Yup, I know it’s been months since I’ve blogged but I really haven’t had strong thoughts about any particular topic—until now.
I’d like to share my observations about the current “pop-up store” craze. If you’re not familiar with the concept, it calls for companies to open a temporary store location, hopefully in a high traffic area, where they can expose their product or products to the public and gain awareness and interest in them. In some major markets it has been a successful PR gimmick, earning coverage on all forms of media for brief periods of time. Some people argue it is highly successful in gaining quick awareness because the media is interested in the concept. Others will argue differently. I am one of those people.
A few days back the makers of a dry pasta product suggested such a store for its return to the NY metro marketplace. They at one time successfully imported many different kinds of pasta into the U.S. but in the past several years that aspect of their business had shrunk dramatically. Now they are coming back to the market.
Because of the type of product I strongly urged the pasta maker ‘s marketing people not to do it because I’d recently had direct experience with two pop up store locations in Manhattan. I won’t name the organization, but it had financed a temporary summer store location at Union Square near 14th Street and Fifth Avenue and an autumn store on Manhattan’s West Side in the 70’s. They rented, staffed and decorated 1,500 square foot storefronts. Union Square is a busy commercial area. The Upper West Side store was located in a residential neighborhood. Neither were very productive, averaging about 100 to 150 visitors a day. Both became hangouts for local residents looking for freebies. When you added up the investment and divided it by attendance, the cost was expensive. The downtown store opening did get fantastic press coverage on New York and New Jersey market print and broadcast outlets. But actually visits were low. Neighborhood mothers and tots were using the uptown store as a hangout when I visited it on a Wednesday at 2 p.m. When you add up the turnout over a three-month timeframe for the downtown location, visitors (generously) totaled about 70,000—in a city of 7 million people. Hmmm.
What marketing people outside of major cities tend to forget is this—major cities are really collections of neighborhoods where the same people tend to come and go every day. Commuters, lunchtime crowds and residents are the same people every day (I went to high school and worked a block from the Union Square location). Pop up stores are not destinations. And because they are short lived they have no opportunity to build awareness—a critical factor for any retail structure. If you can’t afford to rent and staff in a very high traffic environment, don’t.
My counsel? Unless you’ve got something really remarkable, really rare and really appealing, stay away from pop up stores. Even if your goal is to get media exposure from them, the media is starting to go ho-hum to them because they’ve become commonplace. They were a good media gimmick while they lasted. Spend your money some other way—and get better results. And if you really do have something remarkable, unusual and exciting, you’re probably not going to need a pop-up store anyway.
By the way, I welcome observations or criticisms of my viewpoint. Would love to hear from anyone with a different opinion. Always happy to learn.

In these times of economic belt tightening, it’s tough to respond to every local organization looking for a donation for a worthy cause. Fact is, even in economically good times, it’s tough to respond to every request that comes into your company.

Sure, you want to have a positive posture in the community, but there’s no reason why you can’t expect a little payback from your philanthropy as well.

Here are some suggestions I give clients when they ask me about corporate giving.

1)Choose a handful of activities or groups where you can really have an impact and where your donation will be large enough to gain media coverage.
2)Find out which charities and organizations either have marketing and communications capabilities or a policy of doing media relations on behalf of those who give them donations. You really should get something in return for your largesse.
3)Work with those organizations to develop news releases and photos for dissemination to the media. And see if they’ll send the release out on their letterhead and/or contact the media about your participation. You have a much better shot of getting coverage if a charity or community organization sends the information to the media.
4)Work with their executives to come up with a unique way of making the donation. Newspapers absolutely hate pictures of people giving a giant oversized check to a charity. Find a better way to develop a visual for the media.
5)If employees want to volunteer their time for a charity event, make sure you get pictures of them working with the charity. And better yet, if you’re working on a fund raiser with a charity, gets pictures of your employees or yourself “planning” the activity or event. The media likes to cover an activity BEFORE it happens because it’s timely and the media likes to give coverage to make people aware of an upcoming activity so they can participate.
6)And even if you decide to give smaller amounts to more causes, investigate whether they have an online newsletter or some form of printed communication—even a flyer—so that you are acknowledged for your time and money.

Conversely, if you are a small charity, consider all of the above. You won’t have to work as hard next year when it comes time again to ask for another donation.

A number of our clients submit their work for industry contests each year and I’m pleased to say that quite a few of them walk away with awards for their work. Usually, the awards they receive are presented at industry dinners or events. Sometimes, there is a photographer present to take pictures of the award presentation. And sometimes, you’re “on your own” trying to use your own camera to get “grab” shots as an industry official hands the award to your employee or executive—all in about three short seconds.

