According to Jill, Guerrilla P.R. was instrumental in starting and growing GGI. “From the genesis of the program, I was thinking globally and acting globally. My vision from the get-go was to create the most successful EE program in the world, which is why nothing has surprised me, overly impressed me, made me take myself too seriously, or made me lose focus on the ultimate goal. Every baby step I took in accordance with [the book’s] advice was headed in one, linear direction, though to some on the outside, it looked to be a confusing scheme.”
She used the techniques described in this book to network and create alliances, in what Jill calls “the hopscotch approach. One partnership led to another, then another, and ultimately to the big one I really needed. Similarly, one media hit led to another and another, until I was in Working Mother magazine. I knew there were key partnerships I needed to form and key publications in which I needed to be featured in order to (a) acquire the necessary funding to operate the program, i.e., appeal to sponsors; and (b) increase the number of schools that signed on…which also impressed potential sponsors and media outlets. I had to create such a sharp upward growth curve that no ‘similar’ program could compete with me, so that I could attract ‘green’ corporate sponsors.”
With a Guerrilla P.R. plan, she adds, “it was easier than I thought because the industry itself didn’t take me seriously enough to consider me a threat to their reliable source of corporate sponsorship. It was truly a Guerrilla story.”
At the time she wrote the GGI, Jill was neither an environmentalist in the conventional sense nor an educator. “I was a thirty-two-year-old mother of three who passionately wanted to leave her children a clean, healthy planet; teach her kids environmentally responsible behavior; and work with local schools to do likewise. When I wrote the GGI, I gained support from some key figures in the environmental and educational world early on, but it took a lot of nervous phone calls and presentations that made my knees shake. Those partnerships led to others in a ‘hopscotch’ fashion, and within two years, the GGI was the leader.”
Five years after her initial forays into Guerrilla P.R., Jill heads a program that she says finds opportunities for publicity “falling into our lap every week.” She continues to contact media outlets and has gotten unsolicited calls from The View, Ebony magazine, and the game show Deal or No Deal. “They knew our reputation, and liked the ‘Tiffany wrapping’ we recently gave our Web site when we ‘threw a grenade in the middle of it’ back in early 2007. As Michael says in Chapter 13, ‘a guerrilla is never satisfied…[must] keep vigilant…[knowing that] the enemy is always lurking.’ My organization operates based on that advice every single day, and that is how we have stayed out in front of those who have a vested interest in seeing us fail.”
Jill believes her Guerrilla P.R. plan began with Step One: identify the target audience. “I had the advantage of actually being the target audience…a PTA mom.”
She notes the comment in this book that one should “try to do something first.” Jill did so by aiming her program at an unconventional target audience: PTA parents. “We went one step beyond WIFM…I went straight to WIFMK (What’s in it for my kids) and found that this was an even stronger motivator than anyone in the EE world could have imagined. Practically overnight, I had people who wouldn’t cross the street to save a spotted owl passionately involved in the GGI. Why? Because the crux of my program was simple: protecting children’s health through environmental protection. I made a conscious decision that our business was child advocacy, not environmentalism, and that human/child-centric emphasis has made all the difference in differentiating ourselves from our ‘competition.’ Even our logo sends this message loud and clear. As long as parents love their children, the message of the GGI will resonate.”
Guerrilla P.R. is designed to be done on the cheap, and Jill notes that her first Web site for GGI was built on her home computer, with help from her sister-in-law, for a hosting fee of $50. Again, she made sure the message was clear and the target audience was specific: “Every page had pictures of kids and parents. We emphasized diversity of ethnicity, age, and gender to ensure that every visitor to our Web site could see themselves and their children as part of our family of GGI schools.”
GGI then began identifying secondary audiences who could help in spreading the word. “The sub-targets were teachers, students, school administrators, municipal officials, public policy makers, and, finally, environmentalists,” Jill explains. “I thought of it like Coca-Cola; they sell the same product to every demographic, but their commercials on MTV are not the same as their commercials on HGTV or ESPN. Same product, but presented to different audiences in a way that respects their needs and tastes. I knew that I had to equip my primary target audience to answer those questions in their own communities, so I began speaking at PTA conventions all over the country, and ensuring that they could ‘sell’ the program to all the sub-target groups. And because a guerrilla leaves nothing to chance, we went a step further. I worked closely with a handful of schools, and developed carefully orchestrated success stories, and then made a promo DVD showing principals, teachers, parents (besides myself), superintendents, and mayors telling their enthusiastic stories and testimonials on the GGI. The DVD went out to PTA leaders in all 50 states. If any parent champions had difficulty selling the GGI to their principal, they popped in the nine-minute DVD and let the principal hear from his own linear counterpart how easy, fun, and rewarding it was to be a GGI school.”
