Greentarget

Blog

by

We now interrupt your relentless COVID-19 coverage to bring you this analysis of the public relations efforts around Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s split from the British royal family.

Through the wedding drama, pregnancy announcements, family feuds, celebrity intervention, paparazzi madness, and now, the exit, we have meticulously followed their public relations strategy. Meghan Markle and Prince Harry have not just severed ties with Windsor Palace, they’ve rejected the monarchy’s historically conservative PR strategy.

We took a break from pretending not to care about Meghan and Harry to take a look at their PR moves through a Greentarget lens. We found a few hits and some misses for the young couple:

PR Blunders

Choosing authority over authenticity: This month Harry and Meghan shared a lengthy letter declaring that they would no longer work with four major British tabloids. This isn’t the first time the couple has tried to control the tabloid narrative this way. In January, Harry and Meghan announced their desire to choose their own press pool, excluding certain media outlets – including those same UK tabloids – from official engagements. The move was perceived as retaliation for negative coverage of Meghan, rather than an effort to support “credible” outlets. What could have been an opportunity to shake up the traditional royal rota system to incorporate social media, new journalists and other trusted media organizations, backfired and became a war on the press.

No defined strategy: Harry and Meghan communicated their messaging seemingly without input from the royal family, resulting in contradicting messages. In fact, in an attempt to beat the news cycle and a potential leak, Harry and Meghan rushed out their messaging on their own channels. This resulted in a back and forth release of statements and misinformation from media outlets that was public and messy. Even if you think the couple was right to get their message out, perhaps they needed a better strategy from the outset.

Unclear objectives: Harry and Meghan claimed their exit was in search of a simpler life out of the spotlight and away from the paparazzi. But a month into their royal-less life, they were house hunting in Los Angeles – another paparazzi hub – and are set to speak at high-profile conferences. While too early to tell, it seems the new life they are chasing closely resembles the royal life they left behind. At least, it wouldn’t fit under most people’s definition of a simpler life. Assuming their plan wasn’t to simply move to a different spotlight, the couple’s objectives didn’t correspond with their actions.

PR Triumphs

New media channels: Harry and Meghan effectively broke the mold with their personal Instagram account and website to communicate directly with their audience – something unheard of by royal family terms. This was a smart move, one that was particularly crucial in communicating their exit. It was best exemplified by complete transparency with their follows on the spring transition with a FAQ sheet released in February, and accounted via Instagram Stories, a relatively new channel.

Designate a spokesperson: While there isn’t much alignment between the royal family and Harry and Meghan, the couple made a smart decision to make Harry designated spokesperson while Meghan has stayed fairly off the radar. He has communicated their plans, the reasoning behind those plans, and personal experiences that have impacted his decision to abandon his title. Harry, amid a lot of criticism, has demonstrated a strong, unified message and avoided further miscommunications from too many voices chiming in on the same matters.

Humanizing yourself: More so than other members of the royal family, Harry has opened up about his personal experiences. In October, he made a rare statement in a lawsuit against British tabloids comparing the treatment of Meghan in the press to his late mother’s. And following the birth of the couple’s son last May, Harry and Meghan deviated from the usual royal protocol and waited days to release formal photos and speak with the press, a move that many could relate to.

Now that the breakup is official – and now that they’re in the limelight of Hollywood – Harry and Meghan will likely have a host of new PR opportunities and challenges. Will they learn from their mistakes while building on the smart moves they’ve made? Only time will tell.

by

The COVID-19 pandemic looks like a blessing and a curse for journalism.

As Donna Gordon Blankinship news and politics editor at Crosscut, a regional publication serving the Pacific Northwest, eloquently noted, “ The public seems to have an almost desperate need for information, guidance and clarity. Journalism has become essential again.”

But while journalism has never been more important, the media business has rarely been so unstable, as publishers begin to feel the impact of an economy on lockdown.

