The difference between a master craftsperson – a true artist – and someone who has done a ‘paint by numbers’ job is often easily discernable to observers. But where do you start in demonstrating your expertise? Like all professionals you have a day job – KPIs to meet, a company to run, clients to engage, a board or investors to answer to. You want to take the next step in your business model and have a hunch that getting some publicity might be one of the necessary steps.

I am often asked what the best way is to attract ‘good’ media attention (getting attention for the wrong reasons is easy).  There are some basic things that, with planning, will ensure you optimize opportunities when they come your way.

Here is where the disparity between a master craftsperson (who relies on contacts, relationships, and expert knowledge of your market and the media agenda) and a paint-by-numbers PR practitioner can become most evident. The latter approach is unlikely to be sustainable – it’s a far better idea to work on the basics so when the time comes and cashflows can sustain it, you are in a position to partner with a professional PR firm that can help you engage with your markets in a meaningful and perpetual way.

After all, luck is what happens when preparation and opportunity meet. It’s also true that while gaining positive publicity is essentially about trust, relationships and content, there are some basic paint by numbers initiatives that can get you closer to your PR goals. Being an expert in your area helps too.

While there are many other factors that affect whether you are quoted or not (eg the news agenda of the day, the availability of journalists, what the competition is saying) here is a list of building blocks that will help get your name or company closer to featuring in the media as an industry or key opinion leader:

1.  Have an opinion – be willing to comment clearly and pithily on industry issues and how they relate to the national / local news agenda

2. Have a quality, creative photo (not a passport- type photo) that demonstrates your personality / what you do

3. Have an elevator pitch for your company and know how to adapt it according to the situation

4. Have a good, relevant (short-form) bio

5. Be open to using business milestones to illustrate economic shifts and trends – for example:

• You are investing in a new strategy / building / refurbishing / market
• You are moving factories / warehouse / plants / stores
• You are acquiring or being acquired by a company
• You have an overseas visitor / international CEO / manager / guest speaker that has relevant ideas for New Zealand
• You have done research on your markets
• You have a new product or service that has relevance to business or consumer markets
• You have invested in a community initiative – are ‘paying it forward’ in some way – or are attracting your community through a creative idea

6. Once you have a few ‘runs on the board’ and are getting quoted regularly and have developed trust:

• Create an In The Media section on your website – this will help you build momentum and share your media milestones with customers and prospects
• Share your media links, such as interviews and opinion pieces, in your e-mail signature, newsletters, and with staff – these create talking points for people within your company. When teams are talking with customers, that’s a good thing.
• Send your loyal clients and prospects a copy of the latest NBR, Unlimited or New Zealand Herald in which you or a company executive has been quoted. It’s a conversation starter.

7. Write a regular blog – this creates another opportunity to share your thoughts/ opinions/ ideas with your immediate community of staff, partners, stores, sales teams, regional teams etc. If they are written in a relevant way they can also be syndicated to mainstream media and used to ‘bait one-to-one coffees with journalists.

8. Learn how to tell stories. Nothing much has changed since sitting around the campfire thousands of years ago. Journalists know their readers like anecdotes and real stories that capture their imagination.

9. Get to know the journalists and bloggers in your area of specialization. Read what they write and be ready to engage them on relevant story ideas.

10. Ask for recommendations of your work on LinkedIn and on your own website – these  add credibility when journalists are investigating your background.

11. Don’t send a “media release” to multiples of outlets expecting journalists to pick it up. They receive hundreds, sometimes thousands a day.

12. Be  mindful of the deadlines and leadtimes of the various media as well as what editorial features they have planned. Bugging a journalist at the wrong time won’t do it.

13. Write a book – it’s not only a giant business card , but another good excuse for a conversation.

Challenge Trust Chief Executive Clive Plucknett

Challenge Trust chief executive Clive Plucknett tackles the silent epidemic that is depression head-on today in the National Business Review, 05 March.

In his interview with Niko Kloeten, Plucknett says depression is the next global crisis, it happens to more people than we realise, the problem is, NZ executives are too afraid to open up and confide in one another.

