Guerrilla PR 2.0

by Michael Levine

  Photo duplication is another matter. If you want photos reproduced in bulk, it can be very expensive. One way to minimize costs is to get the photo right the first time. Professional photographers, however, charge an arm and a leg, so you may be better off taking your own. If you do, be sure to use a high-quality 35 mm single-lens reflex camera, or better, a high-quality digital camera that doesn’t require film and can reproduce sharp, clear images on your computer that you can then crop or enhance with a program like PhotoShop. Have a photo lab produce a proof sheet, rather than prints of everything on the roll. That way, you select the one or two pictures you want and make copies only of them. Of course, bulk copies bring the unit price down, but that can still be expensive. Work with smaller quantities at first until you need or can afford more photos. Or get yourself a photo-quality printer and some photo paper and do the whole thing yourself. But again, large quantities are going to be impractical to do at home. It’s better to send the photo, along with a press kit, via e-mail and let the media outlets reproduce it at no cost to you.

  Press kit covers can run you quite a bill, too. Instead of having them printed, run off a quantity of attractive 3 × 5 inch labels with your logo on them. These you can place on blank press kit covers, which you can buy at any stationery store. You can buy blank labels and print them out by the page on your home computer. This will create a final product just about as professional-looking as the real thing. But if you’re going to buy ready-made labels, be conservative in your initial quantities. The unit price is high, but it will still be far less than if you were to buy in bulk. You simply may not need large amounts in the early going, especially if your P.R. focus is primarily local.

  As for mailing, a stamp is a stamp. You will probably never generate the quantity of mail that may entitle you to a Postal Service discount. But you can still keep your expenses down with a degree of vigilance. Hand-deliver materials if the addressees are close by. Make sure your list doesn’t have any duplicate names or titles. For example, both the assignment editor and the planning desk coordinator at Channel 12 may not need to be on your list. And send as much information as you can by e-mail, which is, after all, as close to free as you can get (there is a monthly fee for Internet access, but you were going to pay that anyway).

  You should also avoid heavy packaging material like thickly padded envelopes or cardboard inserts to protect photos. Usually, mail is delivered in tip-top shape. These items only serve to drive up your costs (not to mention creating needless waste). Saving on phone costs is easy. For long distance, call before 7:00 AM, especially if you live in the western United States and you’re calling east. One trick you may try is to deliberately leave a message, making the other party call you back and pick up the tab, though you risk making the other party very sore unless they want you. But most long distance and local phone companies offer myriad savings plans, and some can prove economical to you. Call your phone company for details, but beware—some plans don’t amount to much.

  It’s also possible—and sometimes preferable—to use your cell phone as your primary phone. You can get a monthly plan with unlimited long distance calling to save money on individual calls, and those people who call you back are much more likely to find you immediately if the phone is clipped to your belt.

  If you get a G.P.R. campaign going full steam, people are going to want to talk with you and meet with you. That may mean travel to other cities to meet the media. Although some, especially the national shows, will pay your transportation, most do not. You’re on your own. However, you have to weigh the cost of a plane ticket against the potential gain. In the end, the extraordinary exposure you receive on a national TV appearance could more than pay for itself. Overall, as with anything in society, to do a P.R. campaign right involves expenditures. But unlike marketing or advertising, P.R. is dramatically inexpensive, and the return is potentially tremendous. You get most of the benefits of a well-planned ad campaign without the burdensome costs. So even though Guerrilla P.R. isn’t free, it’s darn close.

  The Art of Troubleshooting

  Don’t you just hate those Pollyanna types who always look on the bright side? Who whistle while they work, with a song in their heart? Who always think the sun’ll come up tomorrow? Well, sorry, but I’m one of those types. I am a natural-born optimist, which partly explains my obsession with opportunity. The problems we all face day to day are no less fraught with opportunity than the good things that come our way. It’s possible to make something positive out of the tough situations I described above.

  Look at losing political candidates. After investing so much of their money, prestige, time, energy, and personal life, they so often walk away with nothing but a massive campaign debt. Yet, so often I see them carrying on and smiling all the way. Sure, they hurt inside, but I suspect by and large they adopt an attitude of “Well, I gave it everything I have, and there’s nothing to hang my head about.” More likely, they’re saying, “I’ll get them next time.”

  I’m not saying you have to enjoy the hard times, but you can develop a new perspective on life’s challenges. In terms of Guerrilla P.R., it means seeing your efforts framed by a wider view. Your business, your project, your life and well-being, do not revolve around a guest shot on The View. P.R. is something you want, not necessarily something without which you die. It’s one of life’s great ironies: sometimes, the less you care to have something, the more you’re likely to achieve it. Go for everything you want with all your heart, but keep something in reserve just for you. If you win, great. If you lose—hey, it’s only a game.

  * * *

  GUERRILLA P.R. COMMANDO: Wayne Perryman

  Wayne Perryman, a former gang member, is an author, a labor relations executive, and one of his city’s most active community leaders. But his favorite endeavor is helping the disadvantaged African-American youth in his native Seattle. Among his notable achievements: the nationally lauded Role Models Unlimited, a program designed to provide positive adult male role models for kids, and the Harold Reynolds Children’s Foundation, run in tandem with the former Mariners second baseman.

