The Cheat Code

by Brian Wong

  When you talk about how good your company is, it’s known as bragging. When a journalist talks about how good your company is, it’s known as objective journalism, otherwise known as the truth ;). Kiip is known as a media darling, and the press we’ve received has been immensely valuable to us. It’s put us in the hearts and minds of our clients, our investors, our peers, the public, and other media people.

  We could not possibly have reached the level that we have without press coverage. If you’re also an entrepreneur, or want to be, it’s doubtful that your business and your brand—even if your brand is just you—can get where you want to go without the help of media.

  And did I forget to mention that it’s free—and worth far more than any expensive ad campaign?

  The best thing about media is that it’s the gift that keeps on giving. Once you get one person to tell your story, it tends to trigger a ripple effect, with one news outlet following the lead of another. I’m sure that in school your teachers taught you not to copy off someone else’s paper. In journalism school, they teach you how to copy off someone else’s paper—with just enough dressing to make it seem new.

  I learned about the value of media relations at one of my earliest jobs, at 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, where my job was to make something as boring as junk removal into a palatable story. It taught me the art of angles, finding creative junk-related hooks I could use to pitch stories, whether it was Earth Day, the newest waste-removal laws, or the war that was being launched against the newly recognized problem of hoarding.

  Then I moved to the Net-centered news aggregator Digg, which was the perfect place to learn how to interact with reporters. My job there started with trying to get reporters and news publication operations staff to integrate the Digg button into their websites, and telling them how they could make their content more Digg-able. Then I went straight to the heart of media relations: getting Digg into the news.

  It was fun, with only one significant sacrifice: paying bar tabs before I was legally allowed to drink. Ironic, yes—but worth it to make friends with the cream of tech journalism.

  Legal drinking age or not, I ended up spending time—a lot of time—in bars with a lot of reporters, talking about how great Digg was. Naturally, once they got some alcohol in them, I became much easier to tolerate. After a few drinks, I was actually perceived as cool—and after even a few more drinks, they accepted me into their tribe.

  But kiip this in mind: while I am a salesman and proud of it, I’m not a manipulator or a bullshitter. If I can find a logical, true reason why people should buy what I’m selling, I milk it. But if I can’t find a reason, I won’t try to sell it to them. This philosophy extends to media as well. If I don’t have a good story to pitch you, I won’t come to you with garbage. I’m in business for the long haul, and when it comes to the long game, reputation is the most valuable asset I have.

  Over time, I became good friends with a lot of reporters. Contrary to how they’re often portrayed in the movies, they’re actually not coldhearted opportunists (though the cinematic portrayal of their drinking habits, I learned, is generally true). They’re in business for the long haul too, and they don’t burn sources or make up shit just to get a headline. With few exceptions, they’re serious, stand-up people.

  So I treat them with respect, and I value their opinions, because they talk to everybody and know all kinds of things I don’t. Sometimes it’s like I’m interviewing them rather than vice versa. It’s part of an organic exchange of information. It’s also flattering to them. Part of the theater of journalism is that reporters are expected to constantly defer to their sources—as if the source is the oracle and the reporter is just the humble servant of the public, who’s there to take notes. Reporters get tired of subsuming their own egos (which can be sizable, since they’re people who chose a profession that’s based on getting attention), so when you put them in the spotlight for a few minutes, they tend to love it. Just as with a lot of people who work behind the scenes, any show of respect is welcome.

  I collected a lot of phone numbers working at Digg, and later Kiip, and did a lot of texting—most of it really casual. I just wanted journalists to know who I was, and that I enjoyed their contact. They moved around a lot in their careers—more than journalists did in the past, because journalism is still in a state of flux—but I stayed in touch with all of them and ended up building a number of really tight connections that have resulted in dozens of favorable stories that helped me gain amazing awareness for both my personal brand and my business.

  The bottom line: You cannot take a start-up from zero to prosperity without knowing exactly how to optimize media relations.

  Media is so important that I’ve got several more cheats on it. If you want to know all the stuff that took me all those expensive bar tabs to figure out, kiip reading!

  As I showed in the last cheat, you can stack the cards of media coverage in your favor if you start by making friends with journalists, or at least building relationships built on mutual trust and respect.

  But don’t expect these relationships to lead to automatic puff pieces on you or your company. That’s not how the game is played. Reporters can’t get away with writing gratuitous bullshit, and you shouldn’t even want them to. Even if you do manage to convince someone to publish a love letter to your company, it will smell like bullshit to the reader. Audiences now are savvy, even to the level of cynicism. They’ve seen it all, and they don’t want to see it again.

  Knowing a journalist doesn’t guarantee you automatic press coverage. It just gives you one less hoop of credibility to jump through in order to get it.

