Thousands of press releases are issued each week.
Hundreds of media pitches are sent each day.
The trouble is – a lot of them sound the same.
Communications has become formulaic. And AI has only made the problem worse.
How can PR and communications professionals learn to build compelling, engaging stories that don’t sound like everyone else?
My guest, Lou Covey, has had a long career in communications, working as a journalist, an in-house corporate communicator, and in the agency world. He’s currently editor of Cyber Protection Magazine, and offers media training to executives who want to hone their messaging and presentation skills.
Join us as we chat about what public relations pros should know about standing out from a journalist’s point of view.
Show summary:
In this episode of PR Explored, host Michelle Garrett, a PR consultant, author, and writer, interviews Lou Covey, a veteran journalist with 55 years of experience.
Lou shares his journey from journalism to exploring cybersecurity and creating the Cyber Protection Magazine. They discuss the state of PR today, including formulaic approaches, the impact of AI, and the importance of storytelling.
They also highlight the challenges of effectively pitching to journalists, the decline of independent journalism, and the need for PR professionals to support quality journalism.
Key takeaways include the necessity of thorough research, avoiding overused phrases in press releases, fostering transparency, and the evolving relationship between paid and earned media.
00:00 Introduction and Welcome
00:23 Guest Introduction: Lou Covey
01:52 Lou Covey’s Career Journey
05:29 The Evolution of PR
08:43 Challenges in Modern PR
11:55 The Importance of Human-Created Content
15:15 Words That Kill Trust in PR
25:15 The Disconnect Between PR and Clients
31:38 The Ego Exercise
32:13 Storytelling Principles for PR Pros
33:13 The Importance of Context in Storytelling
34:33 Finding the Right Person for Thought Leadership
35:38 Challenges with the C-Suite
40:05 Crafting Effective Pitches
41:13 The Role of Statistics in PR
43:59 Avoiding Common PR Mistakes
54:53 The Decline of Journalism
56:34 Supporting Independent Media
58:46 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Show notes:
Link to Cyberprotection Magazine (Lou is the editor):
www.cyberprotection-magazine.com
Lou’s podcast Crucial Tech: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crucial-tech/id1455648744
Lou Covey on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/loucovey/
Full transcript:
Telling Stories That Stand Out
Michelle: [00:00:00] Hello everyone, and welcome. We are here for another episode of PR Explored, and PR Explored is a PR video podcast where we delve into trends and topics related to public relations. I’m your host, Michelle Garrett. I’m a PR consultant, author and writer, and my guest today is Lou Covey. Welcome Lou.
Hello. I’m so excited to have you. we’ve known each other for a while,
Lou : quite a while. Yes. when I started my pr stint.
Michelle: and I’ll tell the little backstory and then I’m gonna have you tell us about yourself a little bit. But we met when I moved to the Bay Area, I’m back.
I’m back in the Midwest where I, started, in Columbus, Ohio. But I moved out to the Bay Area and, when I was new, I joined [00:01:00] IABC, the Independent Association of Business Communicators for those who are not familiar with that. And, Lou was very kind to me and, Took me under his wing a little bit and gave me some great advice before I started my consulting business.
And, that was just fairly really helpful and really you, so I’ve always appreciated that so much.
Lou : Oh, thank you.
Michelle: and I still miss IABC because we don’t have anything nearly, nearly as vibrant I don’t think here, but, but yeah, that was experience that,
Lou : that
was, a pretty wild organization.
Yeah.
Michelle: Yeah. But I am so excited to have you today and to catch up with you a little bit. Would you just tell us you know, what you’re up to and just tell us a little bit about your background and anything that you wanna share.
Lou Covey’s Career
Lou : Okay. I’ve been a journalist for 55 years as of September.
I started out, my, my [00:02:00] first gig was at the age of, 18 being a news director for a 250 watt top 40 station in the Bay Area. That lasted for about six weeks, and then I started college. in college, I, worked for the, the College of San Mateo newspaper and at the same time for the Foster City Progress, and then moved to the Palo Alto Times and then went to San Jose State and got my degree in journalism, working for the founder of the journalism department, Dr.
Dwight Bennel. And, after I came out of, San Jose State worked about another nine months in the al times. I went and also did freelance work for Los Angeles Examiner and for the New York Times. And then I went to work for the Ludi News Sentinel and, it was a correspondent for the San Joaquin Valley News Service.
Did stream work for the [00:03:00] Sacramento Bee, the Fresno Bee, and the Modesto Bee. And, Then went back to school for a little bit and came out and there were no jobs. So I went in, became a technical editor for Lockade Missiles and Space Trident two program, and after that I came out and decided to try my hand at PR for a few years, started my own agency.
Did really well until the 2008 crash and then everything went tits up and I went back to freelancing and discovered cybersecurity. And so I started doing freelance, content development and working for Aspir Core Media. And then, from there I started, our current publication Cyber Protection Magazine about five years ago.
That gives, brings us up to date, I think.
Michelle: I’m putting some links in the, in the chat so people can find the magazine, and your podcast. and just learn a little bit more about [00:04:00] you. I put your LinkedIn up there as well, so be sure and follow Lou and check out those links, today. And it’s great to hear everything you’ve been up to.
