Tag: press release

14
Oct

Differentiate or perish

Posted by / PR Tips

It is really interesting to spend many years in this industry, pitching sets of pots and pans and trying to win over prospective customers … and then stepping back from the contest and realizing what’s going on.

Damn near everyone is using the same sales pitch.

I am talking suppliers. And I am talking operators.

When you manage to escape from the bubble that is your company, or the larger bubble that is your general technology or media proposition, you start to realize the sales and marketing pitch – those bullet points that people use to excite prospects – is pretty much the same one the next guys are using. And the next guys. And the next guys.

Everyone is the industry leader. What they do is the next generation. They’re the best in class. The audience is premium. Their medium is highly targeted.

My work now gives me the blissful perspective of looking from the outside in at the industry, functioning as a smarty-pants consultant and communications specialist. I get asked now to help companies pull together their marketing copy and strategy, and enable them to stand out from the many other companies that offer variations on essentially the same products, services or audience.

The problem is … most companies are so busy getting everything else done — to organize, launch and run a technology or media company — that the actual time spent developing a compelling set of marketing messages is minimal. It’s one of those, “Oh crap, we need a sell sheet and some stuff for the Website!” situations, that usually involves someone who shouldn’t be doing marketing pulling together a few points during spare moments.

I have done a couple of competitive analyses for technology companies lately, and what really struck me was how similar the value propositions are between technology companies. Go through 15 company sites and you will find most of them highlighting the things that everybody else is highlighting, like flexibility and scalability and support for most media formats.

Ad network operators are not as bad, but the same issues apply.

Volkswagen markets itself on statements like “The art of rocket science.” It does not plaster signs on its windows reading, “Tires on our cars are filled with air!”

So why, when I go to many Websites for vendors, do I read excited bullet points about Day-part scheduling!!!

Well, woohoo! Peddling features and benefits that just about all your prospective customers already assume you have is not the path to glory.

There are clear indications much of what gets written and trumpeted is a variation on what a competitor has on its site. Chances are, that copy was ‘inspired’ by another competitor’s copy. And so on. Companies need to spend more time thinking about how they set themselves apart from the mob, and far less worrying about how their competitors market themselves.

What is it that you guys do, or have, that makes you different? Are you particularly strong in a vertical market? Does your technology have some whiz-bang component that’s rare or unique? Is there something you are doing that others can’t touch?

There are companies I won’t name who market themselves on technology offers that aren’t even unique, but they’ve nonetheless made that gadgetry their own. They’re the guys who do (insert not terribly unique thing here) and they let people know. Compare that to what most companies go out with, which is essentially: “We’re one of countless industry leaders and we offer the same dynamic, flexible and cost-effective stuff for digital signage networks that you’ll find on the next 14 sites you browse and sell sheets you read!!!”

Try this exercise: Print off your main Web pages and sell sheets and grab some Hi-Liter pens. Underline in yellow those phrases and features you’ll admit are common across many companies, and in another colour highlight those features that are unique or more compelling than common. If there’s a lot of yellow, you need to get to work.

There are many, many reasons why a company might prosper or fail, but a really strong predictor for failure is a company that can’t put into words how it is different and why that matters. The same disciplined work that goes into product development, budgets and staffing needs to also go into how your company goes to market and sets itself apart.

If you can’t differentiate, you perish.

05
Oct

Quotes from the boss should be useful, not just blabber

Posted by / PR Tips

It is probably rare in companies of any real size that the quotes in a press release, that involve the president or CEO, have actually been uttered by that person.

It is probably almost as rare that the release gets distributed with the quoted person actually having seen what he or she has supposedly said. So these quotes are often innocuous and irrelevant, and therefore not going to get anyone in trouble.

The problem is that these sorts of quotes are just about useless and can actually, in their useless glory,  cast the boss in a bad light. Consider quotes you see all the time that read something like this:

“We’re really excited to be working with Acme DooDads on this project,” says  Brand X CEO Bob Jones.

