Public Relations is Way Harder than You Think

Off and on I hear a lot of yippity yapping about “PR” (public relations). People are all like “IndyCar’s PR sucks! We need more news coverage of the great IndyCar awesomeness!” As if this is a revelation to the IndyCar PR posse. Like they’re just over there drinking beer and smoking cigarettes and it never really dawned on them that, DAMN, you know what? IndyCar does need more news coverage! So glad these people pointed it out to me!

I know many IndyCar PR people and I can assure you they're neither dumb nor lazy. Overworked and underfunded? Maybe. Uncaring and dense, definitely not. So, since I’m sometimes cranking on IndyCar PR myself, let’s talk about Public Relations, specifically how 1) it IS NOT what most people think and 2) it IS much harder than most people think.

After I yammered off about public relations recently (here), Mike R had a good comment:

Catch 22 between the media providing coverage of the sports and its athletes that have a lot of popularity and the fact that their coverage drives that popularity by keeping the ones everyone wants to know about front-and-center in the spotlight nearly 365 days a year.

You're a journalist, pressdog...who decides and how is it decided on how much coverage is given when it's a 'low-profile' sport or event. Does the organization have to promote to the media via PR peeps and glossy media handout pamphlets/folders? Who, then, is to be looked to for getting more involvement by the media?

When I was working on the cars, it was the responsibility of our team's PR rep to get out there and work the print and broadcast media to get some coverage for our team/driver.

Extremely fair question. The short answer is it's everyone's job to drive PR  -- teams, drivers, league -- and they all play a different role in successful PR efforts. I'm just a blogger now, but I used to be a real journalist for small daily newspapers in the pre-internet stone ages (1986 to 1995). I also have a day job now of freelance marketing writer that occasionally brushes up against public relations (I write a mean news release!), so I think I can opine on public relations. So here we go.

The Public Relations Society of America, which the main PR trade group, defines PR this way: “Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.”

Most agree that PR is a branch of marketing. I’ll go further: in my opinion, PR is by far the most cost-effective form of marketing. Say you hire a PR person and you pay her $75,000 a year because she is really good. If that PR person gets you ONE feature story in USA Today or even a relatively quick Q&A in the New York Times like this, she’s just generated publicity that’s worth at least her annual salary — with ONE story. The investment in PR is very low compared to other forms of marketing. A big-time TV ad, for example, can cost $100,000 just to create when you factor in the cost paying everyone involved in the process, then you have to pay hundreds of thousands more to air it. You have to sell a lot of product just to make your advertising investment back.

The PR posse is also the brand guardians of a sort, in that they help you respond to potentially brand-damaging events, like if your company manufactures something that starts killing people or your CEO shows up on Facebook half naked at a college frat party. That kind of crisis response public relations can literally save your company. So you need PR and you need good PR to get positive media coverage and mitigate negative media coverage.

So the benefits of PR are huge, but the challenge is also enormous.

To understand PR, you have to understand a couple fundamentals. 1) PR people cannot force any news organization (even bloggers!) to do anything for the companies they represent. Even the great and powerful Wizard of PR is powerless to force the media to do anything. You just got no hammer so "demanding coverage!!" isn't an option.

2) As a PR pro you’re competing with every other PR person representing every other organization out there for a piece of every news organization’s finite resources. So IndyCar is competing for sports space with the NBA, NHL, NASCAR, college sports, golf, tennis and on and on and on. Even online where physical space for stories isn’t a limitation, one reporter can only do so much and there are a finite number of reporters who work for big news organizations that can really move the needle.

Big PR Misconception #1 — That really good PR pros can get news organizations to do any random story just by calling them up, as in saying something like “hustle over here and write a story about Simona.”

Hahahahahaha. No. That’s not how it works. You have to convince journalists to cover your stuff, which is why PR reps “pitch” stories to the media, similar to pitching a product. And, just like when you try to sell someone anything from dish towels to lawn mowers, the pitch needs to be heavy on “what’s in it for me (the reporter)?”