’cause like I said, I know you’ve been, you’ve been doing this a long time and have had a lot of different, Iterations, of your role. and yeah, throughout various, era eras in our, in time here,
Lou : yeah. I’ve, I wanted to be a writer from the age of six, and I think when I, say I am a journalist, I don’t say I’m a journalist because that’s what I do.
It’s what I am. it’s my passion, it’s my, it’s who, how, I define myself. And, it’s, it doesn’t make you a lot of money, but it does bring you a lot of satisfaction.
Michelle: Yeah. No, and I, I feel like [00:05:00] journalists are often, don’t get the credit that they deserve. And, I think that it’s, it’s a pretty important profession, but, but yeah, often undersung.
I, I appreciate journalists and I know a lot of people, in PR do appreciate journalists and it’s great if we can have that relationship. Often there’s a contentious, relationship, but I don’t think it needs to be that way. today we are going to talk about many things probably, but what we are, our topic today is really about, how pr, telling stories that stand out because.
Obviously there are so many pitches, so many press releases, they often sound the same. They don’t really stand out. Reporters are just, inundated with, poorly targeted pitches that don’t really move the needle, help the [00:06:00] clients, meet any KPIs or get any results, often. So really, if we’re not able to tell stories that resonate, what.
what are we doing? So I, am excited to dig into this with you today and, yeah. So far away.
So let’s talk a little bit about, how PR has, it’s become formulaic, don’t you think?
Has PR Become Formulaic?
Lou : yeah. it’s not become, it has been for some time, I remember as far back as 1998 getting a pitch for a press release automation software. Where all you had to do is plug, things into the [00:07:00] blanks and it would produce a press release.
And I thought it was the dumbest thing I’d ever seen because when I got into pr what really exci it, it completely, this completely changed my idea of what PR was because we sweat bullets over every press release. They were five to 10 page documents that were legitimate news stories. And this was be, this was before the internet.
Yeah. And we, we would, we would. Write these things up. We’d have pho, special photography done. We’d take them down to a printer, we’d print up thousands of them and then mail them out to, journalists. But only after we had gone through our list of 10 to 20 journalists that we maintained relationships with and let them know it was coming out and send them an advanced copy of it.
that, that was an intensive pro project. [00:08:00] Then the internet came, and suddenly those five to 10 page news releases went away because the pe, the, clients didn’t wanna pay for anything more than 500 words. And what I discovered was that most of the time was spent number one on the CEO’s innocuous quote.
And then the, next level was the headline, which generally had nothing to do with what was actually in the text of the news release. And then you spend maybe 10 minutes writing the release. And. They all said the same thing. and it was, it drove me nuts. It’s one of the reasons I decided to get out of PR altogether because we weren’t producing anything of value in these news releases, but we were cranking them out like it was a candy factory.
Yeah. And so it, the whole thing about it becoming formulaic has gone all the way [00:09:00] back to even before or just at the beginning of the internet. And now, the thing is we’ve got all of these press releases. On the internet that have been used to train the ais Which are now producing press releases.
So they sound the same way as they did 20 years ago. And that’s, difficult. And that means I’ve gotta work my butt off on every press and I. I still do it. I read every press release. I get, I read every pitch that I get, and after I’ve finished pulling out my hair, I, I, if I, hope to find something that I can, that can use for a story and it’s, difficult.
Michelle: Yeah.
Lou : and I rely on you guys to help, me do this.
Michelle: and that’s, I come back to what are we doing? if we’re [00:10:00] not supplying a journalist with what they need to actually write a story about our client or our company, what are we doing? we’re, are we dis defeating, the AI-driven search? Is that what we’re doing? I don’t know, because I feel like that’s a different, line of work than what we’re supposed to be doing because I think we’re supposed to be telling stories and sharing information that helps our client or our company get out there and be seen and builds their reputation and educates people.
That’s what I feel like pr at its heart is really about.
Lou : It should be. It’s, what I loved about it when I was doing it, and I was completely wrong about what I thought because I struggled with join joining the PR world just from a, an ethical standpoint. But I, was mentored by some really, good people.
like Fred whore from Miller Communications. I [00:11:00] learned a lot. I, learned how important PR can be if it’s done right. And it just isn’t done right very often.
Michelle: And I, this isn’t, this wasn’t a question, that I was going to ask, but don’t you think that it’s actually more important than it’s ever been?
Because now we have, misinformation that is being Created by AI about companies and, individuals, executives and so forth. So I feel like PR is really more important than ever for a company to be speaking in its own words, getting its own. Messages out there. Because if you do that consistently, even if something you know that’s generated that is misinformation comes out about your company, people are less likely to believe it if you, the company is out there all the time talking to your audience and sharing.
Yeah, and being transparent.
Lou : One of the things I am most happy about right now is how AI. [00:12:00] Is actually driving the value of human re created content up. Yeah. I just, I don’t know. Do you know eji Ojo, Bellagio Ojo? Oh, he was, editor in chief of E times EBN. he had the, Balaji, the, ojo, Yoshida report.
he’s been around for quite a while, but he and I were talking yesterday about how the, being able to put context to what we’re doing. What, the companies are doing ha has increased the value of what a journalist can do and what a PR person can do. And it requires not only context, but cognition about what’s going on, not just repeating the same formula.