If you aren’t a great photographer and you’re charged with getting photos that you’d like to have as keepsakes or for company publicity, here are a couple of suggestions.

Get in touch with the persons responsible for giving the awards in advance of the presentation and tell them you’d like to do the following:

1) schedule some time after the presentation to take more photos including a re-enactment of the presentation with the presenter and other photos with your executives and the presenter in them. Do this and you won’t be forced to rush a photo with unsatisfactory results.
2) Pick a backdrop that is attractive, photogenic and well lit. Too much glare or not enough light can result in a lousy photo.
3) Only put a maximum of four people in each photo. Take as many photos as you like with as many people as you can, but make sure there are a maximum of four in each image. Editors don’t like photos with the cast of Ben Hur in them. Everyone ends up looking like a pinhead and no one will ever read the caption because it’s too long.
4) If you’re submitting the photo with a caption to a publication, make sure the caption succinctly tells what the award is for.
5) And finally, use a digital camera with a high resolution capability—300dpi or better. Editors can’t use low resolution photos in newspapers and magazines. Low res photos are only good for online reproduction.

As the one-time corporate communications director for a Fortune 300, I confronted just about every possible public relations issue involving the corporate sector. But one of the most interesting came during A recession several years ago when the company was laying off small numbers of people at every location except the corporate headquarters in Stamford, CT..

Times were admittedly tough and we were doing everything we could to support a dealer network with the “good news.” So, I really broke out the aspirin when the business reporter from the local newspaper told me she had received a call from one of the company’s senior executives telling her we were about to lay off hundreds of people at the corporate headquarters.

She said the senior executive asked to remain anonymous and was the layoff true.

First of all, I knew every senior executive in the company. I reported to the chairman of the board at the time. It was unlikely that any executive would have called any reporter. And second, it was unlikely that as head of corporate communications, I would not know about impending layoffs.

So, I told the reporter first that I had NO “no comment.” Anyone in our business knows that if I had said “ no comment” it would have been immediately used in a story with the allegation from the anonymous executive.

She immediately became frustrated and told me I couldn’t have no “no comment.” I laughed and assured her I knew she was right. And I asked her the following: “Do me a favor and call that executive here at work to confirm that they gave you the information. If they did, give me a couple of hours to find out what’s going on and I’ll make sure to get back to you with a response before your deadline.” I had known her for three years and was pretty sure she’d agree to my request.

She did. Because within five minutes of our conversation, I got another call-this time from our senior vice president of human resources. The SVP told me she had received a call from the reporter, asking her to confirm the layoff information she had received from my senior exec the night before. Five minutes later, I also got a call from the reporter who told me the senior vice president’s voice was clearly not that of the person who had fed her the information and it was apparent to her the SVP had never called her in the first place.

The SVP made it clear that she had convinced the reporter there were no impending layoffs (some actually did come months later). And to this day I’m not sure how she did it, but the SVP was able to track the call to a disgruntled employee who had been fired for completely different reasons. This was their way of trying to get “even” with the company.

Either as a client or an agency, you probably won’t run into a situation exactly like this. But you may run into similar circumstances with disgruntled ex-employees. Know your facts. We didn’t have “hundreds of people” at the corporate headquarters so something wasfishy from the start.

Buy some time–the media will usually give you that much. And be ready to respond.

If you have a large business to business client ($50 million in sales and up), chances are good it sells products through distributors, dealers or franchises.

If the 20-80 rule holds as it usually does, 20% of these distributors or dealers are probably generating 80% of the business. And usually, that 20% is the more sophisticated in marketing and sales, with websites and marketing communications programs.

BUT, the other 80% may not be sophisticated—and not have a website. And while they may not be your ‘A” list, they, first, may have the potential to be on that list and, second, are worth cultivating to generate more business in these economically hard times.

Convince your top executives or client that you should help create and maintain a website for as many of them as you can afford. Why should you do that? Several reasons.

1) The Internet is an important and inexpensive way of doing business.
2) Creating a website for each of them can be very inexpensive if you create a template that changes only slightly to accommodate each distributor. In fact, you want the look to be similar to your own website. That works particularly if each has a geographically exclusive territory. A simple four-page website can cover all the bases on who they are and what they offer—with your products highlighted, of course.
3) If you create and maintain the site, you can also track all incoming inquiries to each site, as well as the distributor’s responses, to make sure leads are being followed up.
4) If you are tracking their sites and they are not following up on leads, you have a choice. You can nudge them, you can follow up on the leads yourself or you can ultimately replace them with another distributor in their marketplace.
5) And always make sure that each of the sites has a link right back to your own website so prospects can get a more detailed picture of what you are offering.