Depression the silent epidemic for executives uncovers another side of the corporate world and identifies several issues;

• Boards are not dealing with the issue effectively;
• Outlines NZ within the global context;
• Depression does not necessarily happen gradually, and it may strike anyone, at any time;
• Challenge Trust offers help at hand with the Wellness & Recovery model based on International Benchmarking, a model that may be applied to a whole organisation or individual;
• Challenge Trust runs sessions on emotional resilience;
• Sufferers should not go-it-alone, support in recovery is key;

Clive also appeared on TVNZ’s NZI Business, 16 March, to discuss the ‘corporate’ attitude of depression among New Zealand offices.  In this segment he reiterated the culture of ‘macho’ bullet proof executives and stressed the importance of support structures for leading business likening the countries’ support of the All Blacks. 

Plucknett understands pressure and hard-work as the head of Challenge Trust, an organisation dedicated to recovery services for people from all walks of life.

It’s not everyday that a national sporting tournament is played out in the centre of a shopping mall. However, shoppers at Bayfair Shopping Centre in Mount Maunganui found themselves centre court during August 2009 when a massive glass court was erected in the mall to host the A1 Homes NZ Women’s Open. Around 18,000 spectators descended on the mall to witness a piece of the fast-paced action.

Having seen examples of the glass courts erected overseas, Bayfair and Bay of Plenty Sport decided it would be a great way to bring the sport to the masses, staging the event in the centre of the mall in full public view – from all corners!

It was also the first time in 13 years a NZ Women’s Open tournament had been played in New Zealand, another great story.

The AC team focused on profiling Bayfair’s innovative approach – a NZ first – hosting the tournament in the centre as well as celebrating this milestone event with the local community and high-profile Tauranga personalities.

Results

What better way to commemorate this event than with the darling of New Zealand squash and one of our most successful international female squash players of all time – Dame Susan Devoy! Dame Susan was invited to play a match against the Bay of Plenty’s rookie MP Simon Bridges – a challenge which she accepted without reservation.

This event captured the attention of the public, attracting around 100 onlookers and media keen to see their local MP take on the sporting legend. Despite a considerable absence from the court and retirement from professional squash, Dame Susan showed Simon a thing or two about the game. Needless to say, Simon was an excellent sport!

The event made national TV, when Breakfast took the opportunity to show coverage of the match on the politician’s regular young gun segment that week. The Breakfast hosts had quite a chuckle, at Simon’s expense, about his technique and bravado in challenging such a sporting great.

The NZ Herald, Bay of Plenty Times, Sunlive and Classic Hits Tauranga also covered the event, relishing the opportunity to see their local MP put himself up for the challenge.

The rather unique setting for the national squash tournament was the focus of a piece on prime-time current affairs show Campbell Live. The article titled ‘Squash open gives new meaning to window shopping,’ looked at the angle of reinvigorating public interest in the sport and the innovative approach of taking it to the people in a glass court in the centre Bayfair. Journalist Emma Keeling described the court as ‘oasis for sport’s lovers in a desert of shopping’

We are bombarded every day with the news of the death of newspapers and other traditional media thanks to the killer effect of the rise of social media. Quite frankly, it’s not the truth, and hearing it is getting a little tiresome and repetitive.

Sure, where there’s smoke there’s fire, as they say. There is certainly evidence that the decline in newspaper and magazine advertising revenues corresponds with an increasing ad spend in social media.

Looking at it strictly from a first-world perspective, yes, technologies and behaviours like blogging, social media, the iPhone and iPad are permanently changing the way we consume media. However, our newspapers’ (mainly) Australian bosses are not stupid (truly – I have worked with some of them). They will change their business models to reflect the new paradigm. They will buy, they will merge, they will purge. One sure thing is that the large  newspapers, and other traditional media, have been experimenting with new business models for some time. They will crack it eventually, even if it means hiring in some young guns to help change the paradigm (again, this has started already).

In fact, the ‘old’ mainstream media have already started to get more social (see Stuff.co.nz and nzherald.co.nz for examples), while social media are becoming more mainstream (WordPress, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn). I believe that in the end these media will blend their technologies and start to look more similar – that is, until the next revolution comes along. What’s after social media? When all media is ‘social’? What’s the next thing?  Is it media collaboration? Or co-opetition? I’m not sure yet, but we are working on it.

