I had a fun hour being interviewed by Fiona Scott for her PR podcast a week ago. She asked me what PRs need to focus on when they pitch to the media. It’s a topic I feel strongly about and there’s plenty more to say, but here’s a short summary.
- Does your story speak to a wider trend? This is an absolute must unless your story is about someone doing something that is completely ahead of their time and/or very surprising.
- Is your story timely and will it solve a common problem or reveal more about a common problem?
- Are you being as concise as you possibly can be? If not, cut down your pitch to the bare minimum. Journalists are sent hundreds of pitches each day.
- Are you totally sure that you are targeting the right journalists? If, for example, your pitch is only slightly about education, don’t send it to the education correspondents
- Be persistent, but don’t pester. Broadcast media’s rotas and shifts mean that sometimes a phone call is the right way to pitch, but in most cases an email is the best first approach.
Fiona asked me for my favourite PR campaign. It’s the ‘Missing Type’ blood donation campaign.
To encourage new blood donors, 1,000 organisations removed the A, O and B from their signs and social media branding to bring attention to the ‘missing types’ of donated blood.
Highlights included the ‘o’ disappearing from the Downing Street sign.
The campaign ran in 2015 and attracted 30,000 new blood donating registrants during its first week, around eight times the normal number for a typical week. The campaign was so
successful that blood services around the world joined up for a follow up campaign the next year.
Here’s my interview with Fiona.
Contact me to find out more