And a, AI has pretty [00:13:00] much ruined the automation of the process and has now, and people are starting to realize. we actually needed human beings to do this. I was having coffee with a friend and, she said my 15-year-old son found out that I wrote a, letter using ai, and he said, don’t do that, mom.
AI destroys creativity. He’s right. Yeah. it’s, I have so much hope for the future because of the young people I see. I go on the train to San Francisco and all of us whited people have got our noses, glued to our screens. But at the same time, I’m looking and I see people under the age of 30 reading books, reading magazines and reading newspapers, actual print good because they’re giving up on technology.
And that gives me hope for the future.
Michelle: Yeah. Because the technology, [00:14:00] companies are certainly not gonna No. Discourage us from
Lou : Yeah. Google just came out with an announcement yesterday. They’ve added a, feature to search where it will, if you push a button, it will tell you if, an AI video is, or as a video was AI created.
Oh, okay. Yeah. However, but they also said, but we’re not gonna take it down if it is. Because they make money off of that. Yeah. They make money off of the clicks. not. If somebody’s actually le looks at it. If they hover on it for five seconds, they get paid. So they don’t want to remove misinformation.
Misinformation makes people angry. Angry people are engaged. Angry people spend money.
Michelle: That’s the social media companies are relying on that. Have you read Kara Swisher’s Burn book?
Lou : I haven’t. I,
Michelle: yeah. that’s, she talks a lot about that. [00:15:00] Yeah. and they know what they’re doing and yeah.
Yeah. So it’s up to us to control our own habits and move away from that.
Lou : Yeah. What’s next?
What words kill trust?
Michelle: so I know that you sometimes talk about words that kill trust. Oh yeah. And, maybe you would be so kind as to share a few of those with us.
Lou : Okay. Now, this, doesn’t come from me. I generally don’t have an opinion unless I’ve seen some, data on it.
I’ve read three reports. One from Oxford University, one from Columbia School of Journalism, and one from the Annenberg, is it School of Journalism, USC. Where they have found and confirmed amongst themselves that there are several words that can actually destroy a press release. And [00:16:00] the words are leader first.
Only and best if you start out a press release with those four words, you will lose your audience immediately. And that is, that, that’s, I see that all the time. X, Y, Z corporation, a leader in something today announced. Okay, you have got about. Five to eight seconds to capture a reader’s interest.
And if you start out your press release with those words, any of those words, you lose them immediately. And it people keep doing it. I was just talking to a company yesterday, it’s actually got a pretty good story. I had to rip it out of them. But I was taking a look at [00:17:00] their, website and the first bullet point on there, we are the leading company to do this.
Yeah. And, I just went, oh, and, when I find this, it makes me happy to find that nugget. But in cybersecurity there are more than 5,000 companies providing tools and services. Then an untold number of what’s called, managed Security Service Providers, which essentially take these 5,000 tools and put them together in packages for, people to use because they can’t figure out what to do, right?
This entire industry has a severe problem in telling its own story. They can talk to each other really well, but they can’t talk to their customers.
Michelle: and I think, to your point when you say you are the leader, or you are the only or the best. are you though? so and a reporter can see right [00:18:00] through that.
And that has always been a pet peeve of mine too. It’s if we’re gonna say this. It’s revolutionary. If we’re gonna say this, we really have to, how are we gonna back it up? and you really can’t. Yeah. You might be able to say it in a quote. That’s where I say, okay, so move it.
Let’s put it in. we, can put it in a quote if you want to, but we can’t make that claim. Just,
Lou : that, that’s not good. So, here’s something that, that’s good for a, that AI is good for. And every time I get a news release that begins, we are the leader in. What are the leading companies in this particular area?
And I’ll get a list and I’ll go back to them and say, I cannot find any evidence that you are a leader in anything. And I would like to tell your story, but I don’t know what it is because I can’t get past this kind of garbage. [00:19:00] And I, always operate off of, this motto that if you think you’re a leader, look behind you.
If there’s nobody there, you’re just taking a walk.
And that’s what it, that’s, and cybersecurity. That is really it. We’ve got a, we’re I, as a journalist, I’m herding cats in cybersecurity. And, part of that problem is that the people I’m working with, the PR folks, very few of them actually read the publications they’re pitching. They, very few of them read any publication whatsoever.
Most of them are just, they, and it’s not just them. It’s the executives that they’re representing. My first question in an interview With somebody new is, are you familiar with [00:20:00] our publication? 99 times OUTTA a hundred? No. They don’t know who they’re pitching. They don’t know what it is that I’m interested in.
They don’t know how, I do interviews. And we make it real easy for PR folks to know this. We put out. Two newsletters every month. One newsletter highlights the things we have covered. Okay. And then the second newsletter talks about things we are going to cover. So you don’t have to send me a pitch saying, what are you working on?
Just sign up for the newsletter. You’ll know it. We make it very, we try to do everything we can. And I think it’s part, partly because of what I learned in my, in the PR side. I wanna make it very clear to the PR folks what it is [00:21:00] we do, how we do it, when we’re going to do it, and what we’re no longer gonna be looking at.
We put out a special issue at the, our last special issue of the year. We, we put out six a year. And it’s going to be about taking a look at what was predicted for the year and what we are going to look at next year. All you have to do is have a subscription. And when I was working in the agencies, before I had my own We had a requirement that we were supposed to spend one hour a day that we got paid for to read publications. Yeah, we were required to have a list of 10 journalists that we were going to focus on. Yes. and we couldn’t sh we couldn’t go in between. Yeah. Everyone had their own, 10, 10 person list.
