Why You Aren’t Getting Press Coverage

Sarah Sherwood January 19, 2025

There are many reasons why your publicity program is not paying off, the answers to that question aren’t very different than they’ve been in decades.  The need for public relations has not changed, and because the public has a harder time trusting than ever, we need the practice more than ever.  Bill Gates once said that if he was down to his last dollar, he’d spend it on public relations.  Because of the way communication is crafted, it is more of a necessity than ever for brand prominence.

I’ve been a publicist for 34 years, and in November I will have been practicing on my own for 25 years.  Prior to working directly with clients, I worked for a number of international communications agencies and my graduate degree is in public communication.  I wish every public relations professional my pathway here; international agencies are the best way to learn the trade and produce for clients.

The top firm in the nation, Edelman, has developed an important tool called the Trust Barometer.  Trust goes to the heart of what we do for you.  Why does this matter so much?  Because your key audience doesn’t automatically believe what you say.  You do need more credibility.  In response, Edelman has studied the influence of trust across society — with government, the news media, business, and NGOs — to shape your conversation with your publics, drive results and earn action. Your ability to succeed or fail depends on your ability to communicate effectively, right?  It is not just what people read or watch that will automatically help you.  It’s what they believe about you.

Beyond trust you also need relevance.  You are unimportant until you show the world—not just tell the world—what you can do.  Rather than telling your story as marketing and advertising does so well, we have your story told in the best particular way, and that completes the set of communications practices you need to produce a winning brand: both owned communications you can control fully but is more sales related, which is marketing/advertising and, public relations, earned communications that is high in credibility, reinforce each other for a powerful story.

In essence you must form a relationship with your key audience by telling the truth in a way that reaches and then moves them.

But when you’re not convincing you have produced work that must be undone.  Starting over is a request I receive often, and these are tough campaigns because the relationship must be remade.  Poor campaigns begin with ignorance, laziness and disrespect of the practice of earned communications, so the first reason you may not be receiving coverage is because you haven’t respected it enough to hire the right people.

Here are the relationships you must make a priority:

Your first relationship is with the news media.  I once worked for a hospital system that had hired a spokesperson who asked a reporter to “get off of our lawn.”   He is now working for another hospital system and I assume is doing damage there, too.  The first thing I did to remake the relationship was to invite them in and give them the information they needed to write the incredible stories that came out of there.

Your second critical relationship is with your hiring committee—the one who hires your agency or publicist.  Be very careful about who you choose.  Last year I worked with an organization who hired someone who clearly was more interested in promoting herself rather than representing her company.  Her posts are mostly about her, while her organization struggles because, honestly, she has never understood public relations.  Your representative must know the art and science of public relationships.  Otherwise, how will they judge whether or not you have a solid campaign?

This is your reputation they are playing with.

We are currently representing two organizations in crisis because their marketing manager didn’t understand the earned communications portion of reputation management.  And that, unfortunately, is common in 2024:  please know that public relations and marketing are very different and often good campaigns require two teams working together. Helen Woodward, the first female advertising executive in the US, famously said in 1938, “advertising is what you pay for, publicity is what you pray for.”

Your third important relationship is your publicist or agency.  Your spokesperson(s) must have international agency experience because it’s becoming increasingly difficult to impress audiences, who are bombarded with so much content every day. It’s a battle to stand out, and the experience one gains from the day to day at an international agency allows them to learn how creatively reach your audience.  They will have had to have had a healthy attention span, another common issue in 2024.

When marketing takes over and limits earned communication, that can be precisely your problem.  Is there enough budget to hire a publicist when your reputation is at stake?  I hope so.  Because that other most important relationship is your customer.

Your Leadership is Hiding

Gerri Kelly January 10, 2025

Even with the pandemic in our rearview mirror for over a year now, I see much of our corporate leadership’s ongoing tendency to continue to pull in, and therefore the top team is less visible to those who need to see its strengths.

