“What may be done at any time will be done at no time.” — Scottish Proverb

Okay, don’t ask what the Jewish grandmother from New York is doing with a Scottish proverb. My chief strategist found it for me, and it fit the tone of my message today.

In my time counseling clients, I have found that the two biggest obstacles to a good PR campaign are the two Ps: Procrastination and Perfection. Too many times, companies will procrastinate in getting their campaign started, and tag their campaign launch to something artificial like a product launch (which isn’t news, unless it’s the iPhone 4) or a new initiative. By and large, the media could care less. Your message, combined with something that is hot in the news cycle, is your hook, and if you’re doing it right, waiting is not an option. The second element, perfection, is something that drives many companies to delay their campaign. Executives will debate messages and news angles to the point of diminished return, and wind up unnecessarily delaying their PR campaigns.

My point is simply this: you need to start now. Not next week, not next month. Now.

After all, isn’t that when you want your potential customers to act? Many consumer businesses have taken to using the “right now” message in their advertising. A leading brake service provider uses the “now” message in their radio ads, stressing that waiting to take care of a potential brake problem could cause more costly damage to your car’s brake system. Empire, a leading manufacturer and provider of flooring and carpet solutions for consumers, has even changed the name of its company to Empire Today. Their point is that waiting for the “bargain” will cost their customers more money in the long run.

So, if you want your potential customers to act today, that’s exactly when you need to start your PR campaign. Getting ready to get ready never got anyone any additional business. What’s more, the dog days of summer will soon give way to the busy days of Q4, and if you want to have a chance at making an impression during the busiest time of the year, you HAVE to start now.

Here’s why:

The Holidays — Yes, I know that when it’s 90 degrees outside, it seems like a weird time to be thinking of the holiday season, but the media doesn’t think in those terms. Media folks like to take time off for the holidays as well, which means they have to start working on their holiday coverage early. Long lead publications are already working on their October and November issues, and if you want to be included, you need to start communicating with them now. Moreover, short leads start working on their holiday gift guides and reviews in August and September. If you have a consumer product or service that is compatible with the holiday season, this is when you need to start communicating with the media to promote it.

Authors — If your book is a fall release, you’ll be competing with a hundred thousand other authors for the attention of book buyers. If you want your book to rise like cream to the top, you need to make sure that as soon as your book becomes available, you will be on the air and in the news to talk about it. Furthermore, the holiday market beckons for you, as well. The summer reading season is over, so you need to focus on your book as a holiday gift.

Revenue — If you’re like most businesses, the year is going by faster than you’d like, and you are behind on your revenues – either falling short of your projections for 2010, or compared to how you did last year. Either way, the only way to increase the inflow of business is to increase the outflow of marketing. There is no better value in marketing than PR, so why let your campaign languish as your revenues stagnate? If you’re going to have any hope of picking up the pace, PR is your best friend.

At the end of the day, the old Scottish proverb rings true. If you’re comfortable putting off your PR campaign until tomorrow or next week or the week after, what guarantee do you have that you’ll ever launch it? Start today, right now, and you’ll be surprised how fast your campaign can be up and running.

In the past few months, I’ve covered a lot of ground with regard to how to do your own public relations campaign. I’ve explained how to make yourself or your company appealing to the media, how to write pitches and why articles work better than press releases.

But I haven’t yet explained some crucial elements with regard to orchestrating a PR campaign and more specifically with regard to landing TV appearances. Radio and print publicity definitely require attention to details – but the number of logistical issues you have to deal with for TV exposure is far greater.

So let’s discuss some of the elements for putting together a really good TV pitch that can result in valuable media opportunities for you.

The Producer Wants to Shoot “on Location”

It’s not unusual for a producer to be interested in your pitch, but want the interview to be done at a location that illustrates what the story is about. TV, after all, is a visual medium.