Now, I don’t think you can do that. Now, I don’t think there are [00:22:00] 10 journalists in technology that can be, covered. but. We spent time getting to know these people and, reading their stuff and understanding, how, they cover things. Like Richard Gehring from EE times. he was the guy every semiconductor company wanted to talk to.
and if you were a startup, he would give you one shot. and he would sit down with you and then you’d put the press release or the pitch in front of him and he’d go push it aside and say, and then he’d ask his questions. ’cause he had a set list of questions about what that would help him identify what they did.
But he would not sit for a presentation ’cause the presentations were always garbage. Yeah. They always started out the same way. They always came to the same conclusions. He can’t write about stuff that’s been said over and over again, so [00:23:00] that’s my primary piece of advice to any PR pro is you’ve got to read.
Michelle: They want AI to do everything for them. Unfor? Yeah. In some cases, I’m, I won’t say everybody, but there are, I feel like a lot of this work is very surface, and the other thing I have seen is that people don’t even read the story when it comes out about the company. Yeah. So it’s just enough.
That the company is in the news when it’s, when they do search and it comes up, just the publication and the headline. People aren’t really even reading the story anymore. I don’t know how I feel about that. I don’t know. It’s changed.
Lou : here’s another bugaboo. I’ll write a story, okay?
And if I’ve spent, I, will get 10 to 20 pitches a week, and I’ll write one to two stories a week or podcasts. Then three weeks later, after we’ve posted it, three weeks later, [00:24:00] I’ll get a call or an email from this says, so when are you gonna run that story? Or Can you let us know when that story is gonna come out?
Which tells me right away they don’t, they haven’t read the magazine, they haven’t even bothered to go up on, on the website and type in the name of their client to see if it got mentioned in a, in the publication.
Michelle: Yep.
Lou : And you, should at least make an effort to look at the publication for the coverage that you’re looking for before you call up and ask when it’s going to be.
PR fundamentals will always matter
Michelle: Yeah. No, I know. It’s, I know. then the, I. This is why I wrote a book because I got tired of I had shared this advice and it’s, a lot of things in our work have changed. However, there are some fundamental things that will never change. And to me it’s you really have to, [00:25:00] you do have to know what you’re, who you’re pitching and you have to, understand what stories, they might be interested in.
And, these things are not really going to change. I don’t care. if you wanna try to AI everything, it’s not gonna work. So
Lou : now in, in defense of the PR folks, I also know that marketing execs, communications execs, CEOs, CISOs, CFOs, they don’t read the publications either. Okay? And they don’t have any respect for what the PR folks do.
They, consider it to be a necessary expense that they wish they didn’t have to do. And that makes it difficult for, most of the time I’m hearing from PR folks now that they don’t actually write the releases. It’s written by the client without any input from the PR folks, which means these releases are being [00:26:00] written in a vacuum.
At least the PR folk are out there actually talking to journalists and getting their feedback. What they have to say is incredibly important, but the profession has lost the respect of the clients.
Michelle: and back to what we were talking about earlier, maybe that will turn around, as they understand that we are a really important, voice to be added to, a C-suite counsel and, if they’re gonna put their foot in their mouth or if they’re gonna be.
they’re gonna be AI generated fake, videos or photos or anything like that. We can really, play an important role in helping,
Lou : position the company. That brings up something that you and I were talking before the show started. Yeah. about SEO and GEO. [00:27:00] Okay. And we have a basic disagreement ’cause you think SEO and GEO are still important.
I do, but the problem is, from my perspective, they’re not because SEO is based on a, on search engines actually doing the job of making it possible for people to find stuff that they’re looking for. Same with generative ai. Okay. But the thing is that ever since the search engine’s like Google.
Have been putting in those AI boxes, web traffic to companies and publications Have crashed. they’re not seeing the traffic they used to get, because you ask a question on Google and it gives you this answer in the AI box, and it may or may not [00:28:00] provide a link. But most people don’t even bother looking at the links anymore.
They’re not clicking on the links. That means no web traffic, right? If you have no web traffic, you’re not getting your information out there. It’s not being, and to a certain extent, that’s not even very good because, I, did my trick Using an AI says, okay, who are the leading companies in this area?
And it gave me this list. And lo and behold. One of the companies that I, that said they were a leader was right near the top of the list that they gave me. So then I asked this, what was the source of the information that placed this company at the, at, in the lead in this industry, It was their latest press release.
It was an independent source. When I went to look, at Gartner at Crunchbase, at [00:29:00] Forrester. Those analysts hadn’t heard about those companies. I called up a couple of analysts and they hadn’t heard about them because that information is not getting out about them anymore.
even with Gartner, Gartner now is completely pay for play. if you get listed by them, it’s because somebody paid them. It may have been one of your investors, it may have been one of your partners, but somebody has paid Gartner to put that company name in there. Doesn’t mean it’s not, a bad idea, but because they do have some integrity, but you’re not gonna get in there without it.
