20 posts tagged “media”

Even a band you cannot stand (and I can) can put together a brilliant marketing campaign, multimedia, multi-modal, teasers, punk, guerrilla, viral. . . Cory Treffiletti says, "This is a true digital marketing concept that has no regard for boundaries or paradigms. This is not an Internet promotion. This is far beyond an integrated promotion. This is unlike anything I have ever seen, . . ." Give a healthy read to the comments at the end of the article at Online Spin. There are bits of gold there. 

Okay, I admit it, it has been years and years since I last picked up a comic book - other than Heavy Metal and I do not particularly like their advertising client base, but they probably do get a lot of response. Hmmm, they might pique my interest if I could win a dinner with Julie Strain, just maybe. Anyway, Lydia Loizides of Media Technologies Future writes that she reads them and that they have a strong demographic readership. Here are some facts and figures from her article: "...the U.S. comic book business (publishing only) was approximately $550 million in 2005, ... Virgin Comics retains an 86% male, 14% female readership, with a median age of 23 and age concentration from 16 to 29, with a median household income of $50.69k ... " Did that get your attention? Well, if not, then consider, "Marvel Entertainment alone, through titles such as "Blade," "Spider-Man," "X-Men," "Elektra," "Fantastic Four," "The Hulk" and "Daredevil" generated over $4 billion in eight years over 14 films." 

The IndiaPRBlog! conducted a survey and reports a list of things PR pros need to keep in mind when dealing with media. This is a helpful list for newcomers and students in the PR field. Seasoned pros probably (should?) know most of this. I did not find the number of participants.

1. Stick to the facts, understand what is news and what is not.
2. Journalists are rated on the basis of exclusive stories they generate everyday. If you can give a journalist several exclusives, you would be the star PR person.
3. When journalists doing negative stories want quotes from top client bosses, PR people should be able to help. If you can do this, you will have the journalist eating out of yours and your clients' hands.
4. Get to know the editor very well, then some amount of any 'not so important' news or story can get into the print.
5. Develop credibility amongst the media persons.
6. Media relations should be based on a strategy and not a knee jerk reaction.
7. Expect the unexpected from the media but still try and understand them more.
8. For an event, try to identify the right journalist and provide clear details in their required language. The PR professional should stop calling continuously if they know the event will not be covered by the media.
9. Know your client's business and the announcement that you are pitching, in detail, before contacting the media.
10. Never sell a story while journalists are approaching their deadlines. Chances are that they may not be interested in talking to you as they need to rush to file their stories.
    
11. Give the journalist your client list.
    
12. Take appointments before meeting journalists.
13. Just try to step into the shoes of the journalist before initiating anything.
14. Friendship and sharing good stories from time to time is the best combination.
15. Give space to journalists...feed them precise and newsworthy information. Be prepared with an option always.

Yep you got it, the jerk organization known as CBS was the only major US network NOT to interrupt programming upon news of President Ford's death - going against what most consider proper protocol and respect for a former chief executive of the United States - dissing him with a lowly news crawl. CBS considers the buck more important  that doing what is called for in a patently appropriate situation to break into programming. CBS should hang its news management's heads in SHAME if not from a tree! Piss poor behavior, clowns. Piss poor. Now they are trying to cover their collective butts by recalling Katie Couric back from vacation to do some reporting on Ford. 

The Center for Media Research reports on a Media Audit study showing these individuals spend an hour a day with a newspaper and are next influenced by the internet. I do not know how the audit compiles their results and whether or not there was a question asking the respondents directly which they considered most influential, but they index at 159 for newspapers and  107 for the internet - although in raw time spent, about an hour a day comes up to about 420 min per week and the internet time spent runs 430 min or more per week (more than an hour a day). ??? We do not know if time spent reading the funny papers was deducted - then it might be about 15 min per day - well we can add Doonesbury back in. Anyway, newspapers are not dead. 

Shel had this on his blog, but somewhere it crossed my screen before that, but cannot remember. As a former business writer and as a pr-type at both an agency and in-house operations, I found CrunchGear's rant about pissing off reporters spot on. Here are some of the fatal errors PR flacks make: never ask a reporter to cross the line and don't ask the reporter to ship something you sent for a review back to you at his expense. There are a couple of other gems. 

Check out the Orson Wells riff that happened in Belgium where a TV station aired an Orwellian program about the country's Dutch-speaking northern sector leaving the country to become its own. The entire country was/is in an uproar about the program because it was so believable. Media Daily News. 

Came across this article at Media Life that says newspapers need to shift from the one size fits all model to a new model of multiple formats with multiple delivery modes. One such mode is a subscription PDF currently being used by some papers in the UK and Canada. Some of the papers using PDF delivery are the Toronto Star (mentioned elsewhere for its battle with MADD) - called Star PM, The Ottawa Citizen's Rush Hour - a hybrid with an e-mail and physical delivery via news stands and hawkers. 

While far from dead and buried, I've documented newspapers' circulation decline coupled to rising costs for advertising - getting less for more. MediaBuyerPlanner's newspaper overview takes a critical look at the industry where they have documented the aforementioned and other details like: "To deal with such challenges, newspapers are cutting costs by trimming the size of their pages, offering new ad space such as on front pages and section fronts, reducing staff, and eliminating such content that, said Seattle Times editor in chief Mike Fancher of his decision to stop publishing stock tables, readers can find elsewhere." 

Remember back when MTV (Viacom) launched Logo, the gay-oriented cable network? A lot of folks were anticipating a lot of protest. Didn't happen. The problem the channel is having is a lack of content and viewers being subjected to endless re-runs of the limited programming available. Fortune magazine says (via CNN), "If Logo wants to keep growing, Viacom will have to invest more in new programs, he (Howard Buford, founder and CEO of Prime Access) says. This is the case even though Logo actually airs more original content than many startup networks do - about 10 new series, 50 documentaries and 200 films that had a very limited release before their exposure on the network."