Guerrilla P.R. is about finding ways to get your message out without spending money, so Jill took the concept a step further and helped generate publicity for the schools who used her program. “If they could generate publicity for their schools or their communities for GGI accomplishments, it would help them spread the program in their area more quickly. We put out sample press releases for our schools to use, and helped them develop relationships with their local media. And guess what…their publicity became OUR publicity. I’ll never forget receiving the front page of the newspaper in Agawam, Massachusetts, with our logo taking up one fourth of the page, and a front-page story about the schools all ‘going green.’ This began to happen all over the country, and before long national magazines and large papers were calling me, and running stories on the GGI.”
She found that much of her work was networking, something Jill is especially well equipped to do: she is very charming. “I worked very hard to develop a good rapport with members of the media,” she says. “If I traveled, I tried to meet with them when I was in town, take them to lunch, and always begin my conversation with ‘I saw the article you wrote on [fill in the recent date], and I thought you might be interested in how my organization is working on the same issue.’ I did my homework on individual reporters and made sure that my pitches were never generic. That made the conversations interesting to them AND to their audiences.”
Jill made a packet of press clips that began with a first article about GGI in a publication called U.S. Mayor, and she eventually spoke at a convention of mayors. “I made a copy of that article and sent it along with a cover letter and packet of information to a hundred mayors across the nation. I cannot tell you how many relationships developed from that mailing,” she says. “The same thing happened when the National School Boards Association endorsed the GGI and asked me to write an Op-Ed in their publication. I made copies and sent it out to the state school board associations in every state. Again, many good relationships and new client schools came from that endeavor.”
With judicious (and inspired) use of Guerrilla P.R. tactics, Jill Buck has taken a concept from her kitchen table and created an amazing environmental group that unites parents and schools in an effort to, as her slogan says, “prepare the future for our children.” It’s an admirable goal, created by a woman who knocks me out.
* * *
7
First Attack:
The Print Media
To a newspaperman, a human being is an item with the skin wrapped around it.
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—Fred Allen
Dealing with Newspapers
Picture the newsroom: a hangar-sized warehouse of cramped cubicles, clacking computer keyboards, ringing phones, and human bodies in perpetual motion, racing to meet unforgiving deadlines. Now picture the overworked reporter juggling three or four stories at a time. The phone rings. It’s you on the line, pitching your project to this harried, disinterested grouch. If you think taking your call is his idea of a good time, think again. But don’t let that stop you.
And that’s just the view of a newspaper newsroom. Consider the chaos that television news, even at the local level, entails. The same telephones and computer screens, but a constant deadline and a studio in one corner where all the lights and the cameras live. Bloggers and online reporters work at home, for the large part, although the bigger sites have offices and newsrooms, too. And everybody, at every moment of the day, has e-mail to read.
There’s a widespread notion out there, mostly fostered by journalists themselves, that reporters have no need for publicists. Don’t believe it. Reporters need sources. If you become a source for a story, then you’re what the reporter needs, and that puts you in a position of considerable power. How you exercise that power is what counts.
To score with newspaper reporters and editors, you have to comprehend their requirements. First, news value is central to their thinking. They aren’t interested in hype. Fluff is fine, but hype isn’t. Everything Paris Hilton generates in the press may strike you as hype, but because it’s her hype, it’s transformed into news. You aren’t yet in as fortunate a position.
As for whom to contact, there’s a wide array of job titles at a newspaper: executive editor, managing editor, city editor, ad infinitum. You’d be best served by trying to reach those on the front lines, such as section editors, features editors, and general or beat reporters. The higher-ups in management don’t have much to do with day-today reporting. Thankfully, newspaper writers and editors are far more accessible than their TV counterparts. If you call the switchboard and ask for someone by name, chances are good the very person you want will pick up the phone.
Bloggers and online reporters are best contacted via e-mail. There’s almost always a “contact us” link on the Web site, and indeed, many newspapers now include the reporter’s e-mail address in his or her byline or at the bottom of the article. Newspapers, especially, are feeling the pinch of the digital age and want to foster a close relationship with their readers. Take advantage of it. Newspaper reporters are eager to answer the phone, almost without regard to who’s calling.
That’s not always true, especially if you’re calling writers at major papers. Hurtling the heavily defended lines of voice mail alone is enough to put off many hardy souls. There’s no getting around the fact that large daily papers in the top fifteen markets, such as the Los Angeles Times or the New York Times, run differently than do smaller town papers like the Des Moines Register. But it’s only a matter of scale. The smaller papers are in many ways more effective. Although not as many people read them, they tend to have more impact in their given communities. Besides, they tend to have nearly as much access to news sources as their big brothers in the big cities.
Rebecca Coudret, a reporter for the Courier-Press in Evansville, Indiana, is quick to note that her paper is a link in the Scripps-Howard chain of more than three hundred newspapers across the country. Any story she writes goes out on their wire and has a potential reach of millions. So if you live in a small city and fret that your audience would be limited if you stayed parochial, relax. If your local paper hits your target audience, then that’s the paper you want to be in, and it may reach out farther than you guessed.