That sort of thing is suggesting to me that Bob has only the most fleeting awareness of the project, particularly since the  most insightful thing he can come up with is that he’s getting goosebumps.

When you are cooking up a quote from your boss, first of all make it sound like a quote. But more to the point, make it relevant, and something that advances the story. For example: “We know Acme DooDads weighed a lot of options before selecting Brand X,” says Bob Jones, the CEO of Brand X,  “and we’ll be working closely with Acme to ensure we’re helping them hit the business goals we all identified.”

That’s actually making a statement that Brand X came out ahead of a lot of competing companies, and the Brand X is less a vendor and more a partner.

Innocuous nothing quotes, on the other hand, are big red Stop signs that tell a reader, “OK, we’re done with the interesting stuff and we’re into the Blah Blah Blah. Time to move on.”

02
Oct

Think, write it out, then think again, then think again, and only then click on Publish

Posted by / PR Tips

I just sent a note off to an unnamed company.

They are unnamed because I like their product and their general approach, and as noted in the past, this blog was not created as some weird writing hall of shame.

Someone, in this case, has been given the keys to the corporate blog, and instead of driving the blog by the cool kids and showing off, the kid with the keys is going up on the sidewalk trying to run the cool kids over.

Not a great idea.

Without going into detail, the company’s blogger is making seriously odd assertions and slapping around the industry as a whole by suggesting pretty much everybody – except his company – has it all wrong.

Well, there’s a slight chance he’s right. But only slight.

His saving grace may be that few people actually read company blogs, because most of those kinds of blogs in this industry have precious little to say other than, “We’re swell!” and “We just released some more stuff that makes us even sweller!!!” These blogs have a role, but are not reliably updated and therefore have no substantive audience.

There are some very notable exceptions to that rule, of course.

A company blog can be a useful mechanism to help existing clients and enlighten potential customers, but’s it’s rare when one bubbles up that’s actually good and not just an exercise in Tarzan chest beating. In this case, the blogger is banging stuff out without, I gather, really thinking through what happens after he posts the piece.

This is a small industry still. Stuff gets around quickly. Twitter can get all kinds of people suddenly reading a post the writer might have thought few would see. The low road is rarely the right road. And your company will be spotted on it. An industry friend note about these guys: “Maybe they should accomplish something before they declare victory.”

As someone writing for your company blog, consider these steps:

Think about what you want to write. Then write it out. Read it again. Think about how the audience will react and what that means. Then think it through some more.

Then, if you are comfy that the benefits outweigh the negatives, hit the Publish button.

If you have any sense your post may stir up some shit you didn’t want stirred, save it as a draft and sleep on it. Even if your blog readership is minuscule, search engines pick up just about everything. So unless you really want to “own” your statements, and are ready to defend them inside and outside your company walls. think carefully about where your opinions might be read, and what goes down as a result.

28
Sep

Fine-tuning your message so that prospective customers notice, and care

Posted by / PR Tips 
This post was also recently posted on the Website of the Digital Signage Association ...

How digital signage and digital out of home companies craft their communications on their Websites, handouts and in press releases is critical to their success.

So why is so much of it so bad?

The industry executives I speak with almost uniformly admit they know they could and should do better, but don’t have the time or resources. Coming from technology, ad sales and retail backgrounds, they also haven’t the insight or experience to recognize the good from the bad.

In the interest of helping better shape the message, here are a few tips:

Figure out what makes your company unique, and go hard with it

For whatever reason this is a “me, too” business, with most vendors marketing themselves on the same general range of features and capabilities that their competitors are also trumpeting. It’s hard to stand out from the pack if all you have to half-heartedly report is the written equivalent of, “Yeah, ummm, we do that stuff, too.”

There will be something your firm has developed, or work your team has done with a client, that is at least uncommon and worthy of a little marketing noise. Maybe your company had to figure out a solution that involved GPS and mass transit? That experience and capability is far more intriguing than telling the world your platform does all that stuff everybody else does, too.