Michelle: Yeah. No, I feel like the industry analyst was, that was such a huge part of what we did when I was in Silicon Valley working with startups. we’d go on tours. Yeah, we’d fly to the East coast. We’d visit all of them in person and brief them all on our announcements before we shared it with the press.
We’d get [00:30:00] feedback and it was a big deal. it was an, it was. An expense and a time, requirement and everything. And we did that. And now I just don’t know if that’s the same as it was either. So
Lou : what, PR folks have to get across somehow without pissing off the CEO, is that PR is not an ego exercise.
I’ve got a story and I’ll name names. Oh no, I went on. An East coast press tour with Art deas, the then CEO of Synopsis because he was upset that, the EDA industry or the electronic design automation industry was not going to, was not getting their coverage from the business press like he thought they should be.
And he came up with this great idea because this was during the.com boom. He said, we’re gonna rebrand [00:31:00] synopsis as a.com company. I said, you make semiconductor design software. How is that a.com company? we have a website. It says.com, synopsis.com. That means we’re a.com company, and they actually tried to pitch this to the New York Times, so the Wall Street Journal to Barons, and it failed miserably.
But the only reason he wanted that in there is because he wanted to ring the bell at the Wall Street at, the New York Stock Exchange. It was all an ego exercise. He’s a very smart man. what he did, with his company is to completely revolutionize the design of semiconductors.
But we have to make sure. That they understand. We’re not here to boost their ego or to even make the board of [00:32:00] directors happy. We’re here to tell the story. To find the story and to tell the story.
Michelle: Yes. on that note. how can, what, I’m gonna switch this up a little bit. I was, I’m gonna switch the order of the questions.
What storytelling principles can PR pros use as they pitch journalists?
What are some storytelling principles, that PR can, pros can use as they pitch? Journalists?
Lou : Current events is a good idea, but it can, it, it can go wrong. in cybersecurity, I get a regular pitch where there’s some disaster. the, a I’m getting it now from the AM Amazon Web Services crash. Okay. And I’ve gotten five, pitches saying if companies were just using our [00:33:00] technology, this wouldn’t have affected them.
yeah. Yeah, it would have. Because your technology has nothing to do with how Amazon, maintains its servers. The idea is, to come up with some piece of information connected to a current news story that legitimately identifies what you can do, and that takes some work. That means you’ve actually gotta read the story and maybe find, some leads that I can follow up on, and.
Putting context to what you do is the most important issue. Again, it’s storytelling. Not just spewing out the same information to everyone else. Yeah. Yeah. what is the story? Because that’s what I’m looking for. Yeah. And every once in a while I will get somebody that, that will do [00:34:00] that.
Unfortunately, I don’t get them very often from PR folks. I get them mostly from CISOs, chief Information Security Officers. Because they’re out there. they’re, reading all these reports. They’re reading the news, they’re involved with the government. they’re great resources.
EE even at that point. Finding a source within your client. Who knows how to tell a story. Yes. They should become your best friend. I, was approached to do on, a contract to help a company do, they wanted to do, Thought leadership. They don’t even know what thought leadership is.
But what I did is I put together a list of questions and I said, I want you to pass this out to all of the people in management and let me take a look at their answers. Or when it came back, [00:35:00] I took a look at the answers and I suddenly realized the best person to do this was the person running their communications.
Because she spent the time talking to the CEO, the CFO, the CMO, the salespeople. She knew more about that company than the CEO did. Yep. and I came back with my recommendation. I said, the person running your thought leadership program should be this person. And they went, what? She’s not even the C and the C-suite.
Yeah. But she knows more about your company than you do. Yeah. And yeah. that’s the next hardest part. Okay. You, can do it as a PR folk, you can figure out how to tell that story, but getting the C-suite to buy off on it is another problem. I had a CEO that got really pissed off about the press releases we were writing because we didn’t have enough adjectives in them.[00:36:00]
Michelle: My favorite is when they wanna put 10 quotes in a, 400 word press release. That’s, I love that.
Lou : Yeah. Especially when the quotes say absolutely nothing.
Michelle: I’m like, maybe we could just create a quote sheet if you want, and we’ll, that, we’ll, that’ll be an extra if, we could put it on the site with the press release, but we cannot, stuff that press release full of, quotes, But yeah, no, I think, what you just said I think comes back to the ego piece because sometimes I feel like the best person isn’t necessarily, the highest up the food chain, right? Yeah. So you can have thought leaders that are not in the C-Suite, you can have subject matter experts. You can, there are other sources you can turn to because sometimes, it’s not.
it’s, I don’t know. I feel like they’re not always the closest to the story, so yeah.[00:37:00]
Very true, and I love that because, I do a lot of thought leadership for clients and often, we, the, it’s not, they’re open to having other people do it, and I love that because it’s we can spread it around too. So it’s not the same, it’s not just the CEO or the, The whichever person you always lean on. It’s the same with, like customers. When we use customers, we don’t wanna use the same customer over and over again. So I feel like it, it just adds more, variety, and depth when you can spread it around a little bit.
Lou : Yeah. And you can, I, can’t really say this.
You can ask me for help. To co convince your CEOs on how to write a story. we’ve, got a program at the magazine we call media training, but most media training is, you sit down with the CEO and you see how they do on an interview. We actually talk about the things that we’re talking about [00:38:00] here.