One prediction I will make confidently is that more journalists will be required to embrace the online world; many leading journalists already use social media for research and story leads, blog regularly themselves and see these things as natural extensions of the craft. Those that don’t embrace it will be left behind – at least in the developed world.

Slightly less relevant but important in terms of world-wide change: looking purely at population statistics in less developed countries, the newspapers (outdoor advertising and radio) are there to stay for a long time yet, and social media is really. . . well, it’s getting social around a water pump, or the community clinic or at local shebeen (pub).

Now where is that iPad so that I can read the news and check out my fave technology mag and the new Lee Child novel!

As you may have guessed, I don’t believe traditional media will die or that social media will take over the world, but the technologies will be shared and the process will sort out the wheat from the chaff  in developed markets. There will be room only for those that can attract revenue and deliver relevant content (and fast). Co-opetition may be the new strategy for media companies.

Amadou Diallo, His Worship the Mayor Hon. John Banks, Brian Broom and Tony Boll

Campaign Overview

When DHL Global Forwarding, the largest freight forwarder and part of the leading logistics company DHL, briefed the AC team about its latest investment, we knew it was going to be big. How big? 125,000 square feet big!

DHL had invested US$8.8million in a state-of-the-art building, and turned to us to help make the announcement of a new high-tech hub at Westney Industry Park, adjacent to the Auckland International Airport. 

This long-term, forward-thinking commitment in logistics was a positive and audacious move in a particularly difficult business climate.  A media briefing was the natural choice for the announcement and unveiling of the new premises to business journalists and suppliers.

In support of the new facility investment, Auckland Mayor Hon John Banks was invited as keynote speaker, along with the international guests, Amadou Diallo, CEO DHL Global Forwarding South Asia Pacific, and Tony Boll, CEO DHL Global Forwarding South Pacific, who made the trip to New Zealand to address guests gathered at the Stamford Plaza in downtown Auckland

Results

DHL’s investment announcement received positive feedback and coverage in numerous media channels. 

TVNZ’s NZI Business featured Amadou Diallo discussing the capabilities of the new high-tech hub, and screened footage of the new premises in action.

The launch also gained good print coverage, with articles in the National Business Review, Southland Times, The Dominion Post Weekend, The Press and Manukau Courier.

Online media played an important role in helping DHL reach audiences in New Zealand and internationally. The announcement graced the screens of stuff.co.nz, nzherald.co.nz, arabiansupplychain.com, veintepies.com (Spain), procurement-online.com, forkliftaction.com and shippingindustry.com among others.

PublishMe was created in May 2007 by Jane and Graeme Beals who established Zenith Publishing Group in New Plymouth 17 years ago. They identified self-publishing as a growth area due to the impact of digital technology and the internet on traditional publishing methods.

We interviewed Graeme for the nzherald.co.nz Inspired People blog last year and discovered what a wonderful business model he and Jane had.

The internet has made self-publishing much more exciting and accessible. With PublishMe’s wider goal of lifting the quality of self -published books, we could not resist working with them to tell more people about it.

Jane’s opinion piece Note to Self : Write my Book featured in the online Herald business section and was very well received and republished on getfrank.co.nz , grownups.co.nz and livemygoals.com.

Jane was invited to talk on TV1 ‘s Breakfast programme after this. She presented a great case for why folk who wish to write a book, whether for pleasure or for business – should self-publish. 98% of unsolicited manuscripts are rejected. PublishMe received unprecedented hits to their website after that interview adding around 300 new sign-ups to publishme.co.nz.

Jane has also been interviewed on Kiwi FM – Radio Wammo, EasiMix, NewstalkZB as well as having been featured in the Herald On Sunday and quoted in Unlimited and NZ Marketing magazines. NZ Business mentioned PublishMe in a review of ‘Deliver’ – Ray White NZ CEO Carey Smith’s first book, which he chose to self-publish and was pleased with the end result.

We introduced Carey to PublishMe, and he continues to be a good advocate for the business. He mentions PublishMe in his media where appropriate.

Of course we share their ongoing story to interested online communities on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin.

It does not end there. Jane and Graeme will continue to benefit from the growing numbers of businesspeople writing a book. Their website now caters for this growing sector .  Fred Stewart, Dr Tom Mulholland and Fiona Christie are also recent ‘featured” business authors.

