Create Your “Media Champions” to Increase Your Odds of Success

Author: Matt

29 Jan

I was inspired today by the cleverly titled, “Relationships Don’t Matter Most in Media Relations” blog post from fellow PR professional David Mullen. The lesson David made was that writing a well-crafted pitch and knowing your media targets was the most effective way to generating media coverage for your company or clients.

I do agree with David’s point that when all is said and done (relationships or not) if you don’t have a pitch or angle that is on-target for each media contact, you won’t likely be successful. There is however one catch to this overall argument, in particular when working with the national media…if you do have that relationship established your chances of success will greatly increase.

David makes the argument that PR agencies often have multiple clients spanning across many different industries, hence making it impossible to maintain such relationships. While this may be the case when working with industry or trade media, I don’t believe this to be the case when working with regional or national media…and here are some simple steps to follow that explain why:

Create at least one internal champion at every key media outlet. It could be the technology reporter at the Chicago Tribune, the personal finance reporter at the Wall Street Journal, or the consumer interest producer at the TODAY Show.

Gain the trust and credibility from these champions through establishing yourself as someone knowledgeable of their outlet and audience and most important, someone who can deliver quality resources in a timely fashion.

Lean on these champions to help identify the appropriate contacts within their respective outlet, if not themselves. This way you’ve now been given the inside track or referral from within (I now have the mobster image in my head…”he’s a friend of ours”) and have a leg up on anyone blindly pitching an unfamiliar contact. If sending via email, I will often put in the subject line, “[your media champion's name] suggested I contact you.”

Again, I have a ton of respect for David and fully grasp the point he was making on his blog today. I just felt the need to elaborate on the importance and ability to have such relationships in place before you make that most important relevant pitch.

How do you effectively manage your media (or non-media) relationships?

Filed under: Media Relations

4 Responses for "Create Your “Media Champions” to Increase Your Odds of Success"

David Mullen January 29th, 2009 at 9:56 pm 1
Matt – Thanks for extending the conversation to your place. I’m glad to have helped spur such spirited conversations today!

First, let me clarify that i was NOT saying that relationships aren’t important. They are. I build relationships with key reporters (key to me anyways) on an ongoing basis. And I leverage those relationships when relevant. So, to be clear, relationships are incredibly important in our business.

I was saying that it isn’t the MOST important thing in media relations. Great story ideas shared with relevant journalists is what’s most important. One could argue that they’re equal. I could see that. But relationships don’t trump quality story ideas and resourcefulness. In fact, you can’t build a relationship without providing those two things first.

The reason I wrote the post is that I’ve seen lots of chatter lately – usually from social media types or tech PR folks – who elevate relationships above all. They say you must build a relationship with a reporter or blogger before pitching them. To that, I say hogwash.

Secondly, they claim that good PR people develop relationships with every person they pitch. That’s what I said is impossible for many agency folks. But beyond impossible, it’s often not considerate of the reporters’ time.

Should I still keep taking time away from education reporters’ busy days because I worked on DeVry for six months – eight years ago? Not only do I not have a story to share them, but even if I checked in to see what they’re working on, I couldn’t help provide any resources for them. I would be completely wasting their time.

What I’ve seen is some social media folks confusing the word “reporters” for the 25 or so bloggers they follow on Twitter and dictating that the only right way for all PR people to do their jobs is to constantly interact with all their reporters, too. That is what I’m saying is impossible. If I only had to keep up with a few handfuls of reporters the past eight years and they all blogged and had Twitter accounts, life would have been a hell of a lot easier.

Regarding your tips above, not only do I wholeheartedly agree with them, but I use them myself – often. Your readers would do themselves and their clients a service to incorporate them into their practice, too.

(my apologies for the diatribe…)
Matt January 30th, 2009 at 5:24 am 2
David – Thanks for adding some additional value to this conversation! I realize relationships are valuable to you and that was evident in your original post. This thread was really just adding my color to the ability to maintain a network of “media champions” vs. claiming to have “relationships” with hundreds of media…which we all know is virtually impossible.

The key take-home I was trying to make was to build a network (maybe 25-30) of media contacts that truly value your relationship and allow those contacts to guide you to your relevant contacts when needed.

I too agree that there is a steady influx of so called “PR professionals” that are confusing the basics of story pitching and media relations here in the social media space. In the end, a relevant (well written) pitch or your ability to package a story is absolutely necessary.

As always, thanks for adding to the conversation!
Arik Hanson January 30th, 2009 at 10:37 am 3
This seems to be more of an agency vs. corporate discussion than anything. To Dave’s point, on the agency side, you’re just spread so thin you simply don’t have time to develop the relationships you need to really get traction with the media. On the corporate side, however, especially in B2B, you’re usually only dealing with a handlful or more of trade editors/reporters who you usually get to know pretty darn well. Completely different approaches.

Bottom line: I think both you and David have valid arguments for different reasons. I like your idea Matt, of having champions for key publications. That’s the way agencies should be thinking–and many already are.
Matt January 30th, 2009 at 2:11 pm 4
Thanks Arik!

I believe the sides we’re talking about are more national media vs. trade media instead of agency vs. corporate. For example, I have B2B and B2C clients and can leverage the same list of 25 “media champions” at key national outlets for both.

Ultimately, I think we’re all on the same page with this issue, just reading different versions of the book:).

Thanks again for joining the conversation!