The Good:

  • Readers Can’t Get Enough News: The unprecedented nature of this pandemic has inspired consumers to lean on the media during this time of crisis. Pew Research Center confirmed, “around six-in-ten U.S. adults (57%) say they are following the news about the virus very closely, and an additional 35% are following it fairly closely, according to the survey of 11,537 adults who are members of the Center’s American Trends Panel.”
  • Traffic Is Up: According to data from Parse.ly, a company that measures content performance for more than 3,000 high-traffic news sites, readers’ hunger for coronavirus coverage has driven record-breaking page views for several prominent news sites. The Atlantic confirmed multiple days of historic traffic, and significant subscription growth, particularly since covering the coronavirus.
  • COVID-19 News Output Reaches Great Heights: The number of articles generated on COVID-19 has also exploded. According to Cision’s Global Insights team, which tracks COVID-19 media in real time, 39,596,388 total news articles have been written globally about the virus since January 1. In addition, according to social media monitoring and analytics platform Talkwalker, as of April 17, there had been 11.1 million mentions of COVID-19 on social media, blogs, news websites and forums. And that was just in the previous 24 hours!
  • Cable News Riding High: We aren’t just reading the news. “As millions of Americans are in self-quarantine and practicing social distancing, a huge boost in television ratings, including cable news networks that have been providing roughly 24-hour coronavirus coverage,” Fox News reports.

The Bad:

The economic fallout from COVID-19 has, however, been devastating for the media business.

  • Reporter Layoffs Prevalent: The New York Times reports that about 28,000 journalists have been laid off, furloughed or taken pay cuts as a result of the economic downturn.
  • Alt Weeklies Face Uncertainty: As reported by The Daily Beast, “The pandemic has gutted revenue for alt weeklies, causing mass layoffs and threatening their existence.” The Associated Press also recently wrote an extensive piece on how “local newspapers are facing their own coronavirus crisis.”
  • Popularity of News Podcasts Declines: According to NiemanLab, people staying at home all the time is harming podcasts. U.S. weekly podcast download growth was:  -3% the week of April 6-12, -1% the week of March 30 – April 5, -4% the week of March 23-29, -2% the week of March 16-22, and -1% during the week of March 9-15, across all Podtrac measured podcasts. 

The Future:

  • Ad Revenue Dying: The COVID-19 crisis will force media outlets to make crucial decisions, much sooner than they expected, because of their heavy reliance on ad revenues. Twenty global news publishers recently surveyed by the International News Media Association expect a median 23% decline in 2020 ad sales as a result of coronavirus fallout.
  • Non-Profit Models: A Lifeline? Elizbeth Green, a founder of the nonprofit education news organization Chalkbeat and co-founder of non-profit organization, the American Journalism Project, an organization that supports social entrepreneurs in building sustainable nonprofit news organizations where they live, recently told the New York Times that her non-profit organization might offer a good solution. “The time is now to make a painful but necessary shift: Abandon most for-profit local newspapers, whose business model no longer works, and move as fast as possible to a national network of nimble new online newsrooms. That way, we can rescue the only thing worth saving about America’s gutted, largely mismanaged local newspaper companies — the journalists,” she said.
  • Facebook Offers Support: While Facebook made a commitment in January of 2019 to invest $300 million in local news programs, partnerships and content over the next three years; the company recently announced an additional $100 million investment to support the news industry during the COVID-19 crisis—$25 million in emergency grant funding for local news through the Facebook Journalism Project, and $75 million in additional marketing spend to move money to news organizations around the world.
  • The CARES Act Could Help: NiemanLab recently reported that media companies with fewer than 1,000 employees will turn to the $300-billion-plus allocation for the Small Business Administration for support. It’s to be determined however whether it will be the lifeline they need to stay afloat.

As news organizations across the country adapt to these new challenges and opportunities, we will continue to carefully monitor and report on the resulting data and trends. We believe the principles of journalism play a critical role in driving a smarter conversation and that true authorities have a responsibility to participate skillfully in the ongoing conversation. We know that earning opportunities to express a point of view through traditional media is an effective way for professional services firms to move audiences through the sales funnel, despite the uncertainty facing media outlets today.  

What is certain from our standpoint is that in an era of smaller staffs and a 24-hour news cycle, at Greentarget we will strive to continue be empathetic to reporters. We know reporters are in dire need of authorities with perspectives that serve the rapidly evolving needs of the audiences they serve as this pandemic continues to evolve. We will continue to deliver.

