Most PR takes the form of a conventional press release.  That certainly works.  So do radio interviews, TV appearances, blog entries, forum integration, e-blasts and phone calls. 

“PR” is what it professes to be, “public relations”.  Effective PR is the product of cultivated and influential relationships that are conduits of information to the public.  PR is often earned through reliable and trusted communications — that is, your communication becomes a resource to these information conduits.

That’s the 30,000 foot assessment.  Now for the meat-and-potatoes.

Effective PR campaigns are often planned campaigns.  That is, the PR professional has identified the media, people, content and means they intend to pursue in getting their message out.  The message must be carefully crafted, the delivery and targets fully evaluated and execution must be flawless.  Shooting from the hip may land you some media but in the long run it will be a hit and miss proposition. 

I start with the objective in mind.  If it’s a new product then why is it newsworthy?  Just because it’s new doesn’t mean it’s newsworthy.  How are people’s lives going to be affected? Will it change how business is done? Will it improve the environment and could it be a model for other industries or countries to follow?  Think big but be honest. 

The BDC Advertising standard for all advertising, including PR, is “the truth told well.”  Tell the truth, tell it well.  Believe me, the media are pro’s, they’ll smell a rat if you’re trying to sell them ocean-front property in Kansas.

The message could be, “Rapala Renews Contract With BDC Advertising”.  There’s the headline for the release.  If I’m the mainstream media I’m thinking, “so?”  The fishing press would get this and pay attention but why would a city paper or TV station?  Better might be, “Rapala, The World’s Largest Lure Manufacturer Renews Contract With BDC Advertising”. 

The copy in the release would support that statement but also identify why that’s important.  Is BDC Advertising a noteworthy agency? If so, why?  Are they the fastest growing advertising and marketing agency in Clackamas County, Oregon?  Are they the fastest growing agency in Oregon? Etc., etc. 

And why is this important?

Stay to the facts and resist hyperbole.

Third party endorsements are effective and I think essential in most press releases and PR. 

“We elected to renew our contract with BDC Advertising because of the exceptional work, understanding of the market and thinking they continue to bring to the table.  Beyond our internal marketing resources, they are the only agency we use”, commented….

The first short paragraph of a release should directly support the headline and provide additional factual specifics that can be read in 15 to 20 seconds.  This format allows a news editor or writer to make a quick read and assessment of your press and determine whether or not they should read further, if the information’s timely, newsworthy or germaine to their audience.

The following paragraphs can/should provide more details and quotes from relevant sources that further support the headline and first paragraph of copy. 

Images should always be included if available or appropriate.  This makes the news editor’s job even easier and increases your value as a resource.

Radio, TV, blogs, forum posts and even phone calls to selected/targeted media should all follow the same format.  What’s your message?  That’s your headline.  What is the overarching message? What are other people saying about it? What supporting evidence do you have?

This is only the tip of the iceberg.  PR professionals work their PR.  They call editors, newsmakers, influencers and they discuss the PR.  They understand why it did or didn’t make it to the public.  If their message doesn’t hit the intended market they go back to the drawing board and develop other approaches and messages.

Some case histories worth mentioning. 

The car maker, Ferrari, for decades never had a marketing department.  Never ran an ad…not one, to sell their cars.  Their marketing efforts are PR-based.  Their PR was on race tracks around the world outcompeting every other builder.  They quickly developed a reputation as the preeminent car manufacturer in the world.  Ferrari’s PR has made them synonmous with “high-performance”.  A reputation they continue to hold.

Just this past week one of our accounts held a seminar at their retail location.  Our job was to make sure it was well-attended.  We were able to get our message out to local newspapers, at the top of a targeted and widely viewed Internet forum and through various e-blasts and blogs.  The results were outstanding.  The PR worked and the event was an unconditional success.  We kept the message tight, clear and compelling and executed the campaign perfectly.  The attendance certainly supported the fact that great PR, properly executed, is an essential marketing tool.