  You can also help your chances by giving those reporters what they need to make headlines. Don’t forget that whether the medium is print or online, at the end of the day what journalists are after are eyeballs—so the more you can give those reporters stories that will grab people’s attention, the better off you are. How do you do this? Be bold. Be very bold.

  Boldness is the veritable watchword of The Cheat Code. Burn this quote into your brain: “Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.” That quote is often attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe—from 250 years ago—and it’s like he was thinking of me when he wrote it. Be bold in your pitches to the media because that’s the place to shout your glory to the rooftops. The least opportune time to be a shrinking violet is with the media. Journalists want to write about the companies that don’t need attention, because they’re already hot—and these companies tend to reject media to avoid overexposure. So the more you can provide those journalists with bold, fresh, valuable content that will help them earn those reader eyeballs, the more likely you are to get coverage. Another mini cheat is to let them know that you’re giving them the scoop first—we all like to be the first person to know something, but reporters even more so, since they make their living that way.

  That’s ass-backward, but hey, so is much in business.

  If the only thing you can give reporters is something that’s self-serving, they’ll tell you to buy an ad. Writers are smart people who’ve been played before, and if you don’t deliver something that really is new or has some other good hook, you’re dead meat.

  So here’s your homework: Think of a hook for your business, or for the business you’d like to start. You surely must have something unique, or you wouldn’t be in that business or contemplating it. If it’s unique, it’s new—and that’s all you need.

  When you look for your hook, suspend your normal thought processes and don’t think like you. Think like the writer you’re giving it to. Put yourself in the writer’s shoes. That’s harder than it sounds, because the writer won’t be thinking like the writer either. The writer will be thinking like the reader. So just think like the writer who is thinking like the reader…and it’s a snap.

  Your hook is probably hidden in plain sight. If you don’t see it, you may just be too close to the whole thing and can’t see the forest for the trees. Step back. Look again.

/>   It’s probably so simple you can say it in ten words. In fact, it needs to be simple. The world already has enough complexity. I can say mine in five: I sell advertising people like.

  —

  One final mini cheat: Crafting a hook is an art, so it’s not a bad idea to hire a publicist. They’re the true artists of communication, because they know how people think on all three sides of the triangle: They know how to think like you, they know how to think like the guy writing about you, and they know how to think like the reading public.

  Once you’ve become friends—or at least drinking buddies—with some journalists and figured out a hook to whet their appetites, now it’s time to go fishing!

  The most dependable media bait of all is news so new it hasn’t even happened: an announcement. Better yet, a pending announcement.

  Here’s what you do: You drop a hint to some reporters that you’ve got something huge coming up. You don’t hand them the whole thing; just provide enough detail to get them hooked.

  You need to be especially careful to not say too much. You’ll get much more value letting it play out over time. Also, the more information you give them, the more they have to find fault with (the media can find fault with anything; it’s part of their job) and shoot down.

  You really are doing your reporter friends a favor when you give them a sneak peek before their competition gets hold of it. Remember, writers and reporters (and especially business writers, who don’t always have a steady stream of breaking news coming in) need scoops: “You heard it here first!” So if you imply that you’ll give them something hot before anyone else hears about it, you’ve got not only their attention but also their sincere appreciation.

  Do they know you’re using them? Absolutely. Is that fine with them? Abso-fucking-lutely. Why wouldn’t it be? It’s a win-win situation.

  When you first dangle the bait, do it in a low-key way. A quick text—something like, “Hey, we’ve got a cool new product launch coming up, I’d love to let u in on it”—is good, especially since you’ve probably already been texting them about other stuff, such as “Nice story yesterday” (if you aren’t doing this, you should be).

  If they call you or email you about it, make sure they know they’re high on your list of initial contacts. Theirs doesn’t have to be the only name on your list, especially if those names work in different venues: a newspaper, a magazine, a blog, a news site, a radio outlet, a TV network. If you’re leaking a big announcement, you want to make sure you have someone from each of these media covered. And they’ll expect you to.

  When you’ve got a few people stirred up, toss out your bait as an email. It should offer just the bare-bones gist of it. For example: “I’ve got a new app for real estate professionals,” or “I’ve got something that Airbnb will never see coming.” When I first launched Kiip, it was “I’ve got a new form of advertising that’s not intrusive that people actually want.” More recently it was “We’re about ready to enter into a major deal with MasterCard.”

  The way to position it is like this: “This email is kind of a heads-up that something big is happening, and I want to hop on the phone to share more color.” I love the phrase “share more color” because it’s vague enough to pique their curiosity and promises enough to give them a reasonable excuse to spend time with you on the phone.

  You want to milk the story as much as possible; stretch it out over multiple emails to build suspense. If the emails are short, they might reply with something like, “I need more details,” so you tell them you’ll hop on the phone with them.