Return to COVID-19 Resources for Communicators

by

Leading through uncertainty demands different roles at different times

The term “thought leader” was halfway out the door before the pandemic. So devalued had it become that it was difficult to refer to someone as such without a whiff of irony.

But now, as companies big and small grapple with what to do and how to do it in the midst of a crisis of, literally, epidemic proportions, something is becoming crystal clear:: people need leaders who lead people not thoughts.

Building on conversations that began well before WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic, we’ve spent the last few weeks dialoguing with executives, thinking through challenges they are facing as they attempt to marshal their teams through what is shaping up to be one of the most arduous experiences many have faced as business leaders.

“This is perhaps the most challenging business role I have had in my lifetime,” says Lori Perella Krebs, Principal at  Ancora Investment Holdings.

“I was CEO of another company based in New York when 9/11 happened and this crisis is different.  September 11 was undoubtedly a catastrophic event and scarred many New Yorkers emotionally but we united within our industry and started rebuilding soon afterward.”

Uniting, albeit virtually, isn’t the problem now—it’s attempting to rebuild what previously existed under a “shelter in place” order during a pandemic with a recession in the offing that’s costing leaders the most sleep. 

Another problem:: no one really knows what is expected of a business leader in a calamity of this scale or complexity because those who were in charge during the last pandemic—the Spanish Influenza of 1918-1920—have long since passed.

Through formal and informal conversations, we’ve discovered that a leader must play not one but several different roles in a leadership position, if they want to inspire lieutenants to do their best work.

Individual leadership styles, as identified by Daniel Goleman, (coercive, authoritative, affiliative, etc), will certainly influence how one wears these hats; but the hats must be worn, and at different moments, to lead teams “in a calm and honest manner,” as Krebs says, through times of great uncertainty.

  • The Social Worker:: When the crisis hit, it was hard not to react in a very human way to very human concerns that were suddenly front and center. This requires patience, compassion, and plenty of empathy. As Francis of Assisi’s famous prayer goes, a leader must seek not so much to be consoled as to console. Successful crisis leaders don’t complain to their lieutenants that their feet hurt; they allow their lieutenants to complain to them about aching feet. Once the pain is acknowledged—human to human—those lieutenants will be ready to do the job. 
  • The Improvisor:: As Kelly Leonard, executive director of Learning and Applied Improvisation at Second City Works, wrote recently, “We are all working script-less. So we need to mine the toolkit of an improviser. We need to say ’yes, and’ rather than ’no’ or ’yes, but’ as a way to create an abundance of ideas and options.”  In other words, play the moment—or “scene”—that we’re in right now, not the one we wish we were in. It requires embracing the craziness and the messiness coming every which way, and thinking fast to, as Tim Gunn would say, “make it work” for you and your team.

  • The Convener:: Organizing lieutenants around the same table at the same time; having a clear agenda when you get them there; and creating the space to have courageous conversations, hard conversations.

  • The Facilitator:: Not only must a crisis leader convene, said leader must be prepared and equipped to drive those hard conversations, knowing in advance the questions to ask of those whose counsel he or she seeks; and of those who are seeking it. Also, great crisis leaders already know what they think; they’ve been training for such a moment all of their professional lives. Having the right questions is far more important than having the fast answers.
  • The Interpreter:: There’s an old joke that made the rounds during the late Cold War years:: The Russians and the Americans don’t have any issues; the problem is that interpreters hate one another. A crisis leader is sense-making on the fly, clarifying in real time to make sure other leaders aren’t talking past one another. The messages shared are in fact messages heard. 

  • The Decision Maker:: The best decision makers know when the decision is working; and when it isn’t. As everything is in flux, the crisis leader is always prepared to rewrite the script as the last thing one wants to do is lead a team on the dread march of folly, toward a goal that is no longer relevant or plausible. 

  • The Advocate:: If you’ve hired properly, and trust those hiring decisions, then your team is the team that can win in good times…and bad. Conversely, senior leaders must know that you stand with them and for them. For this to work, you must shake off old norms that may be too restrictive and move toward a culture where lieutenants have the agency and autonomy to do what needs to be done, without seeking [repeated] direction from the crisis leader on how to solve problems they are expected to solve on their own.