The main thing media people want is readers/viewers (i.e. customers). News organizations want more people to read/view/listen to their stuff than any other news organization’s stuff. Media outlets are businesses so that means success is all about attracting and retaining customers. Traffic (customers consuming the media product) makes them more attractive to advertisers, and fees charged for advertising are what drive media company revenue.

Especially in sports, where it’s rarely a life-and-death or Public-Has-a-Right-to-Know issue, media outlets decide what to cover based largely on “if I invest time and talent into writing this story, how many readers (customers!) will be interested in it?” The best reporters know their audience (customers) really well, and use their limited time to give them stories (products) they want to consume.

People don’t seem to understand the concept that media outlets are businesses and there has to be return on their reporting investment. They say: "If I write stories that you want me to write, I need to see a benefit. I need to think this will make people come to my site and read it, make subscribers happy and want to continue to subscribe, make people watch my TV channel rather than the other one, set me apart from my competition in some way, otherwise why would I as a reporter bother?"

So to answer Mike R’s question, glossy PR kits don’t do you much good unless there’s something about the driver’s story/background/condition/gender/life situation/track accomplishments that make the reporter go “Hmm. That is interesting.”

Case in point: this story about Ryan Hunter-Reay by Jeff Olson. The hook is RHR’s riches-to-rags-to-riches story. People love to read about a comeback. So the PR pitch is something like “you should do a story on Ryan Hunter-Reay because he was almost out of racing, bounced around from team to team, and then won the IndyCar championship. It made RHR realize just how precarious any driver’s position in racing is these days.” If IndyCar PR chief Amy Konrath and her crew and/or Andretti Autosport PR were unresponsive and pissy and didn’t work to create a relationship with Jeff Olson and Jenna Fryer and Nate Ryan and Brant James, these stories probably don’t get written, or at least fewer of them do.

Similarly, if Jeff Olson shows up to dot the story and Andretti Autosport team principals treat him like bleeding leper and RHR is unresponsive and petulant, well that can FLUSH all the work it took to get USA Today's interest ... AND poison the well for a year to come ... AND generate an unflattering story in the bargain. So really good PR is everyone's job to some degree, even if that job description is "don't (f-bomb) it up."

Big PR Misconception #2 — The most important PR task is writing news releases. HAR. As if. That’s maybe the LEAST important task. Still valuable, but way down on the list. A quality news release is a good thing, but real PR is the ability of a skilled professional to build relationships with the media, find pitchable stories and then use them to attract favorable coverage. The news release is just a tool that the PR pro uses. Without the pro, you’re screwed, because media outlets get a tidal wave of news release every day and most of them never even get read.

Big PR Misconception #3 — Anyone can do PR. That’s like saying anyone can fix a transmission in your car. Wrong. It takes more than being a good writer and a "people person" to be good at PR. I get paid a lot of money to write stuff for my day job as a freelance marketing writer, and I think I’m good at it, but I SUCK at PR. I don’t have the specific interpersonal skills required to be good at PR. If my clients want PR, I refer them to PR pros that I know.

Big PR Misconception #4 — Sports coverage is somehow merit based, as in the highest quality drivers get the most pub. Another coffee spew. No. Sorry. Sports journalism is extremely audience driven. The biggest mountain for IndyCar to climb is the fact that it has so few fans (relatively) compared to virtually all other major-league pro sports. Reason number 928 that IndyCar needs to increase its fan base is to make it easier to attract more media attention. With so few fans, the media only really feels compelled to cover race results, just a few paragraphs about who won what race, and let it go at that.

But over in NASCAR, with millions of fans who want to know more about everything (like the very latest in the feud between Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano, for example) then the media has incentive to do a race story and maybe a couple of others, then a couple stories during the week and a race preview story, plus a few features on whoever — because the ROI (viewership) is really strong.