Get to the point

Anyone who has been involved in this sector for a while knows how important it is to have good programming that quickly captures the attention of viewers. The same thing applies with a company’s written communications. Between emails, RSS feeds, tweets and texts, people are carpet-bombed all day with marketing messages. That means your message better make its point quickly, or it will be passed by.

Empty phrases that clutter the opening lines of announcements need to be dropped. The point of your communication can’t be buried somewhere in the third paragraph of your e-mailer. You can’t write something that people need to read twice just to figure out, because they won’t .

Put your key messages in context

When you are banging out your key features and benefits messages, and announcements about new gadgets and gizmos, make sure you do the extra work to explain what that means for your prospective customers.

When your company celebrates the release of a new energy efficient combination of PC and display panel in an all-in-one package, don’t stop there. It’s better described as a technology combination capable of dropping energy consumption for a signage deployment by as much as 25%.

Adding 250 more screens and locations doesn’t mean your ad network is now in 600 locations in five states. The message for prospective advertisers, the ones you’re after, is that the addition of 250 sites means your highly-targeted digital out of home media network is now reaching 200,000 affluent consumers every week.

Think through the whole communications chain

How many times have you read a press release, or the news story that spilled out of it, that was effective enough to send you to the company Website to find out more, only to find there was no “more” to be found?

Marketing and media communications have to be carried through the whole chain. If there’s an announcement, it needs to already be up on the Website and easy to find. The sales people need to be briefed on what it is about so that they can respond knowledgeably and not feel like doofuses. They also need material, ready to go, they can send out as follow-ups to calls, and it shouldn’t be just the same thing the prospects just read.

Meanwhile, existing clients need and expect to get early word of new goodies from their vendor, and to first learn of it on some blog.

Choose your words with care

There are powerful phrases, and there are empty phrases. Good writers choose their words carefully, and think about things like the rhythm and emotion of the message. Most of the people writing copy for Websites, email updates and press releases are doing so not because they like writing, but because they have to … so even if takes forever to prepare, those people spend little time actually thinking about the message.

That’s how the industry has ended up with a vast sea of empty phrases and buzzwords about leading, turnkey solutions and revolutionary, state of the art development. If someone only has to write copy every now and then, there’s a natural tendency to look around and borrow on what other companies are doing. They read three press releases starting off with “leading provider” and figure they better get that in there, too. They see Websites that talk “turnkey” and figure that needs to get in there. The result, every day and everywhere, is yet more of the same blabber.

Whether it’s Website copy, email blasts or press releases, whoever gets charged with doing the writing should ignore what else is out there, forget they ever read phrases like “best of breed” and “taken to the next level”, and think through the messages that would actually resonate with prospective customers and partners.

It’s an after-thought for a lot of companies, but developing the right message that helps drive product awareness, build credibility and boost sales needs the same attention to detail as product and market development. You can have a kickass product, a fabulous network footprint, or do amazing creative, but if you do a bad job of getting the word out, few people will know.

27
Sep

Get focused with your message

Posted by / PR Tips

The other blog I do on the digital signage industry doesn’t break a lot of news or re-purpose many press releases, but I still get some sector companies and PR firms sending me press releases in hopes I may write something up.

I got one the other day from a big technology company trumpeting a series of initiatives at a large sports facility, and it looked like a good chunk of it had to do with digital signage. I stress “looked” because there was so much packed into this release that I read it through three times and gave up.

The initiative covered a bunch of bases and products and services and tried to pack it all into one umbrella announcement. The net result was the part that interested me was given such brief attention it went into no detail and made it a chore to sort out what was relevant and new.

I even sent a note to the company, whose contact confirmed my suspicions as to what the announcement was about, through the digital signage lens. Trouble was, the news cycle had moved on and I did not see a lot of coverage of this thing elsewhere, presumably because I wasn’t the only one who was stumped.

Big companies, or small, should get very focused about what they announce and the message they want to convey. It is less work to do one release as opposed to several. But if you have multiple things going, involving multiple technologies and sectors, you are likely to get more, better attention if you develop a release that is targeted at your sector and goes immediately to the core of what needs to be communicated.