Locally, retired NBA basketball player, Brian Grant was recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease.  The PR campaign Brian Grant’s team has developed has been nothing short of brilliant.  They’ve been able to rally the likes of Michael J. Fox, Muhammad Ali, Charles Barkley and Pat Reilly to be a part of various events Grant is hosting to fund Parkinson’s research.  These events have kept his cause squarely in front of the regional market as “A list” celebrities show and support his foundation.

This is the time of year most companies are looking ahead, setting budgets and making plans for the marketing of their companies in 2011.  PR is as big as ever and should command a sizeable budget commitment.  Advertising is important, vital in many cases to keeping your brand properly positioned and products/services in front of the market.  But for most, the impact of good PR has been underestimated and under-valued when, in fact, it has equal or greater value to traditional marketing and advertising. 

As always, my message in marketing and advertising is to stay balanced.  Create a plan that strikes a balance between print advertising, marketing collateral (brochures, catalogs, tri-folds, white papers), radio or TV, PR, Internet and web-based solutions.  Balance wins the battles and war in a competitive market… and if you want to stay competitive and overcome the competition, just make sure PR is part of the plan.

Government agencies generally aren’t responsible for correcting industry trends.  At least three years ago that wasn’t the case.  Of course with huge bailout monies cascading into the national economy as “stimulus” that model’s changing.  Certainly, in Oregon the case had often been that government sees to some regulatory infrastructure or mitigation but it’s on industry’s shoulders to perk participation and business opportunity.

I had long seen opportunities in the private sector and in government for collaboration.  Collaboration that plays to the strengths of each involved.  “Strength in numbers” resonates here.  I have, in large part, staked my professional career in finding these synergies, crafting mutually beneficial solutions and bringing the various players to the table to pool our respective talents and resources for the good of each other.  It’s worked dozens of times and continues to be my strongest advice in most business opportunities. 

Thankfully, this vision of collaboration isn’t held soley by me.   In the case of the Marine Board and Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife people like Marty Law (I&E Manager for the Marine Board), David Lane (ODFW) and Roger Fuhrman (ODFW) also value this approach.  In fact, there’s rarely a day goes by that I don’t find like-minded people eager to collaborate in a manner that considers and benefits all involved.

The issues that faced the Marine Board were daunting.  The local and regional boating industry had labored to build trade associations aimed at growing the market but those efforts sputtered and stalled as resources waned and a collective vision proved difficult to harness.  Fairly, these businesses recognized something needed to be done…but what that was and who would be responsible was an ongoing challenge.  All of these players had plenty going on in their businesses and could scarcely afford to risk their time to launch a campaign of any meaningful magnitude — no matter how much it may benefit their respective business.

Marty Law made the call and got the ball rolling.  He worked with fish and wildlife and they quickly got on the same page.  They found partners, created a plan, sold the plan, executed it and watched what had been a half decade spiral stop and actually improve…albeit modestly.  This, under the cloud of what’s widely recognized as the most difficult economic climate of the past half century. 

At the heart of this campaign is collaboration.  Both the Marine Board and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife identified what they could lend to the campaign, what they were good at and went to work understanding how each could benefit from the effort.  This collaboration has now drawn in State Parks and Travel Oregon, Oregon’s tourism agency, in new and innovative approaches bent on benefiting all involved.  In this model each entity plays to their strength, is able to participate at reduced cost and enjoy enormous upside potential because of the collaboration.  In a time when government is scrambling to pare budgets and reduce spending these initiatives make tremendously good sense.

What the private sector can learn from this government experiment is that these entities understood they had common customers they could share.  Their respective agency footprints overlapped as various State Parks were in close proximity to popular fishing destinations that were also popular boating getaways that provided considerable tourism opportunities.  Rather than sitting at the table and saying “no”…these agencies found ways to say “yes”, and in doing so are creating a new and enviable model of collaboration we can learn from.