  • The Innovator:: There’s a time for rewriting the old script in a fine fury of desperation, which many leaders are tasked with in the opening stages of a crisis as they scramble to adjust to new conditions and constraints, putting on hat after hat. Then there’s a time for tearing up the script, and creating a new one in an equally fine fury of innovation. Every crisis leader knows, generally, what innovation means; but the truly successful ones know what it actually is:: the systematic identification and disruption of norms that have a bearhug on just about every aspect of any business that involves people. If a leader doesn’t know their norms—how to spot them, how to dismantle them—the leader doesn’t know innovation:: How to use it and where; and how to drive it within an organization that is in the fight of its life.

Wearing each of these hats, playing the related role and, most important, knowing when to play them is one of the fundamentals of succeeding as a leader in a crisis, one who is playing the long game. 

And playing to win.

Howell J. Malham Jr. is founder and president of GreenHouse::Innovation, Greentarget’s strategic partner. He is the author of “I Have A Strategy (No You Don’t):: The Illustrated Guide to Strategy.”

Reprinted with permission from “The Eight Hats of Crisis Leadership,” by Howell J. Malham Jr., copyright 2020 by Howell J. Malham Jr.

Return to COVID-19 Resources for Communicators

by

Amid this unprecedented crisis, reporters crave access and new stories to tell. Individuals — patients, healthcare workers, nonprofit leaders, small business owners or any number of people in need — have the stories those reporters are looking for. Yet many think connecting with reporters is some mystical process that only people “in the know” can master.

We’re providing some resources for nonprofits and others who want to get their COVID-19 story heard — but may not know where to start. Below you will find our video presentation around the media relations process to help you and/or your organization:

  • Find the right reporters to reach out to — and write pitches that get their attention
  • Create compelling op-eds, blog posts and other content
  • Design social campaigns that gather and build momentum
COVID-19 Webinar PresentationDownload

We have also put together a convenient one-sheet to pass around to your teams:

How to Share Your COVID-19 Story with the Media Download

Any questions? Feel free to email Joe Eichner, leader of Greentarget’s Community Investment initiative, at jeichner@greentarget.com.

Return to COVID-19 Resources for Communicators

by

Podcast listenership, at least for now, is another victim of the coronavirus pandemic. But a time will come when daily commutes are once again prime time for podcasts – and smart organizations can use the current moment to strengthen their audio storytelling efforts.

In fact, some difficulties imposed on the working world by COVID-19 provide opportunities for organizations to shine (or, at least, regroup) when it comes to podcasting. Here’s a quick list of our recommendations.

Effectively Plan Content Around the Story of the Moment

For podcasts that have been around for a while, now is the time to look back through the archives and resurface episodes that might be particularly resonant amid the pandemic – perhaps about topics like telemedicine or the consolidation of rural hospitals. It’s a good idea to do a bit of recasting or updating to explain the rerelease, but that can be done without changing much of the original content.

Other pieces of audio content produced by your organization, notably webinars about COVID-19, might work for your podcast series. Under normal circumstances, audio quality could make that a nonstarter. But given the need to get compelling information to key audiences, an edited version of a webinar might work well, or well enough.

In fact, audio that’s a little rougher around the edges than normal might be appropriate right now, and to a point, listeners will understand.

Be Willing to Reconsider Format – at Least Temporarily

Given how quickly things are moving amid COVID-19, throwing out your podcast rulebook might make sense – at least to a point. For instance, series typically try to produce episodes of similar lengths, often around the time of the average American commute (25 minutes). But, as noted, fewer listeners are commuting, so consider shorter episodes to keep up with breaking news and points of view..

And while multitasking is common for podcast listening, it likely is even more so now, particularly for busy working parents. That means techniques that we always advise for hosts – flagging key points, summarizing when appropriate – are more helpful. Releasing full transcripts of episodes, which is always a good idea, could help listeners catch up on their favorite podcasts in front of their laptops instead of on the train.

The Benefits of (Effective) Remote Recording

If you’re a regular podcast listener, you know that recordings are often conducted with participants in multiple locations. But it probably happens more than you realize. Smart podcast producers combine high-end software, insightful guidance for participants and professional editors to create episodes that are near studio quality – even when the studio is a web browser.