22
Sep

How to write a digital signage press release: Step 5 – Footer

Posted by / PR Tips

Readers will go to this information if they have made it all the way through the release, because you have done enough to intrigue them. So take it just as seriously as the rest of the piece.

The footer is a distinct, and in some mechanical way, separated paragraph summary of your company. This is where you must, for one last time, not surrender to temptation and rattle off something about Brand X being a leading global provider of groundbreaking, state of the art software thingdoodles. You are restating your credibility, and are far better off stating Brand X is a profitable, 12-year-old subsidiary of Agent 9, one of the world’s largest suppliers of Y. Or something, anything, that honestly tells readers that you are real and not a bunch of knuckleheads who could disappear off the radar as quickly as you came on.

This is also the place where you provide contact information. Ideally, it is for someone who can be reached directly and will be able to speak knowledgeably when asked questions.  You may want to include a specific phone number or e-mail contact, or you may not. You may want to filter inquiries through a main email drop and phone number, and in some cases, even use a third-party like a publicist. This keeps the nuisance factor down, but also means you will get less direct press action because writers in this sector are waaaay too busy feeding the beast to waste time negotiating interviews with a hired go-between.

The bottom line about contact information is to ensure you don’t make it hard work. The day you do the release, if you expect action, don’t have your key person out of town or booked in meetings.

If you really do want journalists to write or call, encourage it with some sort of invitation to call for more details.

If you have a real Website, include it. If you have a Web page with an animated Under Construction graphic, don’t. If you know there will be technical questions, attach an FAQ, or figure out some why to make that FAQ easily available.

Next – Distribution

21
Sep

How to write a digital signage press release: Step 4 – Body copy

Posted by / PR Tips

The headline and the summary and leading paragraphs have hopefully done their jobs of drawing people into your news release. Now it’s time to fully explain what you are up to, why people should care, and get into the nitty-gritty of how or what’s being done.

You want to be sure the five W questions are covered off – who, what, when, where and why – as well as any other Ws that matter, like which.

This is your chance to provide accurate detail on the project or product, and when you can make statements about the impact. Those statements are things like driving sales lift, enhancing navigation, making a task easier, allowing people to work in their native language, any number of potential benefits.

The body copy is where you can also go into more detail about your company and market position, and use one or two tight quotes from the appropriate representative for the company. The person quoted should be someone who, if pressed, could actually speak with some degree of knowledge about the project, product or service.

This is not critical, but I really like quotes that read naturally, like they really are quotes. Almost all quotes in press releases are planted words, and most of them read that way. You can dilute the credibility of a message if people reading it are marveling at how stilted the quote is instead of taking in what it says. If you are creating a quote, just read it back and ask yourself if it sounds even remotely natural. If not, that’s easily tweaked.

Keep it tight. Your press release is ideally only seven or eight paragraphs in length. You will start losing readers if you go much longer. If there is a lot of technical detail to go through, consider attachments or a Web link where the propellerheads can go to get a jargon fix.

Paragraphs should be reasonably uniform in size and sentences should not run on and on. Have a look at newspaper articles to get some sense of how information is broken up. If you write overly long paragraphs, they look like intimidating walls of characters that people don’t even want to start on.

Some fundamentals:

  • be honest and accurate
  • you are selling your company and goods though useful information, not hype and lots of exclamation points
  • if there are other parties mentioned in the release, ensure they approve what is written and asserted
  • it should read easily all the way through

Next – Step 5 – footer and contact information

16
Sep

How to write a digital signage press release: Step 1 – Define your objective

Posted by / PR Tips

I spend a lot of time with this blog slapping around companies that do a truly terrible job of media communications, and by pointing out the mistakes, trying to educate them and others.

But I don’t want to dwell on the negative stuff, and thought it might be useful to put readers through the basics of writing a press release to distribute in this industry.

