will use such tapes where the expert speaks with general appeal: a tape which mentions Brand X in every sentence will join that day’s poor press releases in the bin!
PR Newswire maintains regular contact with local radio stations and with those programme presenters willing to take outside tapes. Alternatively, your experts can be interviewed live by several stations in succession, using a studio link direct to each station in turn. Thus a spot on the radio in Portsmouth can be followed minutes later by one in Leeds without the interviewee leaving their seat. PR Newswire run a studio and set up these link to targeted stations for a morning or afternoon session.
Television
The 1990’s saw increasing use of the video news release (VNR). As the phrase suggests, it is a press release on video tape; but what television stations require is very different from the needs of radio.
Ideally a VNR will contain around four minutes of footage, with a script that merely describes what is being shown. Usually, a further 20 minutes of more general footage, without a script, is added at the end.
On no account should you include a spoken sound-track: your VNR will only be shown while the station's own reporter or presenter talks to his/her own script.
VNR’s are increasingly used to provide footage of new products, processes, factories, etc. Television is a visual medium. News stories of any length have to be accompanied by pictures. It is very difficult for a TV station to film your story and therefore your VNR will be much appreciated.
Often, a story, which might only have been of marginal news value and thus the TV station did not send a crew to cover it, can still get into the TV programme after all if the VNR is timely and visually interesting. VNR’s should not be confused with corporate videos. Companies will often produce a 25-30 minute sales-oriented film of an event or a development, mainly for internal staff consumption or showing to customers and prospects. Do not send this to a TV station - though it may be that the footage for the VNR can be largely edited from the corporate video.
In the UK there are around 10 specialist producers of VNR’s – PR Newswire can put you in touch with the companies best equipped to handle the details for your specific application. Distribution (on tape or via satellite links) is arranged either by the producer or by a specialist distribution company. You can also reach the whole of Europe (some 90 stations) and/or North America with a VNR.
News Agencies
The main news agency in the UK is PA News (Press Association). It provides a services of general news and features, sports and financial news & results, plus photos, 24 hours a day. PA News serves all the national press and broadcasters, plus most of the regional daily and Sunday press with a feed via satellite into newsroom editorial systems.
Getting PA News to cover your story will get you a long way towards widespread coverage. But remember that PA News is a news organisation: it will cover your story (rather than carry it) if and when it chooses, and the subscriber news organisations likewise can use a story if and when they choose. So PA News is no substitute for direct distribution.
And even where PA News does cover your story, newspapers and broadcasters generally appreciate having the whole text of your release to hand as well, particularly if it has regional interest which will mean that some papers will want to give it more prominence than PA News did. PR Newswire News Network uses the PA’s satellite network to reach the national and regional press and broadcasters, but this is separate from PA coverage: PR Newswire News Network stories appear on journalists’ screens clearly identified as press releases, with source and contact details appended.
Accessing
Media Data
Media Directories
There are over 12,500 publications and newspapers and some 800 broadcast media in the UK alone, so trying to establish which ones are relevant to you can be a somewhat laborious task. Directories are an invaluable aid to targeting the relevant contacts within each media sector.
Successful media and investor relations campaigns rely on the accuracy of the media or financial data used. PR Newswire produces a complete range of media and financial directories produced from data gleaned by skilled researchers who maintain a database of information covering thousands of UK and European media titles and UK City institutions. PR Newswire’s research team make over 20,000 amendments to our database every week and between them have 12 languages at their command.
MediaManager
A PC-based media database like PRN’s MediaManager will provide access to the most up-to-to the minute data with greater flexibility and functionality enables you to maximise the power and performance of your PR campaigns.
More than simply correct contact details, MediaManager contains information on editorial interests and preferred method of receipt of press releases for individual journalists while for major titles, profiles on readership and editorial content are included.
Designed for flexibility and ease of use, to suit individual work needs, MediaManager can be used as a stand-alone version or networked for a group of PCs. Its unprecedented range of features, such as part-word searching, automatic links and versatile clipboard functions, enables you to gather information and create lists within seconds.
Without leaving your desk you can build mailing lists by selecting a range of criteria such as media category, circulation, frequency, correspondent type, TV region and geographical location. You can also use MediaManager to automate routine tasks such as printing labels and mailmerging your press releases. To save even more time, after selecting your mailing lists on MediaManager you can forward them electronically to PR Newswire, along with your press release, for immediate distribution via international newswire, e-mail, fax, courier or mail and the Internet.
Distribution
There are a number of distribution options available to meet a variety of news distribution needs.
By Post
The traditional, inexpensive method of distribution for material which is not time-sensitive. Distribution should be timed carefully to allow for possible delays in the mail service.
By Hand
A quick, reliable and safe means of delivery for sensitive financial and corporate news to the City media and financial institutions, particularly where large amounts of documentation are involved. PR Newswire offers a unique hand-delivery service with a team of dedicated in-house couriers delivering news to media and City destinations every hour throughout the day.
