In Defense of Us

A few weeks ago, I ran into a friend of mine at happy hour. Conversation in our group turned to work, and when I mentioned that I really enjoy what I do, she turned to me and said: “Wow, really? I’m not used to hearing that from PR people.”

My friend is a freelance journalist, so I know she talks to PR people pretty often. But I was surprised by how many of my peers she perceives as unhappy in their profession. Surprised, that is, until I started thinking about what makes people unhappy at work. Sometimes, it’s because you don’t get along with your coworkers. Sometimes, you think you’re being underpaid. And sometimes, it’s because you’re really bad at your job. And it’s always amazed me, when I’m on my friend’s side of things and receiving pitches instead of sending them, just how genuinely bad some PR “professionals” are at what they do.

These are the people who give the whole public relations industry a bad rap. They’re the people who make journalists feel compelled to put warnings up on Cision stating: “John Doe is a reporter. He does not accept unsolicited pitches from PR flacks.” (Unfortunately, that’s not much of an exaggeration.) They’re the people that justify the existence of the Bad Pitch Blog and drive editors to call them out on Twitter. They pitch off-topic, don’t do their research, don’t bother to customize with so much as a “Dear John.” Frankly, they’re an embarrassment. And if they don’t like their jobs—well, they only have themselves to blame.

I like to think I’m good at my job. I certainly take the responsibility of it very seriously—and I know I’m not alone. There are good PR pros out there, if you know where to look. I’m lucky to work with a group of them here at ELISE.

We do a tremendous amount of research before we send pitches. Media lists, even when compiled from a list of journalists with whom we’ve already been in touch, take us days to put together because we’re checking up on every person we contact. Not to stalk them—just to get a feeling for what sort of story they’d want to write. We use our research and create custom pitches that show the people we’re talking why we think they’d be interested in what we have to say. The extra effort is appreciated; our response rate is consistently high, and we get enviable results for our clients. More than a few journalists have even complimented us on our approach—and even if they’re not interested in that particular story, they remember us the next time around.

It’s feedback like that, affirmation that we’re good at what we do, that gives me the confidence to tell a journalist friend, in all honesty, that I love my job. As PR pros, we sometimes have much to prove about the necessity of our field. But if more PR pros would pitch responsibly, our value would be undeniable.

PR Tools: The Media Kit

Ah, the media kit— a clever, creative and oftentimes colorful way to convey your message in a concrete fashion.  Many agencies have shied away from such marketing collateral in an effort to participate in the more cost-efficient and trendy 140-characters-or-less banter, but we at ELISE love the media kit and welcome them with open arms.  In fact, we pride ourselves in bringing traditional press kits back into popularity.

Why?  Because when most people are overwhelming your inboxes with poorly researched pitches and press releases, we are reconnecting with an old friend through a delivery from UPS or FedEx.

The media kit pulls the journalist into the story the same way the journalist pulls the reader into their stories—artfully juxtaposing words and images.  Marketingterms.com claims “there are no static rules, and media kits vary greatly.”  One campaign could be advocating for social change and an end to poverty, while another is informing the media of an upcoming event in San Francisco.  But all are designed to ultimately grab the attention of the recipient and inspire them to ask questions about the enclosed message.

A journalism professor of mine once said: “as much as I used to loathe getting information from PR professionals, I always took the time to open their press kits because there was a certain radiating passion that went into the composition of that particular package.”

Speaking of college days, let’s take a trip down memory lane.  Every college memory starts with one piece of mail—the acceptance package.  There is a similarity between the intentions of a college acceptance letter and a press kit.  Colleges and universities are still mailing out acceptances every year because they understand the significance and the perceived intimacy that goes along with receiving a piece of mail.

Media kits convey the same messages.  Though not always life changing, the PR professional has chosen you, the reporter, to receive this particular package because they know that you will appreciate the gesture and that you also care about the messages, facts and suggestions hidden inside this piece of art.  It is a personalized, professional way of saying “I thought this might interest you.”

A Reflection in the Key of E: Not All Internships Are About Coffee

Internships. Just like men say about women: you can’t live with them, and these days, you can’t get a job without them. Okay, that’s not what they say, but hopefully you get my point. The value of the internship is debatable depending on industry, but in public relations, experience is king. Some are dreams come true, others are waking nightmares (I’ve had both), but as I have learned, you will be hard pressed to get hired without a few internships under your belt. Now that I have been with ELISE for a few months, I wanted to comment on my experience as the resident intern.

