The new season of AMC’s hit TV series Mad Men started off with a bang (pardon the pun), with a peek into the bedroom of creative director and new bachelor Don Draper.  It also revealed the tensions inherent in the pursuit of new business at fledgling ad agency Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.

I confess I’m a “Mad-dict,” in part because I’ve worked at a few advertising agencies in my career and many of the situations hit home for me. 

In my experience, some clients view advertising as the golden child and public relations as the bastard at the proverbial family reunion. PR can be an after-thought, while creative gets the lion’s share of the attention.  After all, how do you quantify something you can’t storyboard or plot into a media plan?

The season premiere of Mad Men, entitled “Public Relations,” opened with Don being interviewed by an Advertising Age reporter.  Don’s lackluster responses and subsequent dismissal of the interview as a waste of his time reminded me of a few clients’ view of doing media interviews.

When the article showcases Don in a less than favorable light, he’s called onto the carpet by his agency partner Roger Sterling:

Don:  He never asked me that. Did he check any of the facts?

Roger:  You didn’t give him any facts. He had to make some assumptions.

Don:  My job is to write ads, not go around talking about who I am.

Roger:  Who knows who you are? This was supposed to be an advertisement for the firm…this is a missed opportunity.

By the end of the episode, Don has an “aha” moment when he realizes the value of PR as a tool to tell the agency’s story the way he wants it to be told.  During his interview later on with the Wall Street Journal, it’s obvious Don’s in control.

Smart organizations (the Roger Sterlings) know the value of leveraging editorial coverage to their advantage.  For those that don’t (the Don Drapers), we’re here to tell them.

It’s the most basic rule of media relations: Nothing is off the record. Anyone who has prepared for a media interview –from a start-up entrepreneur to, well in this case, a five-star general — knows that any comment you make during an interview with a journalist is fair game. Why then would General McChrystal jeopardize his military career and his reputation by disparaging the President of the United States as well as other senior administration officials?

Before the article, “Runaway General” hit newsstands on Friday, June 25 General McChrystal had been summoned to Washington and relieved of his duties as the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Social media networks, including Twitter, and blogs around the world suddenly erupted with discussions about the remarks made by the general and fanned the flames. Accounts of the interview process suggest that General McChrystal and his team of advisors got too comfortable with the reporter and they simply let their guard down during a long delay while stranded in Paris following the volcanic eruption in Iceland. Regardless of the circumstances, General McChrystal’s team suffered a serious lack of judgment and set in motion a firestorm that will most likely end more than one career.

We prepare clients for media interviews almost daily. Whether preparing for a basic profile or a sensitive crisis, a core tenet of our counsel is to remember that nothing if off the record. In this case, General McChrystal was not a newcomer to media interviews. Given his past record of newsworthy remarks and blunders, additional preparation was clearly needed. Before the general returned to D.C. for his meeting at the White House, the press aide who arranged the interview with Rolling Stone resigned.

Although we are not always able to control the comments and statements made by individuals, this situation reinforces the need for those of us who prepare clients for interviews to reiterate the basic rules of media training. It never hurts to remind a client one more time that everything they say can be used by a journalist. One thing is certain: General McChrystal will be the example used in many media training sessions for years to come.

It’s that time of year again for pomp and circumstance, caps and gowns, and commencement speeches given by dignitaries.

It’s been widely reported that this year’s college graduates are entering one of the most difficult job markets in our country’s history - though things look marginally better for the class of 2010 compared with the class of 2009. The opportunities seem to be with mid-size companies. According to Michigan State University’s Collegiate Employment Research Institute, companies with fewer than 500 employees expect hiring at their companies to jump 15 percent this year. But it’s still far cry from the robust job market that existed when I began my career in the late 90s during the dot-com boom.

As it was in the late 90s, the communications field — and public relations in particular – continues to be popular among college graduates. I recently read a column in PR Week by Mary Lynn Carver, vice president of PR for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital that provides pointers for new grads and experienced practitioners looking to land a gig in PR. She offers the following guidance for job seekers: add calm to every situation, have a point of view and develop elephant skin. I would also add one rather simple piece of advice – READ.