Look around at your vendors who, in part, are depending on you to be successful.  Are you getting everything you can from each other?  Are there ways you can get them to drive more business to you and in return you’ll drive more business their way?  Are there other businesses you can collaborate with?  Have you even looked?

I strongly believe this is a new and valuable business model going forward.  I impress it on our vendors in the hope they share it with the companies they’re doing business with.  The economic landscape will likely be rough for awhile and it’s this kind of thinking…strength in numbers…that will carry us over the hump. 

What’s particularly clear to me having witnessed the strides made by Fish and Wildlife and the Marine Board.  Once you post some wins it’s easy to get behind this approach.  As I look around at other businesses that are flourishing right now — and there are several — it’s precisely this approach that’s enabling their success.  I’ve watched completely impressed by a nearby video production company that sailed through 2009.  Video production, a highly competitive category that suffered some serious downturns last year, yet this company grew, hired people, started new companies and are thriving thanks to visionary leadership that’s become expert in collaboration.  They chose not to go-it-alone instead opting to find new partners, markets, opportunities that were essential in their growth during a recession.

In the next week I’ll be making a call to a new and large prospect thanks to a printer and I’ve been invited to a meeting the following week that holds considerable promise compliments of a magazine I work with.  I’m quite sure the following week will present equally compelling opportunities because of my willingness to collaborate and work cooperatively with other like-minded businesses.

For most, writing is like public speaking…a study in anxiety, trepidation and drudgery.

It need not be any of those things. Adopting a process can make writing fun, rewarding and considerably less stress-filled than just throwing caution to the wind and hoping for the best.

The best “lesson” I ever recieved was from another writer who said, “First I get the paint on the wall and then I try to paint a Picasso.” Valuable advice. Too often people sit down and try to paint a Picasso. That is, they spend an inordinate amount of time laboring over every word and the form of the piece. A perfect introduction can consume hours as the writer starts, stops, scraps and starts over again.

Stop the madness and get the paint on the wall first!

Just start writing. Get the words on the page. They don’t have to be in any particular order but getting the information out, getting started is essential. As you write, leave room for notes as other ideas will pop in and out and it’s incumbent on you, the writer, to capture them immediately when they do.

This is getting the paint on the wall.

Once you have done all you need to create your letter, story, blog, instructions or article, then it’s time to go back and paint a Picasso. That may consume several drafts but you’ll find the process much easier once you have the paint on the wall. You’ll need to be a tough editor knocking out words or entire paragraphs that don’t fit. Resources like Quoteopia! (www.quoteopia.com) are invaluable when you’re looking for a spark of enlightenment or the perfect quote to blend into your writing. There are dozens of online resources available but none of them are a silver bullet to writing success. That will come from you and your investment into how often you write and hard you work at the craft of writing.

Finally, write with economy — there’s no need to beat the reader over the head with needless redundancy or hyper-descriptions that add little to the piece. Particularly in letter writing — be clear, concise, to-the-point. Prose, blogs, some stories, you have far more latitude but economy is still a sound principle. Ads for example can be as short as 3 or four words up to 150 words…rarely any longer except in those god-forsaken advertorials that likely go unread. In advertising, every word has to count otherwise it has to go.

There are no shortcuts to great writing. Adopting a process will be a strong first step in making each writing assignment more palatable and less difficult. And so you know, I took my own advice in writing this…got the paint on the wall, dropped a couple paragraphs and a dozen other words, re-read and polished a couple times and hit the “publish” button on my blog interface to post. Start-to-finish…about 30 minutes.

My dad used to counsel that the two most dangerous words in the English language were, “if only”. “If only I would have finished my graduate degree things would have been so much better.” “If only I’d climbed that mountain”…”dated that woman”…”bought that car”…etc., etc., etc.

I’ve spent my life making sure I never utter those words. My success or failure is my responsibility — as others have commented, “I’m the author of my life”.

