Last week Ciara Pressler had an entry on Fractured Atlas with tips about increasing your chances of getting press coverage. Her number one tip struck a chord with me.
The #1 way to maximize your chances for coverage? Trust your press reps to do their job. The time to hash out goals, strategy, and timeline is at the beginning of the promotional period, not on Draft 7 of the press release or in the middle of the night on email a week before opening.
The collaborative nature of the arts can work for us, but at times, against us. A creative environment inspires us to have ideas about more than just our own role, and some of the best results come from the synergy of a group. But the bottom line is that we all have a specific job to do,…
I have been in a position where others, whether they were actually in a position to direct my activities or not, micromanaged promotional efforts. Glad to have put those days long behind me. Now I get to micromanage and make people miserable! Seriously though, regardless of my position, I like to have a general plan in place well before an event is upon me and not make any major alterations. I am sure that is true for most people. You don’t want to be in a situation where you have to invest a large number of resources, be it financial or your own brain power and physical energy, to accommodate a drastic change of direction.
Some brief excerpts of other tips that I particularly liked:
Respond quickly.
As in minutes, not hours, and never days. Landing a placement can literally be a matter of being first to respond. …[…}
Be brief & buzzy.When a reporter asks you a question, whether by email, phone, or in person, it is not a cue to launch into your 20-minute (or even 5-minute) philosophy of the state of the arts in America….
Know what you’re there to promote.
If you’re being interviewed, stay focused on the topic of the article or segment….
Let the photographer do her job too.
It’s the publicist’s job to know which photos will work for a particular publication…
[One of my particular pet peeves. I have waged constant battles with people who are fine directing a show, but awful at getting people to look natural in a photo shoot and won’t cede control. -Joe]
Understand that media is a business.
A reporter is subject to an editor is subject to an editorial calendar is subject to the publication as a whole is subject to advertisers. If there are four major shows opening in a given weekend, there may not be room for a review of a new company’s first production. If an outlet’s primary audience is musical theatre lovers, they will likely pass on covering a Shakespeare play. Especially in the age of search engines, priority will be given to topics that will draw the most – or most desirable – audience to a publication.
I didn’t edit down this last one because this sort of response is common to those outside an arts organization as well as within. I got a call last week from a person telling me it wasn’t very helpful that they learn about the show from a feature story in the weekend entertainment section of the paper on the same day as the event. We had the event on websites, including those focused toward local families, newspaper and radio spots and had been listed in calendar sections repeatedly for a couple weeks. (Not to mention the brochure and email blasts we had been sending.) Fortunately, people who had been purchasing tickets identified each of those places as a source of information or I might despair at having paid for all that advertising. I explained to him that I had no control over what the newspaper printed and when. I noted that papers usually waited to print a story with big headlines and eye catching images until a time when the information was immediate and relevant because that is what people valued. I added that we were very pleased that they had chosen to cover our event amid all the rest of the things going on.