Cross-posted from Ishmael’s Corner
By Melissa Lewelling, Account Executive, The Hoffman Agency

At nearly every PR event featuring journalists, there is the ethereal question, “How can PR help you do your job better?” Frankly, as a former journalist myself, I tend to find it comical. These types of events often feature panels of media professionals who don’t want to be there, don’t really care about answering that question and often hate even hearing it.

In the PR industry, we regularly talk about “relationship building with media.” However, if we are honest, there isn’t much time on either side (let alone in a source-coverage exchange interaction) to have a genuine conversation about personal interests or industry trends. That’s why I found PRSA Silicon Valley’s recent conversation with Quentin Hardy so refreshing.

He was as facetious as one might expect a New York Times writer to be, but was genuinely interested in having an exchange with the audience. He was also sincere in the giving of his time so everyone had a chance to engage (even calling for more female participants during the Q&A). Quentin seemed ready and willing to talk with us all night and provided some colorful quotes for PR professionals to keep in mind:

• “People like learning about the world and need it explained to them in terms they’ll understand.”
• “There’s nothing more seductive than fearlessness [in a spokesperson].”
• “The more levels you have in a story the better: colorful, insightful, characters in peril, the story about going home.”
• “Know your own topic well and avoid facile tropes [when pitching].”
• “I get about 200 pitches a day and lean toward the circles of trust: things you know, the people you trust and what they know and institutions you trust … it does put blind pitches at a disadvantage.”
• “Feature reporting has to do with rapport and feel.”
• “I’m not going to write about what I just wrote … I have ADD.”
• “In the next three to five years, companies will continue to bypass the media with social and be more like content studios, producing finished products.”

Throughout the night, Quentin’s sense of humor (personified by his Twitter profile) was also in attendance, adding levity to the conversation and engaging the audience.

However, as much as I enjoyed the above insights and banter — amid the dim lights, smell of hors d’oeuvres slowly cooling and the faint scuttle of feet — here’s what I really learned from our night as frien-quaintances:

1. Journalism isn’t dying, but analytics and an ad-subscriber model may be key for its transformation.

Before the anticipated question about the widening ratio of journalists to PR professionals, which Quentin seemed unconcerned with, he talked about the business model of his publication and its strengthened financial position. As the internet and digital landscapes have changed the revenue game for publishers, The New York Times has adopted an ad-subscriber model that is going well, according to Quentin’s account, and is helping the publication to remain focused on hiring and retaining the country’s top talent.

Additionally, the publication recently invested in building its own in-house analytics dashboard, Stela, as a way to provide its writers with more data, such as readership fluctuations in response to headline changes, which channels are leading readers to specific content and on which platforms the content is being consumed. Quentin noted that he is able to now take the platform (desktop, mobile or tablet) into consideration when writing headlines and planning visuals as a result of this data — something PR professionals should also keep in mind when pitching a story.

2.  Avoid generalizations when speaking to an industry expert.

We all know this deep down, but when faced with the pressure of an in-person Q&A (and a couple of dozen faces staring back) it can be easy to simplify a potentially complex question for the sake of time (or nerves).

However, in my experience, most journalists don’t respond well to generalizations of an industry they know as well as their byline, so asking a leading or broad question tends not to generate a very insightful response (as the time is usually spent trying to narrow the initial question). As a result, it’s clear that thoroughly thinking through and vetting any potential question before asking it — also true for pitch writing — is of vital importance when interacting with the media, and will ultimately lead to more beneficial exchanges.

3. The future of the sharing economy and tech industry are moving toward a focus on the “efficiency of virtualization projected on a physical landscape” — and this impacts everything.

Quentin was quick to dive into his personal passion for covering the ways in which tech from Silicon Valley affects non-obvious aspects of life in Middle America — such as how the cloud is used by a Texas high school football coach and how an Indiana farmer uses big data. This personal interest evolved into a conversation around the pros and cons of the sharing economy and where he sees it heading — namely, everywhere. Similar to the social disruption of the early 1900s, artificial intelligence, robotics, the internet of things and the sharing economy are all shifting industries in unexpected ways, currently creating an “emotional dissonance” in the U.S. amplified by social media.

However, Quentin pointed out that in the long term these innovations are doing more than just muddling people’s view of their future jobs, but shifting how entire industries function (i.e., turning a single car into a taxi fleet or an apartment into a hotel) and relate to technology as they physically manifest the principles of software virtualization. As PR professionals, this is an insight that can’t be overlooked because it should change the way we view our clients’ stories — remembering that everything is connected beyond what the surface might suggest and compelling us to dig deeper to find that unexpected application.

Side note: Reno Ybarra and Anne Stanley from Engage PR also wrote on the topic, “A Conversation with The New York Times’ Quentin Hardy.”