Make the cost of maintaining these sites inexpensive by working out a monthly retailer with whomever you hire to maintain them. And reward those distributors or dealers who use the site effectively by helping them to upgrade and enhance their sites. You may even have five or 10 distributors who are major customers who do not have websites. Help provide them with something more sophisticated.

Yes, this takes an investment and that investment , depending on the number of distributors or dealers you have , can cost in excess of $100,000 to set up. You have to ask yourself if the anticipated payback is worth it. I recommend you pay for the sites. You could ask the dealer or distributor to pay part, but you’ll lose control and get less participation.

It has been a decade since I supervised pubic relations for the Miss Universe Contest on Hawaii, but I’ll always remember the lesson I learned from the experience.

The local public relations we generated for each of the 84 girls in their individual countries was just as important as the media we got from the two-week long pageant on Oahu. I took some work and fortunately I had also supervised the Western Union money transfer account for 100 countries just a few years before, but the interest from the media was much stronger for the individual candidates than it was from the big print and broadcast outlets—particularly since CBS owned a piece of it with Donald Trump at the time. So we did our share of getting the big stuff but we also made sure that media in each of the girl’s countries (presuming they had media) got information as well.

It means finding the right kind of translators who know how to reproduce the English journalistic style into foreign languages but we did it. It also meant finding the right media in those countries. The girls, their sponsors and the translators were very helpful.

Nearly all of the girls who ranged from shopkeepers from Eastern Europe to a doctor and a dentist (that’s right!) had little stories about themselves worth feeding back to the home country press. We even had a great story for Miss Israel who participated in services with an Oahu Jewish congregation for Passover—a story that went international.

The Miss Universe contest stands n stark contrast to another beauty contest I had supervised for public relations several years before. It was a tugboat beauty contest held on the Hudson River and hosted by Bert Parks who had been fired the year before by the Miss America people. The contest was for Jones Lange Wooten then one of the world’s largest real estate developers to celebrate the opening of Harborside Financial Center in Jersey City, across the Hudson from Wall Street. Jersey City is now a back office haven for Wall Street. Then, it was nothing. We got the tugboat captains to decorate their boats and parade up the Hudson in front of Harborside while Bert Parks, company officials and local politicians rated the tuggies. Thanks to Bert and the idea we got national media coverage that night for the Center which years before had been a cold storage terminal for goods coming into the New York port. I knew because I had worked loading boxes there as a teenager.

Other events of note:

• A party three stories down in a construction hole on Park Avenue in New York to unveil plans for a 38-story luxury condominium project with only 38 units. We had to reinforce an earth ramp so media could walk down into the site. We served gourmet food and champagne and gave out hard hats and press kits at the conclusion, Front page New York Times the next day.

• Kickoff for Coca Cola Food’s (Minute Maid, Hi-C) participation in the summer Olympics—20 amateur female runners from all over the U.S. legging it cross country to Colorado Springs home of the Olympics training facility, to promote the first year of women’s distance running events in the Olympics. I got Winnebago to give me a camper, GM to give me pace cars and hotel chains to put us up for nothing. We took it through every major American city from the start at the George Washington Bridge to Colorado. At times, the route was circuitous to get there, but we had print and broadcast in every town we hit. And we raised money for the women’s distance running committee by holding running clinics at each of the hotels. We kept switching agency crews to keep everybody fresh and held nightly conferences so our media team in New York could generate fresh stories for the next day.

There are many more but I’m already running long. If anyone is interested in hearing more, let me know. Next time out maybe we can talk about event locations that don’t cost much and might be perfect for attracting attention and media coverage.

You can have the best media contacts in the world and the best story angle on earth but the person who’s going to help you get the most mileage out of any media activity you’re planning is the media buyer assigned at your agency or your media buying service to spend your media dollars.

Of course, your media buyer has to be a smart one, not a hack. I have been fortunate enough to work with some of the best media buyers in the New York advertising community over the years, professionals who have worked closely with me to maximize our communications exposure well beyond a simple talk show placement or an article in a publication.

Media buying isn’t only about buying media—often it’s about promotion and cross promotion that blends into public relations.

The economy is tight right now but television and radio networks and stations will still offer advertisers extra perks in return for spending. And your media buyer knows what those perks are.

Here are just a few your media buyer can pursue.

If you’re holding an event and you’re using radio advertising to promote it, ask your buyer to ask the station if you can provide the jocks with background information to mention the event on air. Ask if you can have remote, live coverage of the event-particularly if it’s running more than one day.

