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233Chapter 15: Public Relations and Publicity

their help in the future. (Just as with bankers, it’s good to make friends
with politicians long before you need to enlist their help.)

ߜ Issues and crisis management: Sometimes your news will be confusing,
and once in a while, it may even threaten your image. One function of
public relations is to explain and build support for complex issues and
to manage crises when they arise.

Focusing on publicity

When you get mentioned in the media, that’s publicity. It sounds so simple,
and yet a surprising amount of planning and effort goes on behind the scenes
before a company gets a “free” mention in a newspaper or magazine, a televi-
sion or radio station, online, or even in another company’s newsletter.

Those who spend much time generating publicity know that valuable is a
much more appropriate descriptor than free. Costs are involved to develop
news releases, make and maintain media contacts, stage events, and imple-
ment programs worthy of editorial coverage. But when the effort results in
editorial coverage for your business, the benefit outweighs the investment
many times over.

Each time you succeed in generating positive publicity, you score a triple vic-
tory. First, you win valuable editorial mentions in mass media vehicles. Second,
you win consumer confidence, as people tend to find information they receive
through the editorial content of mass media more believable than they find
paid advertising messages. And third, you can use reprints of the coverage you
obtain through your publicity efforts to add credibility to your other marketing
communications by enclosing copies in direct mailings, sales presentations,
and press kits.

Orchestrating Media Coverage

To generate publicity, start with a news item of interest. If an editor thinks his
audience won’t care about your story, it will never make it into print or onto
the airwaves. But if your story conveys timely and useful information — if it
tells something new, or a different or easier way to do something — then
package it up and get it to the media, applying the process described in this
chapter. Be prepared to proceed with both tenacity and patience, however,
because the art of getting your name into the news requires both.