My colleagues and I hear continuously from journalists who are aggravated with PR pros. Their number one complaint is we don’t know who we’re pitching and what they write about. Recent grads, and all PR pros for that matter, need to immerse themselves in multiple forms of media (magazines, online, TV, newspapers) to understand news value and how to write like a journalist. If your goal is to place a feature in Forbes magazine, then you should read every issue of the magazine, review its blogs and become a follower or fan on social media channels. Simply put, know the publication inside and out.

Just because we have the technology to make media relations more efficient doesn’t mean we can leapfrog the initial research required to effectively place stories. Resist the temptation to pull massive lists and send one email to numerous recipients using the bcc line. After all, the profession is called media relations.

One of our clients in the do-it-yourself business recently told us they’d been offered an opportunity to be featured on a “TLC show” about home design. The client outlined the package and asked us if we thought it was worth the “sponsorship fee.”

When a “media outlet” asks for more than a product contribution or an interview, we’re always skeptical. There are a number of pay-for-play production companies out there who produce programming that feeds out to networks and stations across the country. They guarantee a specific number of airings, but can’t guarantee where or when.

We’ve vetted these types of opportunities from a number of production companies as well as print publications. They usually call saying they’ve done extensive research and their editorial team selected the company after careful consideration. Typically, they have a B- or C-list celebrity as the host. It’s not until the end of the conversation that they reveal there’s a fee – to “cover production costs.” (The print outlets generally don’t ask for a fee, but they often demand a list of the company’s partners and suppliers. Then they hound those companies for advertising, i.e. “Company X, one of your biggest customers, is being featured in our magazine. It would be a good opportunity for you to show your gratitude by supporting the publication with advertising.”)

Another red flag:  These companies almost never call the client’s PR firm. Instead, they reach top executives directly to stroke their egos, hoping the person will feel honored to be selected and inclined to pay the fee for the exposure. When we call to get more information, they sometimes refuse to speak with us.

So just because a show like the one our client was considering gets picked up by TLC, it doesn’t mean your segment will air at a desirable time or at all.

When our client told us a producer from this particular show had called, the name sounded familiar. I recalled another client of ours participated in this show in the past without consulting us. I asked her to confirm my suspicion that the show was not much different than producing and distributing an infomercial.

The moral of the story:  If you’re not intimately familiar with how news stories are developed, you could be misled that these types of programs hold more PR value than they actually do. If you have a significant PR budget and are looking for video that tells your story (and some exposure you can try to merchandize to your key audiences), it may be worth your consideration. A video news release will accomplish the same goals with more credibility as they’re largely aired during newscasts.

Just remember that true third-party media coverage never requires you to cut a check to a production company. For example, the same client called on by the “TLC show” contributed product to a new HGTV-produced series called “Battle on the Block” in exchange for product exposure on air and as a sponsor. That was a real editorial opportunity we endorsed without reservation.

In journalism school, I was taught to never use words that are subjective in an editorial context. As a PR person, I often counsel clients that terms like “state-of-the-art” and “best-in-class” should generally be reserved for sales pitches. Sure, you can put those words and phrases in news releases. Best-case scenario is a journalist cuts them from the story. Worst (and more likely) case, they write your story off as puffery.

I was reminded of the importance of word choice this week when my journalist husband sent me this video, which pokes fun at the word “revolutionary” and PR people who take themselves too seriously.

There is definitely a place for superlatives in public relations – as there is for embargoed news releases and exclusives. And I do believe you often need to shout from the proverbial mountaintop to be heard. But if engaging with third-party influencers (i.e. journalists and bloggers) is part of your strategy, it’s critical to remember that they cover news.

While (I hope) this video is intended to be a parody, I am afraid it’s not too far from reality. Several years ago, in one week’s time, I had three clients in three different businesses tell me they’d come up with the same positioning statement: “We get the right information to the right people at the right time.”

A recent article in The Daily News calls the select journalists who attended Tiger Woods’ apology “stooges.” The reporter suggests their agreeing to attend a press briefing during which they’d be allowed to ask zero questions should have earned them “T-shirts reading: ‘2-19-10. I attended Tiger Woods’ Bootlicker’s Ball.’”