This is why there is always a story about Danica Patrick after virtually every race, regardless of how she finishes. It's not because the news organizations like her. It’s because Danica has a million fans who drive the hit counter through the roof. I know this from my site, where my last original-material Danica post drew about 10,000 page views in 48 hours, which is about ten times my normal average. And traffic = revenue online. It’s a direct correlation. If your customer wants to buy donuts, you sell them donuts. Your customers want to read about Danica, you do stories on Danica.

Likewise, if you would have a million fans out there saying “I wonder what is up with Tony Kanaan these days?” that generates demand for Tony Kanaan articles. That’s the luxury NASCAR has with its millions of fans who create millions of hits and buy millions of editions and watch millions of ESPN shows about NASCAR. The media has a million reasons to cover NASCAR compared to about 200,000 reasons to cover non-Indy 500 IndyCar.

PR is all about talking with the client (IndyCar, its teams and driver) to try and figure out what those interesting story ideas are and then pitching them to the right outlet. Pitching to the right media outlet is key. Maybe a story about Helio Castroneves’ fashion sense won’t make New York Times, but it might make GQ. So don’t spend $19,003 trying to get the New York Times to care because they’re never going to. Instead focus your efforts on attracting GQ.

There’s also a chicken-and-egg kind of thing going on here. Does the media cover drivers because they are interesting, or are drivers interesting because the media covers them? I say it’s more of the former. It starts with drivers being interesting and that attracts media coverage, and then hopefully it snowballs as people read about him or her. For female drivers like Women of pressdog® Danica Patrick, Sarah Fisher, Simona De Silvestro, Pippa Mann et al, gender is a built-in interesting hook (although not so big of a hook as it once was). Male drivers have a bigger mountain to climb to differentiate themselves. Kimi Räikkönen winning with his “don’t give a shit” attitude makes him interesting to many people like me.

Good public relations requires a sustained, long-term effort that builds relationships with media members based on mutual benefit. It means finding the pitchable stories. Everyone plays a role in generating good PR, from the CEO of IndyCar to the mechanic in the shop. Good PR makes it easy for media to do positive stories on your organization and makes sure the media gets your side of the story in negative situations. But most of all, good PR is really hard.

Comments

[Ted Wolfram]

This came out this morning:

http://www.nascar.com/en_us/news-media/articles/2013/03/28/danica-patrick-to-read-at-white-house.html

Kids are watching her....and what does IndyCar need?.....Young fans!!

And remember IndyCar had her, and NEVER had a clue how to use her.

As one advertising man said.....A lot of the divers and team owners in IndyCar were morons...they were jealous of her....and didn't understand that she helped them all with her fan base. He added...they still are and the fans that "hate" Danica and "are happy to see her gone", only feed this stupity...and then they get to watch NASCAR...laugh all the way to the bank,as their TV ratings grow, and not by a few points.

[Tropical Slim]

My 6 year old knows who Danica is and not from watching races, My wife thinks Danica is a great role model and I have followed her from Indy Car to Nationwide (who dropped our homeowners insurance as we live too close to the ocean... not on our side) and now to Sprint Cup. In my opinion she was by far the most interesting personality in Indy Car and I hope she makes millions. She works hard and earns it,

[WhateverJoel]

I think people are confusing PR with marketing. IndyCar has amazing PR with driver autograph sessions, garage passes for all ages, and Tweet Ups. Only problem, people don't know these exist because IndyCar's marketing department doesn't do anything. If there's anything fans should be complaining about with IndyCar, it's the marketing.

[Steve Barnes]

Maybe this isn't specifically the PR department, but the Indycar Facebook page is still advertising the St. Pete race ....

https://www.facebook.com/indycar

With two weeks between St. Pete and Barber ... Indycar has given up almost a week of "advertising" for the next race ....

As Pressdog would say, I guess it's "none of our business" to know about upcoming races.

[Tim]

Very well said!