So with that spirit, I transported my boat, 10 rods, a couple large tackle boxes, my rain gear and assorted boating items to the mouth of the Columbia River and the storied Buoy 10 fishery for a little more than a month. This sojourn had been a burning temptation for the last couple of years and I vowed to spend some real time on one of the roughest, most treacherous and most productive pieces of salmon water on the planet.

I had several agendas.

First and foremost, was to take a number of friends and family fishing. Next, was to put a number of our clients gear to the test. Last, was for me to catch a bunch of salmon and re-connect with one of the most important places in my life.

As a kid I spent my summers in Long Beach, Washington…minutes from Ilwaco and Buoy 10 and the treacherous Columbia River bar. I vividly remember Coast Guard helicopters routinely conducting body searches for some poor soul who’d been claimed by the sea — at times the searches were daily. I can remember the pea soup fog where the only technology we had to rely on was our compass and knowledge of where things were — Buoy 10, Buoy 11, Buoy 12, Chinook, Ilwaco and “A” Jetty were all major landmarks. More than once we’d see the wash of whitecaps and breakers signaling our proximity to Clatsop spit…a short boat-eating break you didn’t want to venture into. Those breakers meant we were on the wrong side of the river and we needed to find our way back across which was a fool’s rush navigating through equally confused boats and the occasional freighter.

I remember the boats flooding back to the harbor filled with ocean-fresh salmon. We watched the boats unload their catch by the truckload hoping someday to be part of that fleet. My dad and grandpa would leave in the dark for some charter and return a few short hours later devastated by sea-sickness but with limits of coho and Chinook salmon for the family to enjoy while they retired to the stillness of a warm bed.

That was a long time ago. It was before the bridge from Astoria to Megler was completed. We used to take ferries across the river which was a thrill-a-minute ride across the 4 mile expanse of river that divides Oregon and Washington.

Here it was — a full 45 years later and now I was committed to immersing myself in this fabled fishery with a whole new sense of belonging and history.

This area, from the bridge out to the ocean and just north and south of the river entrance is known as “The Graveyard of the Pacific”. It’s an aptly named title that’s been earned through hundreds of boat sinkings and thousands of lost lives. Now here I was, bobbing around in an open 20′ skiff trying to challenge this 1,243 mile long mass of river. I will admit most days in an open 20′ boat you feel a little under-gunned.

Thankfully, there were just enough good days where the wind didn’t blow and the river laid down to keep me fishing. The days the wind blew made me think twice about my decision to spend so much time in this stretch of river. I was never in danger…not once, but there were a few days that were pretty damned uncomfortable for me and my guests.

My last stretch was planned to be 9 days straight — I made it to 7 before I had to quit. The fishing had slowed, the weather had changed and the outlook was less-than-promising so I made an executive decision and chucked-it-in.

From those 7 days I have a new-found appreciation for fishing guides. I found that between a few hours sleep, fishing, cleaning up and getting ready for the next day there was precious little time to watch an hour’s worth of news and get something to eat. I remembered a time when I did that every day and now having re-experienced that part of my life I understand that those experiences are best kept in my distant past.

I also have a new appreciation for my clients products. From my boat and motor that were subjected to daily and merciless abuse, to the rods, reels and line I used that were strained to the utmost under tides, fish and pressure — they all held up famously and without incident. Truly incredible when you understand the demands that were put on every piece of my equipment.

I know when I watch “The Deadliest Catch” and see them routinely work through 20′ and 30′ swells…I’ll never complain about fishing in ten footers — I’ll just button everything up and get out of there. Now having experienced moderate swells I have no idea how those guys do it…even though they’re in much bigger boats, it’s still got to be one rough ride.

A few days when I ran from Ilwaco to above the bridge — about a 12 mile run — I felt it in my legs, arms, shoulders, back — pretty much everywhere…except my ears…my ears never hurt one bit. Guides do that daily and they don’t hurt at all.

