Even if you have an amazing company, a wonderful story to tell and artful messages and soundbites to tell it, you need more to get any decent reporter to write about you. You need third party validation – customer references, independent data, industry and financial analyst opinions, pundits saying supportive things, etc. Why? Because corporate spokespersons have not always been perfectly credible. Reporters are wary.
The public relations firm Edelman conducts its global Trust Barometer study every year. Here’s their top line message for 2018. “The Trust Barometer reveals a world of seemingly stagnant distrust.” Oh dear. People’s trust in business, government, NGOs and media has not increased. In fact, in the U.S. there was an aggregate 37 point drop in trust across all institutions. (Gee. I wonder why?? Just kidding. But this is not a political blog, so we’re not going there.)
If you’d like to have a powerful reporter write a glowing story about your company you need to build a strong case that proves the assertions you are making. Do you want the reporter to say that you’re radically improving your customers’ businesses? Your customers have to say that to the reporter directly. If you can’t get any customers to validate your claim you may make your company look worse, so my advice is don’t even pitch the story until you have a bunch of glowing customer references lined up. If you are a consumer company point to tons of frothy happy reviews on social channels. If you don’t have any, get some.
Do you want the reporter to say that buying patterns are changing because you disrupted a whole industry? Get an analyst or an academic expert to show data that proves your claim. Do you want the reporter to say that your innovation is an amazing first? Get a well-known industry pundit to say that. Saying that yourself is like saying you’re the most charming and good looking person you know.
Cultivating strong relationships with third party validators is a big part of your job as an executive. Your PR team cannot create that network on its own. But when you build it together, you can get great results!
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