You may recall from previous posts that I graduated from Haverford College in May of this past year. As a member of the not-so-affectionately dubbed Cursed Class of ’09, I am grateful every morning when my alarm goes off at 7:03 a.m. and I wake up to go to work.

Midway through my senior year of college, I realized along with thousands of my peers that I would be graduating during the worst recession in recent history. Reluctantly, I considered my options: the relentless and daunting search for employment, a mad scramble to apply to graduate school, or a year back home in New Jersey. Not too thrilled with option three, and ready for a break from academia, I chose to embark on the job search with a clear goal in mind: to land a job in public relations, an industry notoriously difficult to break into in a healthy economy, let alone one flat on its back. To make a long story short, I endured seemingly endless frustration, half due to the frozen economy, the other half to my naiveté. Then, three weeks before graduation, I found ELISE communications in Philadelphia and was offered an internship. My search had finally ended.

I write from my desk, in the Old City loft that houses the formerly three, now four-woman outfit that is ELISE communications, where I have worked as an intern for the past three months. ELISE is not your typical public relations firm, and the work I do is not typical of any internship I have held in the past. I work alongside three extremely intelligent, eloquent and driven women all under the age of 35, who motivate me on a daily basis. ELISE functions as a team, on which I am a key player. I tackle projects with the Principal, and there is not a press release, media alert or even blog post that goes out before passing under four sets of eyes. As a 22-year-old, fresh from college, it is extremely encouraging to work in an environment where my opinion is sought and my input valued.

I am likewise motivated by the clients that ELISE works with, all of whom are focused on social innovation, entrepreneurship, invention and education. PR catches a lot of flack for being fluffy, or soulless. Our clients are saving the world, quite literally. It is difficult not to be inspired, not just from 9-5, but also on my career path. If ELISE has done one thing for me, it has set the bar high by allowing me to be in the thick of everything we do. Not all internships revolve around spreadsheets and coffee runs. If you’d like proof, take a visit to 215 Church Street, and I’ll tell you myself.

Why You Should Hire a Female. (Part 2 of 2)

My new favorite thing to read is The New Yorker. It always surprises me. Case in point, this past weekend I read a story about Kroll, Inc. Coincidentally, I was talking to an old client last Friday from Marsh Inc., a sister company to Kroll and part of the family of Marsh & McLennan Companies. I was managing the Marsh Portland account around the time it purchased Kroll from Jules Kroll, its founder.

Jules, I learned from The New Yorker article, is an interesting fellow and his opinions only add to the intrigue of Kroll—a risk-mitigation firm that functions as an investigator-meets-crisis-communications partner for mostly private companies. Sounds a little like Law and Order, my favorite show.

You might have read my post from a few weeks ago about how one of the good decisions that successful companies make is to hire females. And, it turns out that Jules Kroll echoed that same sentiment in this interview:

“I like to mix it up. You need at least one woman on any team. She’ll have a different view.”

It was interesting to see that his view concurred with the Pepperdine research. Interesting in particular to me, as he was part of a publicly-traded Wall Street firm in an industry which I found to be sorely lacking females and very male. It’s the type of environment that is more often than not about golf, drinking and swearing. And don’t get me wrong, I like some of these activities.

“A different view,” to quote Jules. Does that mean better? Unlike? Dissimilar? Or perhaps, it just completes the picture. And, he had other ideas that any entrepreneur and leader of a company (whether female or male) can learn from:

(1)         Build client trust: “You gain their trust, they’re going to want to try your soup and your dessert.”

(2)         Diversify your service offerings: “Once you’ve been invited to someone’s dining room to feed them, you want to have more than salad to offer.”

This too is similar to what we hold most sacred at ELISE: our contacts. Clients and contacts and operating a relationship-based business, that, oh yeah, has a few females. This is what we find is the recipe for success at ELISE.

Happy Blog Action Day!

Change.org’s Blog Action Day “is an annual event that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day,” with the “aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion” on a different theme every year. This year’s theme is “Climate Change.” While still a controversial topic, more and more people are acknowledging that climate change—popularly referred to as “global warming“—is a real problem, and are looking for solutions.