If you’re doing television advertising—particularly on sports networks, the jocks and the advertising people have relationships with athletes you can tap. Ask for personal appearances by the jocks and the athletes at your events. And use those appearances to score points with your target audiences and with your customer. Networks like ESPN and MSG sponsor special trips for clients to professional pre-season sports training camps. Ask the media buyer to see if he or she can wheedle some invitations for your clients and their clients.

Ask your media buyer if he or she has other customers who would like to cross pollinate with you. A local hotel or restaurant might wish to donate dinners and stays for a drawing or sweepstakes you are holding in return for exposure on air and in your commercials.

Some radio stations have camera crews and post video on their websites. Others are doing podcasts for clients. If you’re buying media from those stations, see what the potential is to get video or podcasts for your products. Work out a credible reason why they should do this.

Weather reporters and meteorologists are always looking for strange and interesting settings to do remote weather reports. Is there something about your business or your client’s business that would make a good backdrop? If you’re buying media from that station ask your buyer to broach the idea to the station manager. I recently had nine segments on Fox News in New York when the A.M. weatherman did a remote from a commercial driver training school where college graduates who’d lost their jobs were learning to drive 18-wheelers. In the last and final weather report for the morning, he drove out of the picture at the wheel of one of the big trucks.

Media buyers tend to know what promotions, gimmicks and added value opportunities there are at print and broadcast outlets. Make friends and find out how you can stretch your own PR efforts.

Not everyone can afford to hire an on-staff public relations professional or pay for an outside public relations counsel. And most marketing people in small or medium sized companies lack the training and experience to do effective public relations as a part of their overall marketing strategy.

Sorry, folks, I’m an ex-daily newspaper reporter and have been a public relations agency counsel for more than 30 years. You may think you can, but the vast majority of you lack the appropriate skills.

If you’re a member of a professional or industry trade organization, why don’t you encourage or demand that your association does it for you? Let me give you an example of how that can work.

Right now, we represent a major state wine organization with 35 winery members selling products within their state. We provide overall branding support and public relations for the industry, touting the quality of the product and its producers. No big surprise, right?

But we also support the public relations efforts of EACH individual winery as part of our service. When an individual winemaker wants to promote an event, we provide publicity and counsel. When the organization sponsors a statewide event, we provide media relations support to each individual winery in its market area. This support is covered in the monthly retainer of the association. Members who have embraced the program have seen dramatic results in profitability and exposure. And they are taking the information developed as news releases and media alerts and posting the content on their websites, using it for simple direct mail and even incorporating it into simple ads.

Non profs and trade organizations are always looking for new ways to serve existing members and lure new ones into the fold. But how many non profs or trade organizations—particularly ones with small and medium-sized companies—have thought about doing THIS for their members?

It makes perfect sense, particularly for smaller trade organizations whose members don’t have the financial means to mount their own continuing public relations campaigns. A modest monthly retainer for agency public relations can easily cost $3,000 and up. For that same amount, you can be covering the public relations program for your organization’s overall industry branding AND support your members with their individual efforts.

If you’re a non profit or a member, think about what it might do for your organization and its members.

We guide them just as we would guide any singular client in developing their campaigns. And we provide them with timely, media relations support for their activities. Not every agency can do this. You inevitably need an agency staff with journalism experience to be able to do this cost efficiently and correctly.

At the end of my last blog I had asked when you’re doing media training for more than one person from the same client, should you let all of them in the room when you’re grilling the first candidate? Or should you conduct that tough first mock interview one at a time?

I’ve done both. Starting with fairly innocuous media questions and working progressively to the toughest ones relevant to the client. I’ve had all the spokesperson candidates in the room at one time and I’ve also done it one by one.

Here are my thoughts. If you put all the trainees in the room, it becomes vividly apparent to the observers how tough and important the task of spokesperson can be. They see themselves on the hot seat and they immediately learn from the fumblings of whoever is going first. You can spend hours teaching people the rules of media engagement. But having them watch a colleague face the media music (or a reasonable facsimile) really drives it home.

However, putting everyone in the room together can be embarrassing, particularly to the poor soul who goes first. Your spokespeople are usually senior executives and it can be embarrassing for the individual on the hot seat. It may make sense to do individual training—but it will never be as impactful on the trainee as watching a peer go through the initial torment of the tough interview.

On the other hand, I have to point out that on several occasions I have watched clients come through with flying colors and even learned a thing or two myself.

One other note in selecting spokespeople, particularly when you are trying to place them on television interviews. Television producers—whether they admit it or not—like to have attractive people on camera. I remember visiting Fox News with one of my agency account executives and a physician spokesperson for a major OTC drug company. The account exec was a middle aged handsome man who had even done some TV commercials. When the producer met the three of us, she lit up and immediately asked if the account exec was the doctor. When the doctor introduced himself, the bulb dimmed.