This story originally appeared on Ishmael’s Corner.

Cross-posted from Ishmael’s Corner
By Lou Hoffman

I am an unabashed fan of the anecdote.

Not in the sense that when one shows up on the Ed Sullivan show I’m moved to shriek.

There’s an intellectual argument for using anecdotes – namely journalists want them.

Sam Whitmore – if you’re in the communications business and don’t subscribe to SWMS, you’re missing a tool that can raise your game – was kind enough to allow me to borrow from his interview with Jim Kerstetter, executive editor at CNET:

“Do [PR people] read those long pieces and understand what’s in them? Do they understand that if someone wants to do a long story about a company, they’re going to say that: ‘I want to spend the day, or I want to spend days, plural, at that company. I want to be a fly on the wall. I want anecdotes. I want to see those anecdotes. Or if I can’t be there, I want to be able to recreate them.’”

I think the man needs an ice cold anecdote!

In a world where news announcements are instantly commoditized by the Internet, anecdotes are really the gold for today’s journalists.

Even news stories gain a boost from anecdotes like the Associated Press story on a new Intel chip which after quoting the party line from one exec followed with this little ditty:

The flattery came after Bloomberg News reported Intel CEO Paul Otellini’s apparent misgivings about the new operating system. In a meeting earlier this week with Intel employees in Taiwan, Otellini said he believesMicrosoft is releasing Windows 8 before all the bugs are fixed, according to Bloomberg, which quoted an unnamed person who heard the remarks.

More typical, anecdotes end up being the life blood of feature stories.

I wrote about the Economist and a story on data mining, a topic that I think we can agree isn’t natural storytelling fodder.

Yet, The Economist jumps into the fray with this killer anecdote:

In 1879 James Ritty, a saloon-keeper in Dayton, Ohio, received a patent for a wooden contraption that he dubbed the “incorruptible cashier”. With a set of buttons and a loud bell, the device, sold by National Cash Register (NCR), was little more than a simple adding machine. Yet as an early form of managing information flows in American business the cash register had a huge impact. It not only reduced pilferage by alerting the shopkeeper when the till was opened; by recording every transaction, it also provided an instant overview of what was happening in the business.

Do I think a clever PR pro scooted the James Ritty anecdote to the Economist reporter?

No.

But there’s still ample opportunity for communicators to build out storytelling content that includes anecdotes.

Keep in mind that once an anecdote is in the public domain, it plummets in value. Journalists can’t differentiate their stories with second-hand stuff.

This is also why you need to think twice before inserting a revealing anecdote into a news release. There are times when keeping an anecdote your pocket gives you a chip to play with journalist similar to what IBM did recently with The New York Times.

You Might Want to Ask Alice

By Steve Burkhart
The Hoffman Agency, San Jose

We have already jumped into Alice in Wonderland’s rabbit hole, but in the New Year expect the journey to get even more dizzying. As marketing/PR/journalism professionals, we are all converging on the same prize: creating and optimizing brilliant editorial content that builds brands.

In 2016, the fight for supremacy will be more ferocious.

The New York Times has created an entire division devoted to producing and commercializing content for its advertising customers — it’s called The New York Times T Brand Studio.

Scroll through its packages, and you will see some of the most sophisticated brand narratives being published — very expensive for sure, but visually rich and sometimes very editorially compelling — all under the NY Times moniker. Sure, it is called out as sponsored content, but it still grabs the cache of the big journalism brand.

It is safe to say that the convergence of platforms — and the need to work against a bigger strategy — will continue in 2016.

While it is easy to be impressed with the quality of what the NY Times is doing, it’s also equally encouraging (on behalf of all PR and marketing firms that are content creators) to see what they cannot do.

The stuff in the NY Times is more of a one-shot wonder — it’s an expensive story narrative with lavish visuals that could anchor a campaign. But they are far from the end-all-be-all communication platforms that their marketing/PR brethren can create.

We know that communications and engagement need daily attention. We want our double shot of espresso more than once in a lifetime. In fact, we want it every morning, if not morning and afternoon.

That’s why PR/marketing firms are best positioned to be a brand’s daily content fix. We can ignite the multitude of engagements in Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, media relations, blog posts — and yes, sponsored content on big publishing platforms like the NY Times. Long-form narrative is alive and well, especially when it is properly optimized for SEO. But so are the microbursts of Twitter and the fun of Facebook and the thought leadership of LinkedIn and blogs.

It’s a glorious day to be a storyteller, a writer, a visual thinker for brand building. All avenues are open. The rewards go to the ones who do it best.

Even Alice would love this scenario in her crazy mixed-up world — served up with a daily double espresso.