It is easy for leadership to feel overwhelmed before going out with your public story because of all the noise, the competition for attention, and the potential vulnerability of being chastised by the press or a digital community.  Publicists are properly trained to prevent these challenges.  We often find the opportunities to go even further toward positive exposure. Inherent in our solution is to take the time to carefully plan so that you have a strategy for each scenario, and then you can execute flawlessly.  This often isn’t the approach of startup leadership: Startup founders tend to be uninterested in careful approaches to reputation management. They tend to want immediate high-impact fixes for whatever their CEO has done.  But the challenges of recent roadblocks often stand in their way.

As a publicist for over thirty years I have seen leadership teams come out both before their story has been fully formed and also with teams who are ready, and the latter always continues to build a solid reputation and brand.  Let’s take a look at what “ready” in 2024 means:

  1. The organization’s culture has been primed to feel the excitement of their new product’s accomplishments and what they will do for society as a whole.  Apple, for example, is very good at including everyone in their big announcements and then the celebration of what they have developed follows.   They have the vibe, and it’s contagious.
  2. Your leadership has their finger on the pulse.  They know the need for your product and service because they haven’t spent too much time indoors.  For example, a successful director of sales typically spends one-third of their time with people and organizations outside their company, some of that time with other departments within, and the remaining with their direct line of reports. They know — they have spent the time needed to made the rounds.  Because they are privy to the strengths of their organization and how those benefits fit externally, they are ready.
  3. Good stories develop in the telling and retelling, by going out with a fully formed narrative.  This includes the struggles and what you have learned from them.  Planning requires several deep-dive conversations about what these lessons offer the public.
  4. Your CEO is ready to take a walk with the public.  A literal walk.  Because a strong CEO has “executive presence,” something they have developed over years of both challenges and accomplishment, it adds to their portfolio of knowledge and that is often what makes them interesting.  Being ready to show your audience what it is like to take a walk with your CEO is part of our partnership with you on that road to successful promotion.
  5. The Tim Walz leadership style – that plain speak we have all seen recently — works well because it is ready for a wider audience.  Research has shown that candidates who used more esoteric or intellectual language were eight times less likely to be successful compared to candidates who used more colloquial language. It’s the down-to-earth storytelling that is more memorable and more powerful than a cerebral style because what the leader says actually sounds more digested , and therefore, better understood.
  6. Leaders who appear ready talk less about themselves and more about the team.  They are happy to share the accomplishments of those who have helped them build “it.”

 

Last, what makes a leader ready and persuadable is a confidence that puts everyone, even a veteran reporter, at ease.  When you have built something interesting, we want to know what it’s like to have a beer with you.  We want to know what it is like to walk with you down the hall.  It’s the ability to relax, share and know that will catapult you and your leadership to prime time.

When Podcasts Are a Good Choice for Publicity: What Should You Look For?

Sarah Sherwood June 17, 2023

Late last year another national survey of American internet users showed that listeners trust podcasts less than most other news sources of information—they are mostly a source of entertainment. So why use them for publicity? Because many of their hosts have built credibility with their listeners. My experience is that I see more adoption after podcasts run. How do you know if they have potential credibility? Here is what to look for when you are considering booking a podcast:

  1. What kind of guests do they book? Are they credibility-worthy? This is one of the most important questions you can ask.
  2. If the podcast covers health and science are there academic experts booked on previous shows? Anything that provides advice needs to be delivered by a guest who can back up what they say. Academic experts are the very best sources for this kind of content.
  3. Does the host try and sell, sell, sell? You may not want to consider a pushy podcast host.
  4. What topics are covered? Are they interesting?
  5. How does the host’s voice carry during the show? Are they professional?
  6. What does their media kit say? A media kit will show you how many listeners they have (hopefully it is updated) and gives you an idea of their demographics.  Is it a match with your audience?
  7. Are they communicating something controversial? If so, how often? How would that controversy play with your audience?
  8. Do you want to be on the show? Sometimes instincts provide a good answer.
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