Enquiries continue to grow. Many people are realising they have a book inside them. The Sunday Star-Times Magazine Sunday is currently interviewing a few of PublishMe authors.

This online community will continue to benefit from the confluence of new technology (like the Oce printer- an Amazon.com like super-printer), the world-wide-web as well as the growing feeling that self publishing is a viable, quality option for authors.

Thankyou YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and WordPress for making self-publishing accessible, easy and the creating confidence in authors of today to persue this route.

For editors and their journalists, covering a story that is both subject to legal enquiry and is of intense public interest is at once a thrill and a giant headache. Two instances in the past year have been the Urewera raids and the Tony Veitch case. Both have required journalists to serve two masters; the public interest and the law.

The Veitch case is a prime example of what happens when fame and prurience clash with the courts: plenty of ink, but frustratingly little hard fact – not because journalists haven’t done their job, but because the protagonists decline to say their piece, do so inconsistently or incompletely, or operate through intermediaries who are themselves dealing with third-hand information and have a heavy barrow to push.

Television New Zealand took a lot of heat when the allegations against Veitch were first made public by the Dominion Post in July 2008. It was revealed that some senior executives knew of the incident that had occurred between Veitch and his former on-off partner of four years, Kristin Dunne-Powell, and that a confidentiality agreement and six-figure payout had ensued. It was asked how Veitch could be protected by his employers while TVNZ accepted public money for a series of anti-family violence advertisements.

But for TVNZ and The Radio Network, his other employer, there was no right answer. One only had to look at the New Zealand Herald’s incendiary Your Views feature, both in July and last week following Veitch’s guilty plea at the Auckland District Court, to learn that there is an absence of consensus among ordinary Kiwis over what happened between the couple, and, more generally, exactly what punishment a person convicted of a single act of reckless disregard causing injury should be expected to take.

As such, this was a tough one for journalists. Following the initial Dominion Post story, Veitch gave a vaguer-than-vague press conference and an interview with Paul Holmes in which he fielded a range of softball questions.

Dunne-Powell said nothing until her interview with Phil Taylor in the Weekend Herald following Veitch’s plea last Thursday. She denied that she or anyone she knew had been involved in the Dominion Post scoop, and said that she did not know who was responsible. She did not address the specifics of the night in question.

Following his final court appearance Veitch vowed to take legal action against some media outlets regarding their coverage of the case. What neither protagonist appeared to understand is that if they refused to address all questions raised over the past nine months (or could not due to legal strictures related to the plea bargain), the gaps would be filled in nonetheless. When sex, money, crime and fame intersect, people hunger for more information. It sells papers and boosts ratings and click-through statistics – and media operatives will continue to perform the tightrope act.

Dwayne Alexander talks to getfrank.co.nz  readers about his experiences with Twitter – and its applications for business.

Okay. I have, on occasion, wondered what all the fuss is about, as I am sure some of you have. However, after investing some focused months on Twitter and using it as a tool to learn, connect and engage with people, I have come to the conclusion that, as part of an integrated campaign of other traditional and new media, it can be a very powerful business tool.

Twitter is no longer cosmetic for me, but of real value. So this post is not aimed at Twitter users, but at readers and clients that ask me why? How? When? What? about Twitter.

The function and form of Twitter changes for me daily and over the course of the last six months I have used it to… More

Results.com deals with approximately 200 small and medium businesses on a weekly basis. Ben Ridler, MD was acutely aware of what is on their minds as they came back this new year to work on their businesses.

Ben is a real character, a straight-shooter and a boxer in his spare time. He regularly goes overseas to keep his thinking fresh.

He did a snap survey with a small portion of his clients last year and the results were shared in an article called Trial Period Promise Tops List.

The above was in response to another short opinion piece by Ben Ridler the week before in an -Open letter to John Key  from small business. This in turn  was a follow up to the article ‘John Key looks at ways to help small businesses cope’

Background

• Results.com  were featured on TV3 News last year for their listing in the top 10 Fast50.  And also on TV1  NZI Business Breakfast recently for their opinions on how small and medium businesses are responding to the recession
• Ben Ridler has also shared his opinions fairly regularly on  nzherald.co.nz
• Results.com have nine practices across New Zealand and now have a additional three offices worldwide with Canada already lifting their revenues by 20%.