Pierce Mattie Public Relations New York & Los Angeles

3. Key Message – If you already establish a key message for your brand every year, give yourself a pat on the back! Nothing is more frustrating on our end when we meet with a new client and go through their business plan to realize – they don’t have a key message. Companies don’t spend nearly enough time auditing their images and messages. Use your points of difference and begin to craft at least 5 key messages. Use bullet points and keep it simple. Start with phrases like:

We Are Known For ...
Our First Product Was ...
We Were Founded On...
The Core of Our Brand Is ...

4. Talking Points – Use your key messages list as a springboard for creating talking points. That means developing meaningful and effective dialogue. This practice is useful in breaking down information delivery to emphasize your sales message. Talking points are a great way to help potential customers understand your company background and set a standard for future communication styles. Take your sales team’s message and tweak it for your PR firm. Your PR firm should use the exact same dialogue as your sales force does when talking to wholesale accounts and consumers, but tweaked slightly for the media’s advantage. Your talking points should remain the same for each group within your company. Let’s head to #5.

5. Internal Communication – You are only as good as the person who answers the phone, makes the coffee, and sends the invoice. That includes the internal PR team at your organization. You cannot rely on the outside agency to do everything. We are only as strong as you are. It’s interesting to note that clients of Pierce Mattie PR that get the best press, have the most solid media campaigns really have their act together on the inside. Everyone at your company is important and makes a contribution to the perception in the marketplace. Make sure all employees understand your business and represent you the way you want. Give them the talking points in #4 and the company fact sheet. Let them be part of your media development in putting together your PR calendar.

6. Identify Trends But Don’t Try To "Own" Them All – Read everything and start to train yourself to notice new things. Once you have completed 1 – 5, you are ready to take your PR efforts to the next level. That entails being competitive. Look ahead from time to time and see if you can predict what’s coming along. This is also known as developing awareness and your sixth sense, intuition. Have fun with this and don’t be afraid to make mistakes. But remember never launch an entire brand on a trend because once that trend dies so will your brand. For example, if you’re a lip plumping brand or a Botox in a bottle brand – where will you be in 2007 when this trend dies? Dead! How about the skinny jean? We will be showing loose fitted boot cut jeans in 2008, so where do these skinny jean companies go in 12 months – TJ Maxx.

7. Creative Brainstorm – It’s the old stand- by but it works. You now know your trends from #6 but will they work with your business? And if they do how can you modify and apply them for full benefit performance? Make time to stimulate your creativity, schedule time to brainstorm your business. Change is good! The best way to brainstorm is to invite the creative team in with the logistical team and hash it out. They take your big ideas and road test them to see if they are a good fit for the press before making a commitment. If you want to host a Times Square bash but know based on past experience that the weather will work against you or that the car service for the press will cost too much to get the editors downtown, then look at plan B. Being creative and staying on budget while delivering a successful media impact is the ultimate goal.

8. ROI – (Return on Investment) carefully research and understand the return on a PR investment. Yes you have successful spearheaded #1 – 7, but let’s talk about goals. There is a glass ceiling with PR and it’s a thankless industry where it’s never enough. That is unless you forget establish your goals for the campaign first. Communicate your expectations and set realistic goals. Let’s say you’re launching a new lifestyle line of consumer products including apparel and personal care at Saks Fifth Avenue. Saks being high end – your ROI goal should be national long lead coverage in the top 40 fashion and beauty publications that cover Saks products. Figure out how many consumers you want your media campaign to reach and project realistic and attainable goals. You can largely base this on a 10 to 20% increase from the year before. Keep a monthly audit on each hit you receive and what the circulation and pass over rate is per publication. Tally up per quarter how many people you have reached per campaign.

9. Analyze – take a step back after your in motion and see what PR activities worked and which didn’t? This is as important as getting the message right. Focus on what works and do more of it. I believe it was Bing Crosby who sang “You've got to accentuate the positive - " The lyrics followed with:

Eliminate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
Don't mess with Mister In-Between
You've got to spread joy up to the maximum
Bring gloom down to the minimum
Have faith or pandemonium
Liable to walk upon the scene
It’s funny how classic songs like that still hold true today to our business practice.

10. Celebrate - yes let it rip and scream out loud! Events are always in style, don’t forget to include them in your PR mix. Budgeting your events and how you will finance the set up, execution and core message is just as important as outlining your advertising schedule. At Pierce Mattie PR, we start all events with a core budget first. We then build a strategy for the event from there. Never back in to your budgets for PR but build in a 15% flux over the targeted overall cost. Each event that you do should not only have a list of who you want in attendance but the kind of pre and post coverage that you want to secure from that event. Give yourself a ROI goal based on what you learned in #8 and make sure you hit it within 10% of your mark. Project your short lead coverage from that event – those items you can secure within the first 4 weeks. As well as a long lead goal – those items you can secure within the next sixth months. And one very important thing to note – make sure you invest in a fierce step and repeat. We always assign two photographers to our events, one for the step and repeat and the second for the crowd flow and guest speakers. Make sure you have a publicist with each of them to keep them on task so they know who and what they need to shoot at all times.