By Enhanced Facsimile
Fax is increasing popular among PR professionals as a fast, cost-effective method of reaching a vast number of contacts within minutes – both within the UK and around the globe. However, editorial offices, especially the national and the main regional press, are inundated with incoming faxes, receiving up to 2,000 per day! You should be aware that in large editorial offices faxes do not always reach the intended recipient as fast as you would like them to. PR Newswire’s enhanced fax service allows you to fax direct to selected media contacts with automatic redialing and alert facilities. Depending upon individual campaign requirements the transmission can be programmed for day and night and full transmission reports can be provided.
By Wire
Transmitting text and pictures direct to journalists’ screens on their desk (now done via satellite but still known as ‘wire’ because it used to be done via dedicated phone lines). Research indicates that wire distribution is generally the major media's preferred method of receiving news as it is delivered in a format which does not require re-keying and can be ‘subbed’ on screen in a few minutes. It also by-passes the vast piles of faxes and mail they receive every day, and all the media will receive the story simultaneously. PR Newswire’s wire services are the only commercial wire services in the UK, with unique access to the Press Association’s satellite wire services delivering newswire copy to more than 200 newsrooms around the UK in seconds.
By Internet
As the internet becomes more widely used, the world wide web provides you with the opportunity to maximise the exposure of your news release material at minimal expense. PR Newswire's website at www.prnewswire.eu.com carries all material transmitted on PR
Newswire’s wire services as well as a selection of press releases sent out by PR Newswire on paper and fax on behalf of its clients. News releases can be identified with corporate logos and enhanced by hotlinks to the organisations own website.
The website extends the reach of PR Newswire’s wire services to magazine journalists, freelance correspondents and staff working from home. It can be searched by company name, specialist subject area and date, allowing journalists who are working under deadline pressure or outside office hours, to gather background news o a company or product.
By email
Email presents the PR professional with an alternative method of directly targeting individual journalists. PR Newswire’s Email Distribution Service posts your news releases electronically, to addresses researched by us or to your own personal lists. While email remains new and relatively untried, do remember that:
• The targeted journalists may be out of the office that day and the news releases may not be picked up by colleagues.
• As email is a direct communications mechanism journalists will be extra-sensitive to badly targeted releases and being flooded by material.
• Many journalists use email continually, others may only check their incoming email a few times a week.
By NEWSdesk
NEWSdesk is an internet-based news retrieval system for journalists. Over 15,000 journalists, analysts and consultant have free access to stories which they can filter by language, date, subject, geographical area and company. Organisations posting stories to the NEWSdesk web site can use the site to monitor which journalists are downloading their news.
By International
If you need access to the international media or financial institutions, PR Newswire can help you reach your target audience through its unique relationship with international news agencies and specialist distributors across the globe. Releases can be translated to more than 10,000 major newspapers and broadcasters in 135 countries and 22 languages.
Evaluation
So, having sent out your press release or tape, are you going to sit back and congratulate yourself I all your hard work? PR success is measured not in activity but in results. So how do you find out how well you did?
Media Monitoring
Traditionally, clients - whether in-house or through their consultancies - like to see cuttings of the press coverage they received. The main press cuttings agencies offer one or both of two distinctive kinds of service.
An overnight service will scan the national and regional daily press for mentions of a company or product name. As the work usually takes place in the middle of the night as soon as newspapers roll of the presses, cuttings are usually faxed or delivered by hand before the start of the working day. It is worth remembering that agencies usually scan one or more designated reading lists: they will, in the main, not look specifically for your story in the media to which it was sent. For trade and consumer press and magazines, a general service is slightly more leisurely - in daylight. Readers scan a list of media and on a daily or weekly schedule will send you over the cuttings.
For radio, the system works differently. Producers of syndicated radio tapes, including PR Newswire, will check whether the stations which received the tapes have used them, and will provide you with a report.
For television and major radio stations, broadcast monitoring companies such as Tellex Monitors watch and record all the major news programmes. You can ask them in advance to look out for your story; or alternatively ask them to send tapes or transcripts of anything they pick up.
Increasingly, PR practitioners offer evaluation services where cuttings are analysed and measured according to a number of key evaluation criteria such as: size of story, number of company or product mentions, location in paper - or indeed on the page - tone of story, appearance of specific messages or associations of the company or product with particular qualitative statements such as "Brand X, the market leader."
Usually the data is then collated and presented in chart form using computer graphics. Of course, it would be easy to fall into the trap of measuring all media relations by the volume of cuttings. The work you do to ensure a company or product is known by the media and is viewed favourably can pay of in other ways. For example, if your target trade or consumer press view a company favourably, they are less likely
to run a major piece on a customer complaint, design or safety problem without at least giving the organisation a fair chance to reply. If they know little or nothing of you, you run the risk of such a crisis situation going badly against you. So if your story doesn't get used, don't worry; it will have been read and digested, and the journalist will have your name and number to hand.
If this guide has whetted your appetite and you wish to discover more about how PR can work for you, please get in touch....
PR Newswire
Ludgate House
245 Blackfriars Road
London
SE1 9UY
United Kingdom