About how to tell a story, how to find your story. that’s, what we call the program, how to find your Story and. we do mock interviews to see how the executives do. We give them a pretty hard review of it, and, then we, cut, we will actually craft a story to go into the publication because essentially we take them through the process that I go through.
To create a story. And we did that with one company and they ended up, getting $10 million worth of investment, just off the story that we produced. so yeah, you can ask for help. As I said, the executives may not respect the PR person and what, and the advice they want to give, but they will listen to somebody like me.
And listen to that third party. So we partner with it, with PR folks, the agencies to [00:39:00] actually get through the more stubborn, executives.
Michelle: Yeah. I think sometimes this is getting even, the execs to buy into even having a meeting, listening, taking the advice because, again, if they don’t regard PR as vitally important to the success of their company, they’re, they may not.
Understand, or, see the need for that. yeah, I think that is sometimes a hard sell. I obviously, I love to work with clients who get it and I like to show them, even after they bring me on, I’m gonna show them, I’m gonna prove to them why this is important and how it can make a difference.
but. Yeah, you don’t always get the opportunity. And sometimes the patience too. Yeah. I think it’s not like you’re gonna bring somebody in and then tomorrow, it’s all gonna be, your name is gonna be everywhere and, yeah. so many things. [00:40:00] let’s follow up to the, that question.
How can PR pros do a better job of writing pitches that don’t sound like every other pitch a journalist might receive?
so how can we, sitting in the PR seat, do a better job of writing pitches? that don’t sound like every other pitch a journalist might get?
Lou : number one, don’t use ai. And I get that a lot nowadays. I get a lot of AI pitches. Going back to what I said before, if, you’ve got a tool that the journalist offers to tell you what they’re looking for, if you, read how they, what they write about and, see their style, you’ll be able to craft a pitch that will resonate with them.
Don’t use cliches, don’t [00:41:00] use adjectives. if, you’ve got a pithy quote that actually, oh, here’s something else. Don’t believe everything you hear. most of the pitches I get have some sort of statistics. Now I’m weird because my favorite class at San Jose State was statistics for journalists.
I love statistics. I can’t do statistics, but I can read them and I know what it, what creates a good statistic. I also know where to find real sources of information. In the cybersecurity world, there is a particular, publication that will put, that has been putting out a, statistic on the, amount of money it’s costing businesses every year for, for cyber crime.
And it’s in the tens of trillions of dollars right now. [00:42:00] But that particular statistic was based on a study done in 1995 by Symantec, who, three months after they put the report out, they discovered that the company they hired to do it had made a horrible mistake. And the results were an order of magnitude larger than what it actually was.
Because nothing dies on the internet, right? People keep re report, repeating it. And this particular magazine, just a, they take a look at what the FBI says, cyber crime has increased 5%. Okay? We’re gonna add that to that base number, right? So it was already off by an order of magnitude and they just been adding to it every year for the past 10 years.
So you’ve got to understand where the source of the information comes from. Yeah. And, [00:43:00] going back to the sixties, you’ve got to question authority. Even if your client says this is a statistic, you need to ask the question, where does it come from? Who said it? Has it been verified? That’s something AI can’t do.
And. It’s something the internet is full of false statistics. You really need to spend some, going back to what I said, how we used to write press releases where we would agonize over these things and re make 10 page documents. Even if you’re not gonna make a 10 page press release, if it’s only gonna be 400 words, there’s got to be one piece of something true in there, right?
That needs to be right at the top. You do that. And you’ll get your story. Yeah. At least you’ll, at least you will from me.
Michelle: Yeah. and don’t, this is, what kills me too, because I, have a journalism degree with a kind of a PR concentration. [00:44:00] But like you can’t fool journalists like this is, again, this is journalism 1 0 1, don’t try to fool a journalist because they will dig into whatever you say to them.
They will verify whether or not you have taken the time to do it. And gone to the trouble of researching the original source of the stat or whatever, whatever you’re claiming, they’re gonna look into that. So don’t go into it thinking, oh, they’re, they’re just a journalist. I can say anything and quote anything and use any stat.
No, because they’re gonna look into it and they’re gonna find out if you’re not, if you didn’t do your homework, they’re gonna find out.
Lou : Yeah.
Michelle: Yeah, so that’s again, that’s PR 101, but a lot of people maybe don’t understand that. and haven’t, don’t understand how journalists work or don’t understand, how they do, research stories and verify sources and things like that.
And I will say the internet is. it’s just getting harder than ever. And as this is sticks in my, [00:45:00] as a pet peeve for me sometimes when I’m doing speaking engagements and I try to use stats and I wanna find the original source, because when you just search using Google now, we’ll again give you the AI version.
And you can’t just rely on that. You have to dig deeper and, sometimes it’s really hard to find the original source of the stats. And in that case, I usually just don’t use it if I can’t verify where it came from.
Lou : Yeah. That’s good.
Michelle: Yeah, but a lot of people don’t care. And they were literally like, put the stat.
And the other day I had, I was working on a client, piece of content and they had a stat on there and I’m like, where, like, where did this come from? Like, where did you get this? And I don’t know that I ever, I don’t know if I’m gonna get an answer. So we’ll have to see if we can find something that we can actually verify because somebody saw it somewhere, stuck it in there, to cite and I’m, but it’s, yeah, it’s not clear to me that.