In addition to the best practices listed above, in our experience we’ve found preparation is key – making sure hosts and guests know what they need (a quiet room, a strong internet connection, etc.) well before the “tape” starts rolling.

And who knows? Maybe guests who were pipedreams six weeks ago can be convinced to record a quick interview now that they’re stuck at home. Certainly, booking podcast guests has become generally easier, and with much of the world getting a crash course in communicating over Zoom or Teams, it’s hard to imagine that anyone would find the requirements of a remote podcast recording daunting.

Time to Regroup?

Finally, with listenership down, now might be the time for a series to regroup and plan for calmer days, especially for series with niche focuses that have nothing or little to do with COVID-19. That process starts by looking at downloads and other analytics to assess content focuses and distribution strategies. Other feedback, like reviews on iTunes, might be extremely valuable.

Podcasts have steadily grown in popularity for years, and they were especially impactful for busy decision-makers. That can still be the case amid COVID-19 – and it will definitely be the case when some semblance of normalcy returns.

Make good use of this current pause and your audience will come back even hungrier for your perspectives and guidance.

Return to COVID-19 Resources for Communicators

by

To rise above the noise, just be quiet.

We’re all inundated with screaming headlines, relentless statistics and endless so-called thought leadership. Most of it, particularly the thought leadership, is shoved in our faces with little thought for what we need to know, what’s worrying us, or what questions we wish someone would answer.

Outside of global pandemics, we like to say that true thought leadership, the kind of content that builds authority, has four attributes: relevance, urgency, novelty and utility. But at this point we’ll assume that anything you’re publishing related to COVID-19 is relevant (the crisis effects everybody) and urgent (it’s a crisis). The insights that will rise above the noise during the crisis are the ones that are new and useful. 

Learning From Crises Past

To a degree it’s always been that way. I was a college reporter in the days and weeks after 9/11, and an editor around the 2008 financial crisis, and I still remember the urgency we all felt to go find novel stories our readers needed to hear.

Of course, we were always looking for those stories. And on an intellectual level we understood that our reporting and editorial judgment mattered. But in the wake of global calamity, with lives and livelihoods in the balance, that understanding became visceral. You could feel the weight of the crisis in the almost-desperate search for stories that nobody else had told, in the ferocity of the conversations about what our readers needed to know.  

And the only way to get at those new and useful stories was to go talk to people. And more importantly, to listen.

How to Listen Today

There are a bunch of different ways to listen, and now is a good time to employ them all. The first, most obvious and most literal is calling clients, prospects and others who’re in the audience you want to reach and just asking them what’s keeping them up at night, what questions they’re asking, what problems have them perplexed.

My guess is most practitioners are already doing that. We recently worked with an attorney to publish a smart perspective on the coming battles between businesses and their insurance companies – an article she could only write because she’d been listening to her clients.

But as valuable as that kind of listening can be, we have to tread carefully as well. We risk producing insights that are too narrow – the last person you talked to doesn’t necessarily have the same problems and questions as their peers the world over.

So it also makes sense to listen in the aggregate, using data tools to see what your audiences want to know. SEO data can help you home in on utility by telling you what questions the audience is asking. Media-research tools can show you what’s already been said, so you know where the novelty lies.

If you don’t have the tools, or don’t know how to use them, a simple Google search on the topic you want to write about can tell you how much has already been said, who’s said it and how well. If the first page of search results reveals a litany of others saying what you wanted to say, your choices are either to advance the conversation or move on and start a different one.

In the first few weeks of the COVID-19 crisis (which already feels like nine months ago), it may have made sense to just run and gun with your content, to get the insights flowing quickly, knowing your clients and prospects were desperate for information.

Now that just about everybody has done that, the flow of insights has turned into a raging, deafening river of noise. The worst thing any of us can in our communications is add to that noise.

But if we can just be still for a few moments and listen to the people we’re trying to reach, we can find out what information they need, what would help them get through this. If we can provide it, they’ll have no trouble hearing us above the noise.

Return to COVID-19 Resources for Communicators
Close
Close