  With any luck, the reporter will print or post something like tech media whale Michael Arrington did in TechCrunch when I told him about the birth of Kiip shortly before it happened. He wrote, “Wong may be the youngest entrepreneur to raise venture capital—Mark Zuckerberg was just 20 when he raised early money for Facebook….We’ve got our crack team of research interns looking into exactly who holds the record as the youngest entrepreneur to have raised a proper venture round. Kiip.me is still a few months away from launching. Stay tuned.”

  In just a few paragraphs—which didn’t mention anything other than an impending announcement—Arrington made my life a whole lot better than it had been the day before. All this was even before we announced that Kiip was in business. And when we did, guess who was one of the first reporters to get that scoop?

  I did the same basic thing much more recently, when Kiip made a huge deal with MasterCard. Want to hear about it?

  Stay tuned.

  The smartest person in the room is usually the person who says, “You guys are all so smart.”

  The smartest people surround themselves with other smart people.

  You probably work with and socialize with intelligent people. There are plenty of people in the world who don’t have much imagination or wit, but if you’re reading this book, you probably don’t deal with too many of them in your business or social life. After all, the smartest people surround themselves with other smart people—and I know you are one of them.

  But smart people don’t tell other people that they’re smart just to kiss their ass. They do it to get through to them. It’s one of the best ways to get someone who’s intelligent on your wavelength.

  Unfortunately, many people expend energy trying to prove to others how smart they themselves are. But that usually backfires, because it makes whatever you say look like a cry for respect or approval, which is just another form of being needy. People, especially in business, don’t want to fulfill your needs—they want you to fulfill theirs.

  I often run into people who are obsessed with telling me all about their brilliant technology—not just what it does but the back end, how it’s made. They’re obviously smart enough to create something, but I already knew that when I started talking to them. So even when their technology is ridiculously amazing, if it’s hard for me or some other non-engineer to understand, it’s not worth explaining. We’ll just end up feeling stupid, which is the opposite of what you want.

  Making people feel smart is one element of how Apple launches new products, like their new Apple Watch. On their product’s new site, they put a lot of effort into showing beautifully produced videos of the Apple Watch’s raw materials—mostly the metals: aluminum, gold, and stainless steel. The videos are about two minutes long, and tell you a bit about the science that went into the metals that compose the Apple Watch. The videos are interesting and informative, without talking down to people. Now, most people aren’t metallurgists, or even remotely versed in how to create different alloys. But the fact that you can kind of understand it makes you feel like: “Wow, they put so much effort into the freaking metal that I’m buying this! It’s way worth all this money!”

  The point is that Apple invariably breaks down complex ideas in a comprehensible way that makes the audience feel smarter. Apple’s site says, for example, that the Apple Watch “keeps time within 50 milliseconds of the definitive global time standard.” There’s not a word in that claim that you don’t understand, so even though you may not really know what the “definitive global time standard” is, you kind of, sort of feel like you do. You know what “definitive” means, and you know what “global,” “time,” and “standard” mean. So just put them together, right?

  I was spending time with my head of engineering recently and we were breaking down all the products that Kiip has. I started talking about one of the things a product can do, and he’s like: “That’s not actually what it does.” But what it really did do was super-close to what I was saying, so I go, “Yeah, but that’s the thing that people will grab on to, and listen to, and understand. And that understanding will make them feel smart.”

  When you use a term like “machine learning,” for example, people know the meanings of “machine” and “learning,” so it sounds smart to them, and they feel like they’re smart just to understand it. It doesn’t matter that machine learning doesn’t actually involve a machine that can learn. It’s actuall
y just a series of formulas that inform your calculations. But describing it as “machine learning” makes it sound so addictingly smart.

  Everybody in the world wants to be smart. People open up to you when they think you recognize and respect their intelligence. If you try too hard by making things complicated—or, worse, by talking down to someone—you’ll fail. But if you give people just enough information to feel like they understand something complicated or hard, they’ll almost instantly be on your team. You agree with that, don’t you? You must. You’re so smart.

  If you’re in the business world, one thing is inevitable: you’re going to encounter a lot of bullshit. When people start beating around the bush—giving you the vague “context,” offering unconvincing “illustrations,” and burying you in all kinds of meaningless “important details”—you’ve got to wonder: Do they have a point?

  After all, if they had a good point, why wouldn’t they just get to it? If it’s such a good point, why does it need so much window dressing?

  If you hear someone saying “Long story short…,” it’s not short enough. You should live by that maxim as well. Leave the verbiage, redundancy, and time-wasting to the bureaucrats, the idiots, and the insecure.

  The reduction of ideas to their ultimate core is a great bullshit-meter. Simplicity reveals, while complexity conceals.

  That’s true about everything from products to philosophies. Winston Churchill, who won a Nobel Prize for literature, said, “The short words are the best, and the old words when short are the best of all.”

  One of the best things about Kiip is that I can explain the whole concept in about a sentence: “With Kiip, advertisers reward people with free things during moments of achievement on apps and games.”