Lou : I drive my wife nuts because she’ll tell me something that she’s just wrote on Facebook, and [00:46:00] my question is, where does that come from? I don’t know. It says here on Facebook. I don’t believe it.
Michelle: Yeah, no, you really can’t on social media and, Google, you really just can’t take anything at face value anymore. You have to be a little skeptical, all the time. Unfortunately. I don’t like that. That’s the world we live in, but it’s true. yeah, we have a, we have a few minutes left.
What should PR pros be asking themselves before they hit send on a pitch?
Let’s talk about, Before we get ready to, hit send on our next pitch to a journalist, what should we be thinking about? What question should we be asking as we give that a final review?
Lou : You mean, in your pitch?
Michelle: Yeah. what, things should, what, questions should we ask ourself about the pitch?
Should we ask ourselves, does this, will this work for the journalist audience? Is this, in the vein of what the journalist usually writes about? Yeah. [00:47:00] What are some things like that?
Lou : Yeah. Number one, what does the journalist write about? That’s the most important thing. I’ve gotten three pitches this, morning on women’s fashion now.
Now, to be fair, I’ve covered a lot of different subjects in my life and one of them happens to be women’s shoes, but that was a very long time ago. so yeah, I have some background in women’s fashion, but if you take a look at the name of the publication, that should be your first clue. what publication am I pitching? And I’ve noticed a lot of peer agencies are just buying lists. And, because I see it up, the unsubscribe from this list. Yeah. Which I generally hit every time because they don’t know who I am and they probably would don’t. [00:48:00] And, now I was gonna say they never follow up after that, but they’re using something like, some, mailing service like HubSpot.
If I don’t respond. Within 24 hours, they send a second pitch saying, just in case you hadn’t seen this. I’m going, I saw it. I didn’t wanna talk to you.
Michelle: Yeah, I just, I put in the comments earlier that I see, I saw an AI product, a story about an AI product that actually just keeps spamming journalists.
This repeatedly keeps, it’s an ai,
Lou : yeah.
Michelle: Based product, and it will just keep, and I’m like, wow, that’s really not what we need. Because if there’s one thing that journalists hate, it’s when you just keep. send the pitch, maybe follow up once. they probably saw it the first time, and if they’re interested, they would get back to you if they didn’t, the follow up would catch them.
Let’s, be, let’s use common sense a little bit here. Although here’s something
Lou : just that recently happened. I got a pitch from somebody turned [00:49:00] out to be a junior PR person, and it seemed interesting. So I wrote back, says, yeah, give me a couple of days and times next week. and I’ll.
I’ll schedule a time with you. Heard nothing back. The next week I got a pitch for a completely different subject from the same PR person, and I said, okay, I’m interested in this too. What happened to the other one? No response. Next week, a third pitch. So then I ended up calling the agency principal. Oh no.
And I said, does this person actually work for you? Because I can’t really find her, and she doesn’t even have a LinkedIn profile, so I didn’t know who she was. I says, is, this a phishing attempt? And she, the principal really freaked out and says, yeah, no, she does work for us. She’s brand new.
she’s never been in PR before. And okay, you [00:50:00] might, want to give her a little bit of training and we can provide that if you’d like. But, yeah, spamming is a problem, especially for me because like I said, I read everything
Michelle: right. back to the point about the person doing the pitching, being brand new, this is another thing that drives me, somewhat crazy because I feel like, pitching journalists is often, relegated to the lowest person on the totem pole, when in fact it is a pretty important, task role that you really need experience to do effectively. So I just feel like a lot of the agency model is broken in that way. And, again, I wrote about it in my book.
Lou : the thing is here’s another story. Fairly recent. I got a pitch from an agency principal [00:51:00] and I said, okay, sounds good.
We set up the interview. I did the interview. They said, okay, when is the story coming out? Says, let me, edit this ’cause I think I wanna use this for a podcast. Oh, wait a minute. We didn’t say you could do a podcast. You recorded this. yeah, I record everything. it’s, makes it easier to, have an interview rather than just be busy writing down notes, you didn’t tell us you were recording it, so if you publish this, we’re going to sue you. Yikes. And I went, what? So I said, okay, then I will just erase everything and, I won’t do anything. But I ended up calling up the CEO of the company that we, that I did the interview with and said, look, I’m sorry I, you were upset about being recorded.
He says, I wasn’t upset about it. your agency just threatened to sue [00:52:00] me for recording the, the interview for Invasion of Privacy. So that was an agency principle. So the lack of experience goes far beyond just the newbies.
Michelle: I, yeah, I don’t know, I here. Okay, so let’s go way back. So when I was ready to go out as a consultant. Part of what you told me, and it was very good advice, was to go and work in an agency so you can get a sense of how things work, how to manage and juggle multiple clients and you’ll meet a lot of people and that all that was true.
And those people I stay in touch with and they still refer work to me all these years later ’cause, but I only made it a year at the agency because I just, it was it was like the antithesis to everything that I felt and believed and knew. In my heart, [00:53:00] what clients really need and how to, make it work.
not to say, yeah,
Lou : I was lucky that I had a very good mentor in the agency I went to work for. And she’s the one that actually pushed me out the door when I had an opportunity to start my own agency. And she said, you’re ready to do this. Get outta here. G get getting a, that was, I was lucky.
and I thought that was typical of all agencies and it wasn’t until I, no, it wasn’t until I had my own agency that I found out how bad the others were.