  In fact, Wayne has so many projects going simultaneously it’s a wonder he has any time to breathe, let alone direct his own publicity campaigns. But from the very start of his community service work, Wayne has run his own P.R. show, learning as he went along exactly how to entice the media.

  “The media want something newsworthy,” he says. “Selling newspapers meant they had to have something unique in terms of public interest. No matter what I was doing, I tried to give it a new twist to make sure, from a journalistic standpoint, there would be some excitement in covering it.”

  That’s precisely what he did by publishing the nation’s first anti-drug storybook for young children, What Mary Found, as part of the Harold Reynolds Children’s Foundation. Wayne knew that Reynolds wanted to do something for kids, but he warned him against doing anything that had been done a hundred times before.

  “All it takes is thinking your project through,” says Perryman, “and presenting it in such a unique way, it touches the emotions.”

  That’s the key to any Perryman pitch: emotion. “When your project is devoid of emotional appeal, the chances of selling it are almost nil,” he notes. “If you reach the heart, you generally will get the response you want.”

  To get there, however, requires a solid foundation, as Perryman well knows. “Anyone doing their own P.R. should take a community college course in creative writing and/or public speaking,” says Wayne. “Monitor news anchors and journalists. Watch Good Morning America. Guests on these have only seconds to make their points. The question is, when the lights hit you, can you tell your story? You have only one chance, and you’d better be prepared.” Given Wayne Perryman’s sterling reputation in the Northwest, he considers his good name a priceless possession. “You use P.R. to build on your credibility,” he says. “The collective press you receive over time helps you sell your projects. Even if you sometimes
end up with bad press, they can’t damage you if you have a good reputation preceding you.”

  Though his Role Models project has received network attention, Wayne continues to focus his energies on a local basis. That’s just fine with him; making a difference in Seattle has always been Wayne Perryman’s main mission, and fortunately for him, it’s a mission accomplished.

  * * *

  11

  Intelligence Gathering:

  Planning Your Next Step

  One man that has a mind and knows it can beat ten men who haven’t and don’t.

  —George Bernard Shaw

  How’m I Doing?

  Assessing the success of your Guerrilla P.R. campaign can be simple. If your project is a church carnival, and, come event day, it’s packed to the rafters, then you did your job well. But if your project involves longer-range goals that aren’t so easy to measure, like increasing community awareness of a public policy issue, or getting a new storefront business off to a good start, then you have to read different tea leaves to know how well you’re doing.

  One of the truisms of a well-mounted professional public relations campaign is its pervasiveness. When a big star has a new summer movie coming out, or a top author hits the talk-show circuit to push a new book, the cumulative publicity effect hits like a hurricane. You’ll see that person’s face everywhere you look, on magazine covers and round-the-clock TV interviews, even if the movie’s a turkey or the book’s a loser.

  The well-connected P.R. pros wield enormous clout, and many face a good deal of criticism, some justifiable, with naysayers decrying the outsized demands of a select group of top Hollywood publicists. That certainly isn’t the case with Guerrilla P.R. While the pros may brew hurricanes, you’re looking to create a stiff breeze. You’ll still make the trees bend, but not snap.

  To calculate the effectiveness of your Guerrilla P.R. campaign, take stock of the following:

  Are sales up?

  Is attendance increasing?

  Are the phones ringing more?

  Have you had more hits on your Web site? (You can add a counter to your home page for free, if you don’t have one already.)

  Have people commented on seeing your project mentioned in the media?

  Do you notice an increase in donations?

  Are calls being returned more than before?

  Are people treating you differently? (You know how awe-struck folks get when encountering anyone deified by media celebrity.)

  These sorts of things can be explained by forces other than a P.R. campaign, such as ancillary marketing efforts, word of mouth, or seasonal timing. So to pinpoint the impact of your Guerrilla P.R. campaign, you have to conduct some kind of survey. Either by verbal inquiry or written form, poll your customers and find out what drew them to your project. If they read about it in the paper, get specific. Which articles did they read? What impressed them about it? Some small business owners regularly hand out to their customers little cards with specific questions about how they first heard of the store and other similar points of inquiry. I urge you to do the same.

  The best and simplest way to honestly assess your progress and performance is to play schoolteacher. You should literally give yourself letter grades in various categories. The categories should include specific P.R. objectives (i.e., the local daily paper, the morning talk radio show), success in reaching target audience, ability to define your own message (as opposed to having the media inaccurately shape the definition), and diversity of media (i.e., did you get no TV or radio? Were you featured in the trade press when you were also going for the consumer press?).

  Here’s what each grade should mean:

  A. All your objectives were met. The coverage you received was extensive, the spin given your project was positive, and response from your target audience met or exceeded expectations. Pat yourself on the back—but only for a moment, because success is a short-term affair unless you keep on top of it.