[pressdog]

WhateverJoel ... marketing outside of PR costs money real money, especially when you get into mass media. Spendin $50,000 at that level is like going to the can ... not a big deal. I'd love to know what IndyCar's non-PR marketing budget is. I'd be willing to bet it's really slim.

[vern]

Very good explanation of what PR is all about and the most accurate quote with the article I see is:

" Even the great and powerful Wizard of PR is powerless to force the media to do anything."

Interesting observation that PR is not always tied to Marketing. However, if the subject, series, team, drivers etc in this case IS popular its easier for PR and then the marketing aspect is usually much easier, as then often times the marketing people/sponsors etc will come calling on you?

Also being a good writer doesnt mean they are good at PR--interesting aspect as well explaining how tough it is to be a PR person.

The RHR explanation of what the PR person used to push the PR story of his background is good and explains that a "catch" story is needed sometimes? However the other side is--if the media isn't interested--regardless--they wont buy it.

Very good story and its on the Indycar Trackforum site as well drawing attention as it does answer some questions Iam sure and the issues Indycar has by NOT being that popular, but PR stories are possible regardless, as stated?? Very interesting--thanks

[vern]

Also to add about Danica comments here within this PR story etc, when in Indycar. Early on they loved what she brought them with her popularity to draw in mainstream attention but then yrs later things cooled down and Indycar went through major changes and wasn't so popular even with her anymore. Most then became jealous of her and Indycar didn't do much to promote her from within as their thinking was "we need to promote our other drivers"--how did that work for them back then and now that she left? They are still trying to diss her saying she never mattered--pure ignorance and stupidity from Indycar and most trying to use her in comparison to make their other lessor drivers popular--now that's the funny thing. Course the other side is--she was popular enough for her brand to grow and her sponsors and she survived quite well and that's WHY Nascar wanted her.

As said--Nascar wanted her and her sponsor wanted her out of Indycar into a more mainstream series so Nascar has her now and they are using her. Yes--there are nascar anylists/hosts/media who don't like her and often diss her results etc, but the bottom line IS--they use her to draw attention to their other stories and the race tracks definitely are trying to use her to help draw in more fans etc. The bottom line is for Nascar as they have said, esp since Daytona, "How Danica goes is how the Nascar ratings goes." Her results are somewhat tied to Nascar ratings and even not so good since Daytona, she puts different eyes in the stands and on TV cheering for her as they are thrilled having her. Indycar was at first thrilled to have her, but then later on--not so much-- and now they have NO one even close to her popularity, so its tougher for their PR people to promote Iam sure? ALL fans have favorite drivers to watch and cheer for and Nascar has plenty in the mainstream, but Indycar, not so much generally speaking in the mainstream and that's one of their problems in my opinion?

[Chiefswon]

Real good look into the business for folks that have no experience with PR. Some very interesting comments from your readers as well. Thanks PDog!

[Michael Kaltenmark]

Pro Tip: Sometimes the media like it when you pitch stories or just pass along pleasantries on bananas, called "banan-o-grams."

And then there's that one time, circa 2008, when nobody would read my press releases, so my colleague Pat and I took to social media, gave the fans what they wanted, which created an audience, and then motivated the media to cover us. That is neat.

Now I do PR for some dog nobody has ever heard of.

Good stuff here, Pdog! I miss seeing you in media centers around the lower 48. Next time you pick up a banana, just imagine I wrote something nice about you on it.

-MK

[Ted Wolfram]

PR for any sport...involves using what people are interested in to promote what improves your sport's attraction.

This is what IndyCar needs..in spades. But let's be honest...they had the tool and didn't have a clue of how to use her.

In 2005 if they had done what NASCAR is doing, things might be different!...She is everywhere on every program supporting good causes, (being at the White House for the Easter Egg hunt and there to read to kids), is certainly not about advertising her products...but it does it as an adjunct.You can bet NASCAR will be mentioned

And what does IndyCar do?

You can't make a silk purse out of pigs ear; and no matter how hard you work you can't make a sport's hero out of any driver, but when a special event drops a potential star in your hands to NOT use it is stupid. Go check out what happened when she took the lead in the 500, and the TV coverage.