The lessons? Well, the grass isn’t greener on the other side. It’s brown. I love my job — being a marketer is what I was born to do. In fact, after all the time I spent on the water this past month I love my job more than ever. I’d hoped I’d have time to contemplate the universe, think and relax…there was no time to do any of that — I thought about herring, tides, rips, weather conditions and gear — constantly. If I want to contemplate, think and relax I’ll do that in the comfort of my Tempur-Pedic not at the Graveyard of the Pacific. Finally, BDC Advertising represents the best of the best. I witnessed it myself and am more committed to their businesses than ever. Whether it was Stevens Marine or Fisherman’s Marine & Outdoor that supplied my gear, Maxima line, Okuma reels, Lamiglas rods or Luhr Jensen gear they all performed perfectly and flawlessly and never let me down. I realized through my experience just how fortunate I am to be doing business with these companies and how fortunate I am to be a part of BDC. Next year, I’ll limit my stretches to 3 or 4 days…no more.

Baby-boomers like me grew up with technology — heck, we invented a lot of it. We started with punch cards that we stuck into massive main frame computers that buzzed and whirred like something out of an old Buck Rodgers movie using programs named Fortran, Cobal and Pascal. We gravitated to MS DOS as the technology changed learning lengthy codes that tested our recall and then we ran to the simplicity of Windows that required neither cards or much personal memory. So why-not Facebook?

“What have you been up to these last 20 years?” Well that answer was best left to a crisp micro-brew and a couple hours of catching up. I’ve now enjoyed a short case and several contacts from long lost friends thanks to the power of social networking.

Today, I posted a shot of a wonderful fish I’d caught on the Deschutes River. It was a fabulous fish and a great shot so I thought it worthy to share. Within minutes “oohs” and “aahs” flooded in from Alaska, New Jersey and California from people I wouldn’t have connected with otherwise. My network isn’t just the 70 or so people I’ve cultivated…it’s all those people and the people they’ve attracted — in several cases hundreds and in some even thousands. All of whom are privy to my message.

I can easily see the value of these networks.

We landed an important new account today. I don’t have the official go-ahead to share the news yet — but we will soon and when we do thousands will know about it in seconds. Hundreds will probably notice it and a couple months later the traditional media will print it and it will be old news — but still news just the same — just not as timely as these social networks we’re building.

If I was a retailer I’d be after this stuff like a fat man to a pie-eating contest. I’d grow my network fast and furious. I’d want thousands, tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands to see my tweets, twitters and blogs. This is powerful stuff that happens immediately.

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Social networking creates buzz. It’s exciting, immediate, engaging, fun and effective.

Social networking has become mainstream marketing. A celebrity sends out a tweet that he’ll be yodeling on some street corner and the next thing you know is 5,000 people are gathered on a street corner tying up traffic listening to the celebrity yodeler. Better yet, media floods to the fracas trying to be as just-in-time as the tweet which stimulates another 2,000 people to join the now mobbed celebrity yodeler.

This stuff is incredible!

I’m finding people and they’re finding me. I’m connecting and re-connecting more easily and seamlessly than I could imagine. Daily my network is growing and by this time next year it should be into the hundreds as more and more of us climb aboard this wonderful runaway train of technology.

Us boomers don’t fear it…we embrace. At times slowly. We’ve been sold a bill of goods before and understand time is precious so we squander it just like we do our precious identities. We get it though — it’s easy to understand, easy to do, easy to accept and easy to use. That’s why we’re building our LinkedIn and Plaxo accounts as well. Some of these may fall by the wayside…no worries the investment was minimal and it’s to be expected.

We finish the first beer and order a second. We’ve re-hashed a failed marriage, several perfect kids we’ve sired, dreams we had, ambitions we followed and now it’s time to talk about our fishing exploits. Nothing like sharing tales of big salmon and the prospect of future trips over a cold one…or two…or…