A great example that comes to mind is a client who is an expert on how to deal with foreclosure – a timely topic, unfortunately. He was traveling around the country to cities experiencing high percentages of foreclosures and in each city we obtained media coverage for him. But in Phoenix, Arizona, the producer didn’t want just a “talking head” interview. She agreed to do the interview only if it could be at a foreclosure property. And of course it was up to us to locate a suitable site, get permission to shoot the interview there, and ensure the TV crew had access when they arrived. After many, many phone calls to pull all of this together, the location was finalized, permission was obtained and the client’s TV interview was confirmed. In fact, it turned out to be one of the client’s best interviews.

So when planning your pitch for TV it’s a good idea to give some thought about where your story would best be told. You would be smart to research all the details about the location and offer an on-site segment as part of your pitch. For instance, if you are an expert on bridge safety you would want to pitch shows in those cities with older or problematic bridges, and suggest a location on or near the bridge to illustrate your message.

Visuals are a Must

If the three most important words in real estate are “location, location, location,” in television they are “visuals, visuals, visuals.” Even if it’s an in-studio segment, the producer will be more inclined to book you as a guest if you can provide visuals as part of your interview. It can be props that are part of your message, or even graphs to illustrate your message. Two examples come to mind where we had to do a lot of extra work to close the deal with the producer.

One example had to do with a producer for a national TV show who was very interested in a segment we were pitching related to “Adopt-A-Shelter-Dog Month.” But the producer only wanted our client if she could bring 10 to 15 shelter dogs with her. Talk about logistics! My staff called animal shelters all around NYC, New Jersey and Long Island and finally found one who wanted to work with us. The shelter agreed to find 10 shelter dogs that they knew were compatible with each other and wouldn’t fight on the set, bring them to the studio at the scheduled time, and provide pens for them to be contained in for the time they were there. In the process of our calling around, we also found a second shelter that brought a “pet-mobile” to the studio and parked it outside for the day. It was a huge amount of work for my team, but really paid off for the client. At the end of the segment the host invited people to come down to the studio and adopt a cat or dog on the spot. Many showed up and so it was a huge success for everyone!

Another example has to do with the many cookbook authors we’ve represented over the years. If you’ve written a cookbook and want to promote it, you’d best be ready to do some cooking on-air, particularly if the station has an in-studio kitchen. Be ready to prepare your signature dish or at the very least, to show all the ingredients, measured out, sliced and diced and ready to use, followed by the triumphant presentation of the completed masterpiece. You may even have to arrange for (and pay) a food “stylist” to create the sumptuous spread that the show’s producer may demand, particularly when dealing with the national shows.

That’s a Wrap

What I recommend is that you get creative…watch TV shows for ideas. Before you write your TV pitch, see the segment in your mind – think of what locations, props and actions would be the most interesting for the show’s audience.

What I can promise you is if your story is entertaining and makes for an interesting and informative segment, with clearly planned out details, TV producers will be far more likely to invite you to be a guest. Producers appreciate segments that are fully planned out and if you can’t deliver the goods, they won’t waste a minute before moving onto the next candidate that has his segment “packaged” and camera-ready!

Good luck, and have fun!

Over the years, I’ve always advised my clients that if you want to get in the news, you have to watch and read the news. I know it sounds a little like “bumper sticker” advice, but it’s really not meant as a sound bite. In fact, we use a practical application of that advice every single morning at our agency.

It’s actually a very simple list of easy steps that anyone can do, and it can get blockbuster results.