This is not done through the lens of someone who took formal public relations training and has some certification to that effect. My background is daily newspaper journalism, as down and dirty as investigative reporting, and I have been reading press releases for 30 years because I had to. There may well be a formula that’s been laid out in textbooks, but here’s what I think actually works in getting the attention of editors and bloggers, and readers who get things direct through news readers and filters.

I’m going to break this up in parts, so that the post is not too long and I can drill a little deeper into the process and then the components.

The very first thing you need to sort out is why you are doing a press release.

What has happened, or will happen, that compels your company to issue information about it? Is what you are about to tell the world actually interesting or valuable to anyone beyond the walls of your company? Or are you issuing a press release because, as is common, it’s been a while and you want to keep the company name out there?

For example, a press release about your company’s new Website is only relevant if the facelift changes the way your clients do business with you. If it’s the online equivalent of a new hairdo, forget it. Changing office locations isn’t PR-worthy, unless you are hiring a bunch of people or adding new facilities like a lab or hosting center.

New product developments that advance the company or the industry, or big deals, milestones or hires, that’s cause for press. If your company trades on an exchange, you may be legally required to issue press releases on any business dealings or status changes.

The point here: if you have nothing, really, to announce … or don’t have to be law … just don’t do a press release.

If you do, develop an angle for your story to make it more compelling. Announcing your advertising network has added some new venues is nice, but not overly compelling. Announcing that a new set of venues added this month to the WhizBang Media Network means ads are now being delivered to a weekly audience of more than 250,000 affluent, gourmet food-loving consumers is another matter entirely. That’s reminding your target advertisers you just got to a big number and might get you to whatever it is that constitutes critical mass.

Think about what you want and need to announce, and how you’ll spin it to make it interesting to your target readers.

Keep in mind spin is one view of the facts, but is still, hopefully, maintaining some grip on reality.  You should be able to defend your spin, so if your angle is that your service is the first of its kind, is it? Can you defend assertions that what you’re doing is the best? Is what’s going out some largely empty and indefensible chest-beating exercise (common), or something people will read and send to friends because it looks like what your company is doing is something they and others will want to know about.

If it’s just hype, most people see through it. People don’t like being “sold” in press releases. They expect worthwhile information. Press releases are an opportunity to talk about good work you’re doing, and the successes  you’ve had or are coming. You want people to read what you’re doing and conclude they either need to know more, or have reinforced that these guys are busy and clearly making a mark. Press releases can show market momentum and corporate excellence.

But bad press releases can have all the wrong effects. If they are written poorly that reflects on the company’s smarts and ability to communicate. If the releases are nothing but empty phrases and unsubstantiated assertions wrapped around a small hint of news, your company is telling people you’re really not up to much. And companies that announce relentlessly, with near constant releases about pretty much anything, can create reader fatigue – the equivalent of hearing someone drone on and on and wishing they’d please just stop.

The audience for press releases has changed dramatically in the last decade. For scores of years, press releases were only ever seen by journalists, since they were distributed in one way or another only to media outlets. Releases were written entirely for the editors, with the expectation that if a press release was noticed and picked up, it would be seriously filtered, with the BS removed and the story recast from the perspective of the assigned journalist.

The Internet means press releases go everywhere, immediately, and there are now several target recipients.  Mainstream journalists may see  a release and pursue a full story, but the more common scenario now is for releases to get noticed and largely repurposed by online industry publications, and sector bloggers. Some of these writers get their hands dirty and filter and repackage stories, or even take the releases in unintended directions. But most just pass the releases though largely unfiltered, the contents re-formatted more than edited.

That means the plan and the wording of the release you put together is that much more important, because while it may pass through other hands, it can easily go through pretty much untouched. It will be rare when a journalist comes back to you and asks what you were trying to go on about in the release. You won’t find out it’s really bad until someone reads it and tells you. Someone like your now unhappy CEO.

NEXT – Step 2 – Headlines

11
Sep

Everything not make doing with press release

Posted by / PR Tips

As stated in the past, my multilingual skills extend only to being able to say Hello and order beer. So I comment on material that is language-challenged with that in mind.