ELISE client The Lemelson Foundation supports a number of energy-efficient technologies, most notably the programs included in their InventingGreen(tm) portfolio of projects. The organizations included in InventingGreen are working on clean energy technology that can reduce carbon emissions or dependence on petroleum-based fuels—two things that are widely thought to contribute to global warming—with an added bonus: they are also helping to grow and strengthen the local economies where their technologies are being used. These projects are Envirofit International’s two-stroke retrofit kits for motorcycle taxis, which can reduce carbon emissions 75-90% and increase fuel efficiency by 30-50%; affordable solar energy systems designed by IDEAAS that could bring electricity to 3,000 families; Lifelights, the Freeplay Foundation’s safe and sustainable alternative to kerosene lanterns; and off-grid renewable energy fueled by biowaste, engineered by Emergence Bioenergy, Inc.

The Lemelson Foundation is also co-sponsoring Andrew C. Revkin’s visit to Portland State University next month, in conjunction with EcoTrust. Revkin, who maintains The New York Times‘ Dot Earth blog, has written extensively about climate change and will be discussing how to restore certain environmental conditions as the earth’s population continues to grow.

At ELISE, we’re glad to see our clients support proactive work that can and likely will affect climate change for the better, and it’s something we try to do on a smaller scale, too. From our very large recycling bin, to or recent acquisition of real plates and glasses (instead of disposable), to the scrap paper pile that ensures that we re-use paper as much and as often as possible, to our timed thermostat that makes sure we aren’t using extra energy to heat and cool the office when it’s not needed, we’re doing our part to keep the conversation about environmental responsibility going, even when it’s not Blog Action Day.

For more on Blog Action Day, and to see how you can get involved in the global conversation, follow @blogactionday or #bad09 on Twitter.

PR Tools: Talking Points

PR professionals have a few standard tools that we tend to utilize on a day-to-day basis—the press release, the media alert, the pitch and talking points.  Everything else—the research, templates, internal tracking/monitoring documents, etc.—differs from agency to agency.

Over the next few weeks I plan to run a series of posts about the importance of some of the PR tools we at ELISE communications create and implement everyday.

Today, I would like to focus on the importance of talking points.  Whether preparing for a meeting with a journalist or a major press conference, it is important for a PR firm to provide their clients valid and up-to-date talking points.  Talking points are exactly what they sound like: a list of key messages that ideally would come up in conversation that are also relevant to both parties involved.  Ample research and a firm understanding of the person you are representing are key when drafting a set of talking points.

I know there are many people in this world that think they are excellent at on-the-fly responses and do not need to do advanced work, but oftentimes those are the people that end up having to back-peddle and reword or stumble over their responses.  I recently witnessed my brother play a phenomenal football game against the Air Force Academy and (not to brag) score the game-winning points for the Naval Academy.  He was then whisked away to participate in a press conference (his first—hopefully not his last).  After viewing the conference I realized how useful a set of talking points might have been in that situation.  Yes, he had an idea of what they would be asking him about, but no, I don’t think he was ready for the curve ball question: “So when was the last time you missed a field goal?”  Someone else had to respond for him to prevent the pregnant pause: “Two games ago. Next question!”  Thankfully, the other questions that followed were not as awkward, and I think he did fabulously for someone I know to be very humble and shy.

Hours later I received the phone call from Joey and the first thing he said to me  was: “Chrissy, man I really could have used some talking points in that press conference! Do you know of anyone who might be able to help with that?”

Image courtesy of Joe Buckley.  (Photo is from a Navy game against Pittsburgh earlier this year.)

A Few Thoughts on the 2009 Global Creative Economy Convergence Summit

Innovation Philadelphia’s 2009 Global Creative Economy Convergence Summit (#GCECS2009, if you were following it on Twitter) was held yesterday and Monday, and I had the opportunity to represent ELISE at a number of panels and discussions over the course of the conference.

If you follow us on Twitter, you’ve probably already got an idea of what I saw and who I met. But for the rest of you, I wanted to give a few of my personal highlights from GCECS.