Michelle: Yeah. I don’t think that’s the norm. And again, they’re not all not, I’m not gonna put everybody in one, Oh, no. Yeah. I,
Lou : we, actually have a list of agencies that we will recommend.
And that list is fairly short, but it’s got some good people on it.
Michelle: Yeah, so again, but a lot of times, [00:54:00] and again, they will use the media database and they will just pull out a list, random list, th maybe a thousand publications or journalists on the list and just spam out a pitch.
And I’m like that. Are you getting anything out of that? if you’re not getting anything out of. Then how were like, how is that successful? Just because you sent out a thousand pitches doesn’t mean
Lou : yeah. That, that, that goes back to the client side, because that’s one of the things they wanna see in the, reports.
How many journalists did you pitch?
Michelle: No, see, that’s the wrong question to ask.
Lou : Yeah.
What do journalists want PR pros to know?
Michelle: We know it. We’re just saying it. So, yeah. okay, so we’re wrap. So we have a few minutes. Is there anything else we should talk about? What else do you think journalists, wish PR people knew from their point of view?
What do you think?
Lou : we are becoming very rare. There’s not many of us left, in [00:55:00] fact, from. 1990 when the internet became big. there, there was an explosion of publications and then the.com bust, and then people stopped advertising altogether. I was actually in a meeting with. Three of the top CEOs, CEOs of the top, electronic design automation companies, and one of the CEOs said, we’re gonna cut back on our advertising because the startups are writing our advertising coattails.
And so if we reduce our, advertising, there’ll be fewer pages so you won’t be able to cover all the startups that you’re covering. And from that point on, we’ve lost 90% of the tech journalists covering technology. Yeah. And 75% of the publications and it’s not getting any better. people were said, I was crazy for trying to start this magazine and it’s been a rough go, but I’m also [00:56:00] hearing what people say about us in the industry.
one CEO came up to me and says, you guys are the most honest voice in the industry right now. And that means a lot to me. And so if you’re looking for honesty, if you’re looking for someplace where you can hang your reputation on for content that you can share on your website, that’s what you’re looking for.
That’s what journalists can do. That’s what PR people need to tell their clients. If we support this publication, we will have a better share of mind. If you want thought leadership support, independent media. That’s what they need to know. And they may know it, they may not know it, but they need to tell their clients that.
’cause otherwise we’re gonna lose everything.
Michelle: Yeah. Yeah, no, it’s, it’s hard to watch and, I know, a lot of journalists are being laid off and entire [00:57:00] publications are shuttering, and so we really need to, support our journalist colleagues, as much as we possibly can. we were talking, I think, before we started today about, I often encourage clients to do some paid, media in addition to the earned media side. And I think if we, if they have the budget to support, publications in that way, it’s a good thing to do, for a few reasons. But that’s, that is a conversation that you could have too with your clients.
Lou : Yeah.
And it’s not as expensive as you think it is.
Michelle: No, and I think, obviously, you’re paying for an ad or a sponsored article or whatever it is, but then you’re also, they’re probably gonna give you a little bit more attention on the editorial side as well. And I know a lot of people don’t wanna.
You hear that? Or, when I say that, sometimes people push back and say, you don’t really mean that. And I, yes, I really do mean it. And [00:58:00] it’s common sense again because it’s like, you’re supporting us and so we’re probably gonna take a little bit of a closer look when you do send us a story or a press release or a piece of content or whatever it is.
So I think it,
Lou : you, you pay go, you pay Google to go up higher in the search rankings. Yeah. Same reason. they give you priority there too.
Michelle: Yeah, it used to just be such a black and white issue with between paid and earned media, but I just, I don’t think we live in that world now.
So I think it’s okay to talk about it. And I know that editors like you will have told me, I know it’s, I know it’s, something to take a look at if, as we budget for, the coming year, I know a lot of companies are in that process as well.
Lou : yeah. Anyway, we’re looking, for sponsors, so gimme a call.
Michelle: This has been a, this has been a, not only a delight, but it’s also been very insightful and you are [00:59:00] somebody I greatly admire and respect and appreciate. And so I really, thank you for spending time. thank you,
Lou : Michelle,
Michelle: today. Thank
Lou : you. I appreciate the thought. Thank you. Yeah.
Michelle: And please, I put all of the links to follow Lou, learn more about Cyber Protection Magazine and his podcast, crucial Tech there.
The links are all, in the chat. And, please be sure to check those out. And I wanna thank everyone for being here and, we’ll be back again soon with another, new episode of PR Explored. Thanks so much.
About the host: Michelle Garrett is a B2B PR consultant, media relations consultant, and author of B2B PR That Gets Results, an Amazon Best Seller. She helps companies create content, earn media coverage, and position themselves as thought leaders in their industry. Michelle’s articles have been featured by Entrepreneur, Content Marketing Institute, Muck Rack, and Ragan’s PR Daily, among others. She’s a frequent speaker on public relations and content. Michelle has been repeatedly ranked among the top ten most influential PR professionals.
Learn more about Michelle’s freelance PR consulting services here. Book a no-obligation call to talk about your needs here. Buy Michelle’s book here.
