If I could guarantee you the opportunity to pitch your best story idea in person to writers from BusinessWeek, ComputerWorld, Investor's Business Daily, and the Chicago Sun-Times, would you be able to take advantage of the opportunity?
Would your pitch be strong enough to convince these reporters to write about your company?
Last month, I had the chance to witness this phenomenon.
BusinessWire's Ken Bouton asked me to moderate a panel discussion featuring writers from those very publications.
The audience consisted of PR and marketing types from dozens of area technology companies. Each person had the opportunity to stand up and deliver their best story pitch to the panel.
In almost every case, their pitches focused on technology, rather than a compelling business issue.
The panelists critiqued the pitches and offered suggestions for improving them.
If you weren't able to attend, Ken Krause will give you a behind-the-scenes look in his article, "Lost in Translation."
About the time I was moderating the BusinessWire panel, the Red Sox were fighting for their collective lives in their playoff series versus the New York Yankees. I was elated to watch Boston win the series after being down three games to none and then crush the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series. So much for curses. So much for excuses, too.
Now that the Red Sox are the champions of the baseball world, I wonder what their victory means to Billy Beane, GM of the Oakland Athletics. Beane was the subject of a best-selling book called Moneyball. The premise of the book is that most teams overpay for talent by focusing on selfish statistics like runs batted in and batting average rather than team-oriented stats like on-base percentage.
While I agree with Billy Beane's emphasis on looking at the numbers behind the players, I wonder what kind of team he would have created had he accepted the GM position with the Red Sox a few years ago. While the Red Sox spent millions to win their championship, the Oakland A's continue to do things on the cheap and continue to come up short.
Can Beane's performance metrics be applied to the field of marketing and public relations? We take a look at that subject in this issue of the newsletter.
Last month I wrote about XM Satellite Radio. Two weeks later, I had one installed in my T-Bird. You know what? XM is amazing. For the first time in years, I'm actually hearing new music that simply isn't played anywhere else. When I attended a KingsX concert the other night, one of the warm-up bands was bragging that their new single already was a hit on XM Radio -- that's a first for me.
While XM provides 100 channels of music, news, sports and comedy, the unit also streams stock quotes and the names of the bands and titles of songs being played. As all this information flashes before you, I wonder how often people are keeping their eyes on the road while they're driving.
Finally, as we head into the final lap of 2004, it's time to start planning for next year. Personally, this has been a very rewarding year for Tech Image. We won a number of industry awards for our work, moved into great new offices and are enjoying the second best year in our 11-year history.
Since you're probably mired in the budget process right now, I have a free PR budget planning tool that might help you. Send me an email if you'd like to receive a copy. The first five people who respond will be entered into a drawing to receive a free competitive PR analysis of your program versus two of your competitors. This competitive analysis will help you look "beyond the numbers" to create a benchmark for measuring the impact of your public relations program.
It's the kind of statistical analysis that would make Billy Beane proud.
That's my two-cents' worth.