The article goes on to say, “There was a time when reporters would not genuflect, not bow down, not adhere to rules set by some celebrity-punk looking to control them. Nor would they listen to some shifty PR flacks or enabling agents, like the ones who look the other way as their married clients morph into womanizing, cheating creeps.”

In the spirit of full disclosure, I know personally one of the three reporters who agreed to attend the “Bootlicker’s Ball.” All journalists are in the business of breaking news. My colleague, who works at Bloomberg News, was the first to write about the apology with this article that scooped his biggest competitors.

Not only was he first with the story, but the piece led to his being interviewed by dozens of other media outlets, including CNN Headline News and Good Morning America. The coverage was great exposure for him and his employer. Plus, he didn’t simply publish Tiger’s statement. He found other people to fill in the gaps for the story he wrote after he attended the event. A stooge? Hardly.

Is the idea that someone in power put restrictions on the media really new? Sure, there are circumstances where reporters won’t acquiesce to the demands of their sources (e.g. they can get the info elsewhere or they know the source needs them more than they need the source). It’s impressive that the Golf Writers Association of America boycotted the event. But, in the era of citizen journalism, Tiger Woods would have found a way to get his story out even if the others had followed suit.

I appreciate the idealistic notion that media should be able to report a story the way they see fit. But I don’t subscribe to the idea that journalists are more easily influenced by people in power today than in the past.   

As the Federal Trade Commission drafts new rules on bloggers’ disclosure of sponsored content, BlogHer, the community of thousands of influential female bloggers, is in the midst of its fifth annual convention in Chicago.

We attended BlogHer in 2006 on behalf of our client WeightWatchers.com. The debate about the precarious relationship between trusted information sources and marketers with dollars aimed at garnering positive product reviews was percolating then and it’s raging now. (Incidentally, WeightWatchers.com was paying to attend the conference and exhibit, but they weren’t paying bloggers for posts.)

Days before this year’s conference kicked off, Elissa Camahort Page, the community’s co-founder, told AdAge that disclosure alone is insufficient. Her network is advocating that bloggers create a separate section of their blogs for reviews based on freebies, perks or outright compensation.

We’re members of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association and we’ve always been proponents of transparency. Camahort Page’s new proposal’s an interesting one. Ultimately though, which of the many proposals on the table is adopted doesn’t matter as much as continuing the lively dialogue. It’s important that there’s real forward movement on the establishment of best practices and policies – something both bloggers and marketers desperately need – especially since this world is evolving so quickly (next frontier: sponsored tweets).

Publishers, like mommy bloggers, have a right to monetize their work – how else will they survive and thrive? But they also need to retain their credibility and authenticity. We’re hopeful that as the industry moves towards consensus on these issues we’ll strike a satisfactory balance.

At the risk of seeming insensitive: Enough already with “changing media landscape.” Let’s not lose sight of the fact that there are some truths about journalism that will likely never change. The moving or still image, for example, continues to reign supreme when it comes to storytelling.

When I first entered the PR profession, I quickly learned how important it is to provide journalists with a series of photos or photo opportunities with an announcement. At the time, I represented The University of Maryland Medical Center and we were promoting “discovery” tours for aspiring medical students, which happened over the course of two weeks. The first week, we had zero media coverage. The next week, my boss suggested I add detailed descriptions of what the kids would see on campus. A heart that had a heart attack. A hyperbaric chamber where people were treated for flesh-eating bacteria. A lab filled with mosquitoes used to test anti-malaria drugs. Bingo. That week, the local ABC affiliate dedicated a two-minute health segment to the tour and the Associated Press sent a photographer whose pictures appeared in newspapers across the region.

Fast forward nearly 15 years and the only real differences today are the proliferation of media channels for the images and the growing acceptance of citizen photojournalists. Whether you’re pitching an idea to a traditional publication or to a blogger, well-shot photography and video are key elements to placing your story. And those same assets can also fuel the social media fire if they are interesting, relevant and easily accessible.

While this may seem intuitive, we continue to see instances where organizations don’t make the extra effort to provide quality photography or video for the media. In our experience, if your imagery doesn’t effectively tell your story, you are doing your PR effort a major disservice.

In our 24-7, constant communication society, we want real-time feedback and instant gratification. Sometimes though, what we want and what we get are two different things. Occasionally that’s not such a bad thing.