When you contact a newspaper, keep your news angle uppermost in mind. Most likely you’ve already sent a press release and/or press kit. So, once you’ve got a reporter on the phone, avoid the hard sell. Saying “You have to cover this” just won’t work. My reporter friends uniformly claim their disdain for pressure from outsiders. You must be willing to bend, even to the point of losing. Better to miss out this time and keep a friendly contact than to go for broke in an obnoxious manner and lose out permanently.
The same principle is true when applied to TV and radio: local stations will afford you more and easier access than network affiliates and huge cable stations. Local cable access is probably the easiest, because it has the lowest budget (so it can’t afford to hire a lot of reporters and relishes any local stories brought in by publicists) and lives and breathes local news, but it has the smallest audience. It is a concentrated audience that lives where you live, works where you work, and shares your interests. Remember that local news wants local stories, so play up that angle as much as you can.
Be friendly, but not gushy. Nobody likes to be sucked up to. Your manner should steer clear of the sickeningly familiar.
Know the reporter’s work. I say this over and over. You will genuinely flatter a writer if you indicate that you’re acquainted with his or her work. Don’t fake it. If you refer to a piece that ran a week ago, you’d better have read it. Aside from garnering goodwill, you can make more sensible suggestions about the nature of the reporter’s coverage of your project.
Be sensitive to deadlines. Most newspapers are dailies. That means that every day the Herculean challenge of putting out a newspaper is met by these individuals. Give them credit. Reality for newspaper writers is the deadline. Like an ever-moving wall of molten lava from a Hawaiian volcano, deadlines are unstoppable. So if you’re pitching an event, make sure you give the writer plenty of time to work with your request, and don’t call when he or she is under the gun. Morning papers have late-afternoon deadlines, so call in the late morning. Conversely, afternoon papers should be contacted in the late afternoon, after they’ve gone to print.
TV and radio news broadcasts have constant deadlines, but you should know the station’s schedule. If the news is broadcast at 5 PM, it’s a hideously bad idea to call at 4:45. Understand that reporters—even those who might be open to your story—have a job to do and a drop-dead moment when it must be done. You don’t want to be a distraction or, worse, an annoyance. It’s easy to give in to your impulse for immediacy, but take it from me: you want to wait until the reporter is open to your pitch.
Remember that many journalists have an inflated sense of self-importance. There’s a reason why so many people out there distrust the media. Many media people believe they’re on a mission from God, and they can be unbearably arrogant at times. You could be the next victim of a cynical writer spoiling for a fight. Counter with a professional attitude, quiet enthusiasm, relentless cordiality, and an ironclad pitch.
When it comes down to negotiating a story idea, there are several options to go after. They include
Feature. A full-length descriptive article on you, your project, or related topics. These tend to be the most beneficial to you because of their length, prominent placement in the paper, frequent use of photo illustration, and prestigious journalistic cachet.
Q&A. A simple question-and-answer interview. These can be reprinted in their entirety or condensed into much shorter pieces. Either way, they make for excellent coverage.
Round-up. When you or your project fit into the scope of a larger piece a writer is working on, a round-up story may be your best bet. Say you own a computer dating service. A writer may be working on a “Love and Speed Dating” think piece, and your insights may dovetail nicely. Take it if you can get it.
Column item. Some journalists write regular columns for the paper. Perhaps you can interest one of them in devoting one of their columns to you. These articles tend to be more emotional and subjective, which can be a real boon to you and your project. Other columnists report on upcoming community activities and events. You may benefit greatly from such a column mention. Usually local columnists focus on only local issues.
Calendar. This is nothing more than a line item notice in a calendar of events. But you’d be surprised how well read th
ese pages are. At the very least, make sure your event is listed.
It’s okay to suggest to the reporter what you feel might be best—it demonstrates that you’re a regular reader of the paper, especially if you can cite a recent piece that was similar. He or she may then direct you to another writer or editor. Make sure everyone you talk with has received or will receive press materials. Sometimes, reporters pass them on to editors, and vice versa. Determine that before you send along another e-mail or package.
What if your pitch works and the reporter wants to do an interview or story? Congratulations! But being on the receiving end of an interview requires preparation. The proper handling of interviews can make or break your Guerrilla P.R. campaign, so let’s lay some groundwork.
First of all, even though the reporter seems to hold all the cards (after all, he or she will ask the questions and write the story), you do have a considerable role in shaping the tone of the interview. The reporter may frame the questions, but you frame the answers. You’ll probably sense right away if the writer is sympathetic, bored, skeptical, or downright hostile.
No matter what, you need to concentrate on positive responses. Do not get defensive or evasive. Keep your language and decorum on a high level, because a reporter will pounce on anything he or she senses might be controversial.
Here’s a fictitious interview that shows how to gently deflect tough questioning:
Q:
“The Mid-Valley Youth Center seems to be a black hole for public and private funds. Why are you once again turning to the public to pump more money into a losing proposition?” (This question is hostile, full of loaded terminology like “black hole” and “losing proposition.” Reporters often goad subjects into giving more info than they intended to reveal, and this is one effective way of doing that. Don’t duck the question, but deflect hostility by absorbing it into your own agenda.)
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