Press conferences are so like yesterday. Your best bet is to ignite a conversation.

Related Categories: Communication

It was in January, several week before their big press conference when my (new) client called to say they had received over US $1,000,000 in international funding and wanted to launch the second phase of a public education programme.

But this new client had been without a public face for many years, had gone through several corporate communications managers and had been virtually silent when it received funding during Phase 1 of the project. "We preferred to work quietly with our stakeholders rather than seek publicity," said the CEO.

When I told my client that holding a press conference was the least effective way to get his news out, he almost had a heart attack. He had held on to the notion of a press conference as a way of making a big splash, the same way a hungry baby does his mother's nipples.

But we had three major issues and I told my client just that:

1) No one knew who they were, they had been quiet for too long

2) In the news cycle too many distracting and competing things were going on, their news would be pushed to the bottom of the media totem pole

3) We needed to embrace the fact that journalists liked to be briefed exclusively, this was one case where I thought we could make it work if we stripped away the press conference niceties and got the stakeholders talking.

I outlined a strategy for igniting as many conversations as possible in a very short timeframe.

I am not sure why I wasn't fired immediately but somehow I convinced my client to find stories, real stories of people who had benefitted from their programme, real stories and real voices from folks who were creating successful and unique work but also had their hardships to share. We promised editors opportunities for one-of-a kind photography, no reporter was given the same pitch.

My client got extraordinary results from understanding a fundamental rule about Public Relations and that it is our jobs as professionals to discern stories that the market actually wants to hear and to help journalists write stories that tell the truth and which bring people into the conversation rather than keep them at the periphery.

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We groan when we have to cover a press conference--unless it is some long awaited response by some major public figure. we drag ourselves there because sometimes that is the only place you can track down somebody you have been stalking, because there is the fear that if we don't turn up, the competition might just get an exclusive, because it is a thing to send newbies to which they can't mess up too badly, because if we don't someone might call the top brass and complain and when one day down the road we actually want something important from the source they snub us because they felt snubbed when we didn't cover their event, because you might get the chance to corner the source and squeeze out something useful for the news.

kathy.

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