A recent client experience proved this point. Last fall we met with executives from Context-Based Research. We learned that the ethnographic research firm had partnered with its sister marketing communications agency, Carton Donofrio Partners, to conduct a study on consumer behavior during the economic crisis.

Excited about the scope of the research and its obvious news value, we told our client that we suspected the study results would yield substantial media coverage. We also speculated that the coverage would happen immediately, given the timely nature of the research. At least we were half right.

In December, when the results were ready, we issued a press release. The impending holiday season notwithstanding, we hoped the interesting findings would generate interview requests. But only one journalist bit. We were disappointed, but not deterred. We recognized that though the marketplace may not have yet been ready for analysis of the recent meltdown in December, that would probably not continue to be the case.

Over the next four months we issued four more communications, each focusing on different aspects of the study and targeting different groups of reporters (culture, economics, retail, and political journalists). Five communications about one study is a lot, but the research was compelling, broadly applicable, and, given the recession’s anticipated trajectory, it had continued news value.

In the end, our (and our client’s) patience and persistence bore fruit:

-Context executives were quoted in two New York Times articles in March. One article ran on the front page of the paper, the other was on the cover of the paper’s “Week in Review” section.

-The Baltimore Sun ran a feature in April. (The reporter told us she’d held onto our December press release.)

-The New York Post, the Omaha World Herald, and several other publications ran articles referencing the study and quoting executives from Context and Carton Donofrio Partners. The New York Post piece ran in December, while the Omaha World Herald didn’t hit until April.

-Money Magazine ran a substantial piece in its May issue quoting Dr. Blinkoff, Context’s founder, as did the Financial Times.

-A retail reporter at the Associated Press and a personal finance reporter at USA Today turned to Dr. Blinkoff as an expert source for pieces they were developing.

-An association interviewed Dr. Blinkoff for an article in their membership publication, then asked him to deliver the keynote at their upcoming conference in November.

-A literary agent called about turning the research into a book.

All in all, the coverage amounted to critical exposure and yielded new business leads for the firms. The lesson we learned: Though patience and persistence can feel outmoded in a Twitterized, hot-for-a-day news environment, sometimes it pays to take the slow road.

The endless string of newspaper collapses is threatening to throw me into a depression.

The Rocky Mountain News published its last issue two weeks ago. Both the San Francisco Chronicle and Seattle Post-Intelligencer may close. Earlier this winter the four parent companies of The Chicago Tribune, The LA Times, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Daily News and The New Haven Register said they’d be filing for bankruptcy.

As entrenched in new technologies as I am (social media is part of nearly every campaign we create, I’m facebook obsessed, and my iPhone’s become an appendage), I must confess: I’m a gal with a four paper-a-day habit. I love the physical experience of reading the newspapers – seeing the information laid out, sorting through sections. Clearly this proclivity may soon be nothing but nostalgia.

I’m an optimist though, and the reality is I’m much more concerned about the news itself than the paper it’s printed on, so Larry Kramer’s article in The Daily Beast intrigued me.

Kramer argues that the news industry – not the newspaper industry – is viable if the producers of news would listen to their customers and give them what they want.

“And guess what, they want news” – whether it be via “television, newspapers, BlackBerries, cellphones, magazines or web.”

Kramer sees a window of opportunity, “Consumers are just learning all the new ways they can get news and are still figuring out what works best for them. There is still time for those of us in the news industry to work with them and find out at the same time.”

This squares with what our clients at Context-Based Research Group found when they conducted an anthropological study of people’s news consumption habits on behalf of the Consumers are struggling with news fatigue. Interestingly, the research also revealed that they’re yearning for in-depth stories.

Kramer’s article which, interestingly, ultimately endorses a model that resembles a wire-service approach – divorcing news gatherers from news outlets – appealed to me because it takes an action-oriented tone and suggests there’s something that may be done before it’s too late. His call for newspapers to stop doing the Sisyphean task of selling something to people that they refuse to buy sounds right, even to this newspaper addict.

Regardless of what the new model is exactly, it’s clear that finding a new incarnation and proactively implementing it is imperative for us all – news consumers, producers, and communicators alike.