The Public Relations Blog

By Jonathan Bernstein and Jason Mudd, APR

Current events demonstrate that a crisis can strike a company at any time. It's a matter of when, not if. Don’t think that it can’t happen to you. 

Natural and man-made disasters happen all the time and often without notice. No one knows when or if events like the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, SARS, anthrax, or a tornado may occur. In these times, every business must be prepared. Otherwise, you risk the possibility that the media will drag your company through the wringer and allow the public to judge you by scandalous front-page headlines.

Earlier this year, the New York Times published an article about The Council of Public Relations Firms, which lists more than 100 PR agencies as its members. The association met in an effort to not only redefine its own image, but attempt to redefine public relations in this new digitally-focused age. What concerns me as a 20-year veteran of the communications and public relations profession is the fact that our industry--as evidenced by the article--is amid an identity crisis.

Practice unique creativity to attract attention

Take a close look at your efforts to reach your audiences this past year – did you make the cut? There is one surefire way for you to attract consumers’ ever-important attention. Remarkable creativity will speak to your audiences and make your business stand out.

Historically, headline-seeking journalists have struggled with reaching live spokespersons for interviews and with extracting necessary facts from press releases shared in newsrooms. Happily, though, times have changed, spurred on by the burgeoning digital realm and the creation of the online newsroom.

Big and small businesses alike can turn website real estate into useful bits and bytes for the press. Downloadable videos, news releases, photographs/executive headshots, biographies, movie trailers, application reviews and the like appear with ease online for immediate viewing and download. It is this website subsection that we refer to as the online newsroom.

By Jason Mudd, APR

One key phrase oft repeated inside newsrooms is “If it bleeds, it leads.”

To those outside the communications profession, that may sound utterly offensive, but realistically, news editors, writers, journalists and programming directors know that when it comes to news, people listen and watch more intently when it’s negative. In fact, bad news far outweighs good news by as much as 17 negative news stories for every one positive one. Scholars have studied the psychology behind this, too. The human brain evolved in a hunter-gatherer environment where dramatic events required immediate attention for the sake of survival, and we still care (worry/fear) more about the threat of bad things affecting us than hearing about good things. When the news is negative, people take notice.

Take a minute to think about the best stories you’ve heard in your life – the ones that made you laugh out loud, brought tears to your eyes or elicited a happy sigh after reaching the end. What is it about storytelling that evokes these emotional responses and causes us to remember them for years on end? I know I can recall details of family trips, Grandma’s famous recipes and Grandpa’s scariest yarns. Storytelling utilizes a specific formula to entice us to pay closer attention, and the stories that make the deepest impact are the ones that resonate most personally with each of us.

Focus and direction are key to revenue gains.

To beat your competition, accentuate what sets you apart from them. Don’t let your company get distracted from what matters and what works for your creative vision. Maintain a laser focus to achieve your goals.

60-Second Articles:
1. Avoid the sandbox
2. Shiny Object Syndrome vs. sound strategy
3. The 60-Second Close: The importance of direction

As fall soldiers on, anticipation of end-of-year holidays begins to mount, and alongside the anticipation comes a healthy dose of panic for employers seeking seasonal holiday help. Retailers, shippers and the like increase their workforces from October through January in preparation for round-the-clock positions needing to be filled. Already, UPS has reported seasonal hiring efforts to likely fill more than 90,000 positions. That number of jobs can be incredibly relevant to businesses that depend on seasonal support. But how do they fill those slots as readily as is required to meet the demand? 

Let PR experts help you understand why your results may not be matching up

You perform a Google search and find your company at the top of the page with glowing reviews. Your customer conducts the same exact search and gets entirely different results (or vice versa). What gives?

Trying to understand Google analytics and search engine optimization rules can make your head spin. Use our PR firm to guide you through the ins and outs of the world’s most influential search engine.

When organizations consider hiring public relations firms, some use requests for proposals (RFPs) to differentiate between each of them. In an RFP, an organization can ask for everything from vendor background and special areas of expertise to ambitious ideas and rates for proposal execution. RFPs are, as a rule, highly informative documents.

Axia Public Relations has received countless RFPs both from established businesses and startup companies. We definitely understand the value of RFPs to the requesting companies, but from a PR agency’s perspective, these documents, when sent blindly, can be relatively useless. RFPs, while sometimes honestly used to pursue work with PR firms, are also overused as a means of determining the going rates for PR services or, worse, to solicit free ideas or tactical concepts. PR firms therefore tend to be leery of RFPs and here’s why