• Read the Feed (or watch the news) – A daily routine of following breaking news and popular stories is the first and most essential step in my formula for how you can get interviewed by the media. If you are Internet savvy and prefer to get your news digitally, tracking news trends will be a breeze. There are many online news outlets, such as Yahoo, MSN, CNN and AOL, that prominently feature on their sites the most searched and significant news events each day. There are also other online services, such as Google Alerts, Digg, and others, that allow users to stay on top of the hot topics. If your preference – like me – is to watch the news on TV and/or read daily newspapers, those are also effective methods for keeping up with the news cycles. Whether you prefer traditional or digital news, the key thing is to establish a news-tracking routine and stick to it. It will orient you as to which news topics are getting the most attention, and will be a strong predictor of which stories are most likely to have a longer cycle on TV news outlets.
• Identify a Hook – As you follow the news each day, think creatively about how your company or your expertise could be applied to comment on news events of the day. I’ll relate something that happened this past month, and how we applied it. We have a client who is a world-class financial advisor. He is a former Wall Street player who made himself very comfortable through that life, but felt another calling for himself. Now he works as a financial planner for families in trouble, and he’s extremely passionate about it. We were looking for news hooks other than the typical “Tips for the Rough Times” pitch that has been making the rounds since 2008. As we were doing that, it hit the wire that the IRS was going to be taxing the claims being collected from BP Oil by the workers displaced by the disaster. At the same time, we had just finished watching a clip of Anderson Cooper of CNN on the ground in Louisiana, covering the crisis. At that point, it rang like a bell – we’d send our client to the Gulf Coast to help those hardest hit by the disaster. So, in a matter of minutes, our team went from, “This is a great hook,” to implementation.
• Develop your Angle – Taking my client example from above, we developed an angle for him using the BP oil story as a launching pad. We emailed him to see if he had any specific tips for the Gulf Coasters, and he came through beautifully. We cobbled his tips into the pitch, and it flowed like this:
  
   

  A Guide for Gulf Coast Victims of the BP Oil Spill

  Financial Expert Offers Tips on Getting Through the Worst
  Gulf Coast workers displaced by the BP oil spill have had to deal with losing their jobs, losing their businesses and many are losing their homes. But there are ways that they can protect themselves right now from further damage. Money expert (name deleted, because we’re still pitching him and we don’t want to jinx anything!), has a slew of creative and practical tips for those affected by the disaster.

  He says that uncertainty on when the spill will be stopped leads to the uncertainty about long-term economic activity and its effects on employment, consumer spending and housing prices. So, he is advising people to do the following things:

  • Be Prepared. Prepare for the worst case scenario. Build up a cash position equal to 3-6 months living expenses. Keep a significant amount of cash in your house in case you may be forced to evacuate due to a storm or adverse environmental conditions. Keep enough gasoline on hand to be able to fill your vehicle.
  • Stock Up. Build up a supply of food and water in case a sudden evacuation is ordered or if city water sources are deemed undrinkable.
  • Get Trained. If your livelihood is based on fishing or tourism, consider getting training in industries not dependent on the fishing or hospitality industries. If worse case scenarios develop, jobs lost in these areas will not come back for many years.
  • Fill Out the Forms. Apply for all aid and compensation available from both BP and state and Federal government. If income has stopped or decreased significantly, apply for food stamps and other social assistance.
  • Watch the Real Estate Market. Be prepared for lower real estate values for some time to come. Even if the spill stopped tomorrow, the ecological effects will be felt for years. Gulf Coast real estate, both commercial and residential, is falling dramatically and will not rebound anytime soon.
  • Stay Well. Monitor your family’s health as there have been reports of mysterious sicknesses in Gulf residents and cleanup workers.
  • Read the News. Stay informed as best you can. In addition to traditional news sources, read blogs, where you may find reports that are not widely available to the public. BP and the federal government have not been fully forthcoming in informing the public of the extent of the disaster.

  Thanks for your consideration – let me know if you’re interested.

• Blast it Out – Once you’ve read the news, identified a hook and written up your angle, it is time to launch your effort. When you pitch something that is hot in the news, you also need to call producers individually to follow up, ensuring they received and read your email. Many national producers won’t take phone calls, so at the very least, send your emails with a return receipt so you can track that they opened it.

To follow through with the effort we began earlier this month, we have booked two national TV interviews and six local TV interviews across the Gulf Coast, with the campaign continuing all through the month. So the bottom line here is that by doing this daily exercise, you will enable yourself to take advantage of these kinds of headlines. And who knows? You might even be able to fold yourself into the national news cycle.