  B. You got most of what you wanted. Response was generally favorable, but perhaps one or two important goals were not met. Perhaps you felt your own performance was not as dynamic as you would have liked. Reexamine your plan, take note of what went right, and emphasize those aspects in the next leg of the campaign.

  C. There was some press coverage on your project, though not enough of it was positive or prominent. Perhaps you achieved some of your target media coverage, but it turned out to be the wrong choice, and goals for your project were unmet because of errors in judgment. You need to begin the formulation process again, exploring new angles, new pitches, and new avenues for publicity.

  D. Nothing went right. Despite your best efforts, you received little or no press, or bad press, or nobody showed up or cared. It’s time to start from scratch, developing your interpersonal skills and rethinking your strategy for media. All is not lost, but you have your work cut out for you.

  F. Forget about it. You have to either change careers, hire someone like me, or join a Tibetan religious order.

  Take a look at your grades, and see where you flourished and where you floundered. This will give you an instant picture of where you need to improve and where your strengths lie. Also look beyond the grades themselves, and analyze your data in terms of the quantity and quality of coverage. We professionals do this all the time in refining our techniques for the next campaign. Assuming that you too will want to take your P.R. efforts to the next level, assessing your P.R. data is crucial.

  As carefully as we may try to select our targets, often we take shots in the dark. P.R. reminds me of the old “linguini on the wall” routine. “How do you know if the linguini is done? Throw it on the wall. If it sticks, it’s done.” You may try many different Guerrilla P.R. techniques to publicize your project, but whatever sticks is what works, and vice versa. If your data show that more people responded to your appearance on a local radio call-in show than to a guest shot on the local morning show on Channel 6, that tells you where some of your personal strengths lie, as well as which media respond best to your project.

  Once you isolate your successful media efforts, retrace your steps. Go over your tracking from the campaign, examining your pitch style, responses, and reactions. Do this not only with your successes but also with your failures, to determine why some aspects of your campaign didn’t work. I see nothing wrong with recontacting media people with whom you had success and debriefing them on what it was about you and your campaign that worked for them. You can use this information for future appeals. Next go-around, you may return to the well, appealing again to publications and broadcasts that covered you previously. Or you may wish to retackle those outlets that said “no” early on. Both strategies have merit, but be aware: many media will not touch a story a second time, especially if it’s within a year of the first article or segment. But this is not the eleventh commandment, and if you can continually come up with fresh new project hooks, there’s no reason why you cannot sustain an ongoing media presence.

  In addition, thanks to your successes, when you return to the naysayers to pitch again, you will now have evidence to show just how media-worthy you are. You will have gained newfound credibility that keeps building as you go. That’s the beauty of publicity.

  You’re the same worthwhile and deserving person you always were, but now the media have knighted you thus, which makes it really true.

  Time to Trade Up

  So—you’ve surveyed your customers, collected data, pinpointed the media sources of your P.R. success, reexamined your success with those outlets, and sketched a second-tier plan. Most likely you can proceed upward on your own, following essentially the same path you took before. You should be better at writing, phoning, and interviewing than you were the first time; your increased confidence should mushroom into bigger and better results.

  Managing an ongoing campaign is different from launching one. You may not always have a splashy announcement or a magnet event to draw attention. But you should maintain regular contact with med
ia to keep your profile high. Once you have your links at the outlets, regularly send them releases. I don’t mean every day, and I don’t mean to announce that your Doberman had his tonsils out. But if you hire a new employee, begin distributing an interesting product, or move to a new building, then let the media know about it. You may not get coverage, but the constancy of regular mailings keeps you in their faces, and they’ll definitely remember you.

  If you were lucky enough to cultivate friendships with any media people during your initial campaign, now is the time to cement them. Do lunch, do dinner, take time to fraternize. It doesn’t guarantee a story next time you need one, but it does guarantee a fair hearing, which is not something everyone gets from the media.

  This is the time to solidify a perception of yourself as an expert in your field. If you own a downtown fish market, you must be the one the local newspaper calls when it’s doing a story on fish. How do you do this? Careful cultivation of your prior media success. This is where reprints of clips can be most valuable. You should be sending out mailings to your list, even if you have no immediate news angle. If you keep the editors informed of your standing as an “expert,” I promise you they will eventually come to believe it too.

  Also, make sure you’re listed in the Yearbook of Experts, Authorities & Spokespersons (or Expertclick.com), the bible of talent bookers on radio and TV. It may cost a thousand bucks to run your ad, but it will be seen by influential media personnel. And see to it the media are part of any consumer marketing effort you undertake; that is, keep them fully informed. Again, even if they do no reporting this time, they will remember who you are the next time you need them.

  What if your reach exceeds your grasp? What if you set your sights on loftier P.R. goals? Can you pull it off on your own, or is it time to trade up? If you’re willing to relinquish a measure of control to establish a long-term, high-publicity profile, if you find your ability to make contacts has hit a ceiling, and if you’ve got the bucks, you may wish to consider hiring a pro.