• Elizabeth Gilbert had a lot to say about what it meant to be fully employed as a creative person. Most interesting, she shared her belief that if you’re having trouble on one creative project, you should move to another. When plagued by serious writer’s block, Gilbert began to garden—creativity in a whole new way!
• I’d never heard the term “Shiny Penny Hell,” but I know I’ve been there: it’s the moment that you have a great idea and you have no idea what to do next, so you do nothing. Facilitators Julie Lenzer Kirk and Y. Renee Lewis led us through some exercises to un-block the creative stops—literally, with a block of wood.
• I think conferences need more Pecha Kucha. It’s the Twitter equivalent of Powerpoint presentations. Highlights from Monday’s session included Shift_Design’s gorgeous rainwater capture systems and the official introduction of the newly-launched Walkshed Philadelphia, which I plan on using all the time.
• Randall Kempner, of Lemelson-supported ANDE (Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs), gave a really engaging talk during lunch on Monday. During his talk, Randall said something that relates very much to the work we do here at ELISE: Entrepreneurs are everywhere, and we need to find ways of supporting them—especially the ones who are potentially driving social change.
• It was nice to see Doug Bellenger of PhindMe speaking about Mobile Technology (I first met him two years ago when I attended BlogPhiladelphia). Doug and his co-panelists had a lot to say about mobile browsing and apps, but my biggest takeaway was perhaps one of the more obvious: if you’re going to optimize your site for mobile Web, you can’t just do it for one type of mobile device. They’re all different, and what works for the iPhone may not work at all for a Blackberry.
• The session on crowdsourcing, moderated by Matthew Fisher of Night Kitchen Interactive, presented quite a few interesting points about this community-based method of problem solving and marketing. Because word of mouth travels more quickly than before, crowdsourcing enables movements to grow internationally and exponentially. And it also allows you to facilitate long-term, two-way relationships with the people you want to reach.
• Peter Shankman’s breakfast keynote yesterday was a re-focused version of the talk he gave two weeks ago at the Philly PRSA, this time talking more about social media in general than self-promotion. Key point he made that too many people don’t get: in social media, it’s up to you not to be stupid and post things you don’t want other people to see. Because at the end of the day, social media doesn’t exist. What exists is the ability to screw up for a larger audience in less time. Sound familiar?
• My key takeaway from the Mayors’ Roundtable on Sustainability? Conferences so focused on technology should make it easier for you to charge your laptop without having to leave the room. From following the #GCECS hashtag, though, it sounded like a really fascinating session!
• I’m really interested in issues of fair use and intellectual property, so attending the panel discussion focused on “Legal Challenges of Successful Entrepreneurship in an Internet Age” was a no-brainer. Most interesting to me was the idea that trademarks operate on a strictly “use it or lose it” policy: even if you file for protection, it’s up to you to make sure that you don’t let your brand slip through your fingers by inaction.
• I met some really interesting people at the lunchtime “Unconference Gab-Fest on Creativity,” including Rich Gretzinger of Human + Nature, which produces film and video for non-profit organizations, aimed at inspiring others to take action.
• My last panel at the conference focused on entrepreneurial journalism—Web-based outlets especially. Things got a little heated over philly.com Editor Chris Krewson’s thoughts on the future of the print industry (which basically amounted to: new business model needed), but he responded very thoughtfully to the audience’s concerns, and we had a great chat after the panel about how the rules of news changing so quickly that we were possibly headed into the wild, wild west: exciting, but untamed. Also on the panel, and great to talk to after, was Paul Schutt of Issue Media Group, which publishes (among other outlets) ELISE-favorite Keystone Edge.

I’m sure that I’ll go back to re-visit these ideas and other notes I took during GCECS, but that’s it for now. Were you there? Leave your thoughts in the comments!

Raise Your Glasses…and Cupcakes!

Tonight ELISE communications will be joining the Chemical Heritage Foundation in celebrating its museum’s first birthday! In keeping with CHF’s monthly First Friday “Manual Science” events, museum-goers can participate in a fermentation conversation with Michael McCaulley, Partner and Wine Director of Tria Cafe. McCaulley will lead three discussions about the science of winemaking and offer samples of Spanish cava, a double-fermented sparkling wine at 5:30, 6:30, and 7:30 p.m.  Jennifer McCafferty of JPM Catering will also be lending her services to the anniversary celebration with light snacks and a periodic table of cupcakes.  How delicious!  The event is free to the public and set to kick-off at 5:00 p.m. and run until 8:00 p.m.  All are welcome, so please join us.

Special congratulations are also in order for SaylorGregg Architects, who led the renovation of the museum space.  SaylorGregg was recently awarded a Citation of Merit for architectural excellence by AIA Pennsylvania.  The award commends SaylorGregg’s historic renovation of the Civil War–era bank that houses the museum and conference center.

Image credit: *Sandra*