IndyCar had the tool....and what did they do? NOTHING, well except began to cut her down, and now 388,000 TV viewers are considered GGRRREEAATTT!! Meanwhile NASCAR grows a younger fan base, including young girls....not because she drives a race car, but because she shows girls that they can be anything they want to be...and that folks in PR!

I didn't have to use her name....because everyone knows her...tell me that you can do that with any other driver?

[Tropical Slim]

Someone is working on Indy Car PR, This was in today's Miami Herald in the Scene in the Tropics section of the People page: "IndyCar drivers Dario Franchitti and Tony Kanaan met up with Andy Murray after his victory over Grigor Dimitrov Monday in the 3rd round of the Sony Open Tennis Tournament."

This is only the second time I can remember seeing something about an IndyCar driver who lives in Miami in the Herald other than in a sports page race report.

[GeorgeK]

"Public relations is way harder than you think".
All the points you raise in your posting can also be summarized as "Public relations and marketing without a viable product is impossible".

Much like the post race Daytona 500 fist fight of 1979, seen live on network TV, began the popularity boom of NASCAR I think a post race melee after the Indy 500 is what's required to resurrect the moribund national interest in Indycar racing.

Someone please draft a script outline and submit to the teams for consideration. Being highly competitive people it wouldn't take much.

[Tropical Slim]

Sunday wasn't so kind to Indy car as Helio Castro-Neves was referred to as being a CART driver who had had a tax problem. The blurb was about Lea Black and her attorney husband Roy. Helio was a client of his.

On page two of the sports page was the NASCAR/Univision press release about the new NASCAR novel. If you have never seen a novela they are quite dramatic and fun to watch even if you don't speak Spanish. The women are very sexy of course. Why Indy Car, with so many Latin drivers, didn't think of this is beyond my comprehension.

[The Speedgeek]

I don't understand all of this "IndyCar did nothing with Danica in 2005 to 2007 (or so) talk". Did I hallucinate her on the cover of Sports Illustrated in June 2005? Or her appearances on Letterman and the Today Show and Leno and about a million other talk shows and on the ESPYs red carpets? Or her appearance on some CSI show back in '06 or so? Or her TV interviews before and after just about every single race from 2005 to 2010?

Look, I'm not trying to say that IndyCar got exactly the same results as NASCAR is getting out of The Danica Experience. But like Whatever Joel mentioned up there, folks are getting "IndyCar PR" mixed up with "IndyCar Marketing". IndyCar's budgets, and therefore potential reach, for either of those things are limited, as are the budgets of the sponsors we see in IndyCar (small TV ratings drive the smaller budgets). Meanwhile, now that Danica's in the much, much larger pond of NASCAR, with its requisite tenfold (heck, probably twenty-fold) larger Marketing (with a capital "M") budgets, we get so see what cubic dollars can do. This is what buys all of those Go Daddy and Coca-Cola ads that we see during races, ad nauseum, and pun most certainly intended there. I'm certain that "IndyCar PR" did about as much as they could do with Danica. But, like Pressdog says, you can't force the media to cover something they don't deem newsworthy. Media sees NASCAR as newsworthy, and NASCAR's sponsors certainly deem Danica worthy of putting in ad spots in basically every ad break. That's why we're seeing 10x as much coverage of her now as what we saw even in the most fevered midst of Danica Mania 2005. Not because IndyCar didn't want to use her more, or because "IndyCar" wanted to tear her down. Yes, some drivers took shots at her after they got frustrated with her and her alone getting 90+% of the media attention (and put yourself in their shoes...can you totally blame them for getting frustrated when she scored less career top-5s than, say, Kevin Cogan?), but I'd like to see one single quote where somebody within the IndyCar organization ever said a bad word about her. Never happened. If anybody can find me quotes that prove me wrong, I'll be more than happy to eat a big ol' plate of "shut up".