But, I am smart enough to know that if I am going to send out a release in a second language, I need to get it checked by someone who is proficient in the first language.

This has nothing to do with our sector, but it is both sad and hysterically funny. It makes you wonder if Borat has left journalism and started a public relations firm in Kyrgyzstan.

The point here: don’t do this … (company name excised)

Grand Opening of X.O. Casino

On September 3rd there was the grand opening of X.O. Casino in Bishkek (Kirgizia)

Press release September 4th, 2009

The international group (guys who wrote this)  is happy to announce the opening of X.O Casino in Bishkek. The facility is located in Hyatt Hotel, and it promises to become the most fashionable one in the city. This is a chamber casino of X.O. format which has shown itself to good advantage in other projects of the company, aiming at high-rollers, well-to-do guests of the capital city. Classical games will be offered here on 12 tables featuring Russian Poker, Punto Banco, Black Jack, and Roulette as well as 30 of the newest slot machines including many Gaminator’s.

The facility is designed in the luxurious “art deco” style. Mirror ceilings visually extend the space and exquisite stained glass fills the casino floors with warm light. Furniture and bandings of walls clad with expensive fabric are made of finewood. Luxury, sophisticated taste and comfort – this is what (the company’s) experts have been targeting at, creating the interior of X.O.-Bishkek Casino.

The tradition of organizing big events devoted to our new properties was continued by the bright night of the grand opening of X.O. casino in Bishkek. All the beau-monde of the capital city gathered outdoors, next to the swimming pool in Hyatt Hotel, where the new casino is located. Sadly, not everyone willing could be a guest at the event as the number of invitations and tickets had been limited.

From the very start the exciting performance by Artecc – a young but professional band which has already won the love of the local public – gave a positive tune to the party. Further on Prestige, a fire and magic show, made the audience recall the times when the nature elements and the unknown used to be much closer. And everyone seemed to have forgotten about the fun of the fair – A-Studio band’s performance.

There is nothing to hide – it was A-Studio that had caused the frenzy about the event. They are fellow countrymen here, the ones able to set the whole post-Soviet space in turmoil. They are loved here, and waited for, and it was obvious from the smiles, happiness and dances that the audience was sincerely grateful for the opportunity to enjoy the music by their favourite performes on that warm autumn night.

Closing the party, accompanied by the thunder of endless fireworks, (the CEO) made a joke: “This is the most memorable event since the times of Genghis Khan!”

A lot of people noted the high level of the event organization – and this is what should be expected if the party is devoted to an opening of an elite facility.

08
Sep

DS PR 101: Dispense with the opening Blah Blah Blah and get to the point

Posted by / PR Tips

sleepatdesk

Give yourself a little mental test …

Read this:

Brand X, a leading provider of design and development of content rich solutions for self-service, digital merchandising and digital signage applications, today unveiled its WhizBang™ digital signage offering, designed for banking institutions to easily localize and communicate updated rates and new product information to customers in real time. Utilizing “off the shelf” digital photo frame hardware, the bank’s brand messages, content and interest rates can be displayed at individual teller stations or on larger format screens strategically placed in different areas of the branch.

Were I not asking you, would you have made it much past the “a leading provider of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah” stuff to get to the actual point of the release that went out today? Maybe. Maybe not.

You can bore the pants and skirts off people with the “yeah, yeah whatever” stuff and hope they hang in there, or you can get to the point with a press release.

How about: “Localized bank content, real-time interest rates and brand messaging  can now be displayed right down to individual teller stations using a new WhizBang Digital Signage for Banks product developed and announced today by Big City-based interactive firm, Brand X.”

Or something like that. The point is: companies need to jump right to the core value proposition of the product. If they insist on boring people with all the chest-beating nonsense about being leaders, do it later on.

The rest of the release, by the way, is on balance not too bad. It hits the key points and backs them up. The writer just could not resist sticking to that deadly boring opening formula of establishing whoever is a leader. As stated before, the leader phrase is meaningless, and you need to get readers interested in your service or product, and THEN provide your credibility message.

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