And, "Newsworthy" Means What?

An article I wrote for Inventor's Digest magazine. https://lnkd.in/d357bcD

Using PR as a marketing method for product launch requires an understanding of what is newsworthy, and what is not. 

No matter if you are an accomplished PhD or an enterprising young person starting out with a fantastic product, most people don’t understand this. Don’t fret.

Once I explain it, you’ll be able to pick up the phone to a reporter at the Wall Street Journal or Buzzfeed and have an actual conversation, instead of being blown off. 

Let’s start here: there’s nothing worse than calling a reporter and regaling them with a description of your product’s features and benefits, followed by “it’s so newsworthy!” 

Did they hang up on you?

Yeeeeeah (cringe).

A little background: You need to understand what editorial is, versus advertising, aka “buys.”

Editorial is unbiased. It’s the objective, earned opinion of a reporter or producer. This is the content between commercials on TV, articles on .coms that are interrupted by popups, ads on Instagram in the middle of your feed, the organic listings on Google under the ads on the top, magazine feature stories between ads – you get the idea. 

Advertising, which includes anything you pay for, including pay per click, influencers, banner, radio, TV, newspaper ads, endorsements (and many other methods), are biased, subjective, paid-for placements. 

I’ve heard others say that “PR is an island of objectivity in a sea of advertising prejudice.” Like my Labrador, I am food-driven and see it this way: editorial is the cream in the middle of the Oreo.

One is worth its weight in gold because it’s inexpensive to solicit and unbiased. The other can be worth its weight in gold, but usually costs as much as gold, too.  

What if you could get your product reported about in 34 media outlets, over a 6 month period and be exposed to 109M potential customers by paying a PR agency a $6,000 monthly retainer? Wouldn’t that be better than purchasing one ad for one month in Vogue magazine at the cost of $270,000? What about spending $36,000 versus $500 a day ($90,000) on GoogleAds? How about spending $36,000 instead of a spendy $5.6M Superbowl TV spot (which doesn’t even include the cost of producing something cool)? By the way, the first sentence is a real case study from our work for a luxury skincare line which resulted in a 8100% ROI. Had they bought advertising; it would have cost them $2.9M to get the exposure they received through PR. 

The secret of marketing is to target your customer and spread it out so they see / hear / experience it repeatedly. I call this the “Oh Yeah, I’ve Heard of that Response,” where humans only buy things they have heard of. Yes, we are sheep.

So, what is news? 

Anything that is new. 

This doesn’t mean your new jogging bra made of fabric that measures your heart rate is new. What I just listed there are features and benefits – the information you put on a package. 

What may be newsworthy about the bra is that it’s now possible to weave wearable technology into a fabric for the first time and your jogging bras are the first to use it. You might think about calling reporters during National Heart Month to make it more so. If you donated some of those bras to a women’s hospital who are recovering from heart attacks, that ups the newsworthiness. What if you could find a heart institute patient who used your bra and it saved her life when she had a relapse trying to jog too soon after her heart surgery? Now that is newsworthy!

It’s not about your bra --- it’s about all the trends, statistics and things already in the news that make your bra significant. 

See the difference?

The reason why reporters hang up on you, or don’t respond to email pitches is because they don’t want to yell at you. Enduring another product soliloquy makes them want to spit in your face like a llama. I’ll save you the embarrassment and tell you what they really want to say: “buy advertising, dummy, don’t waste my time telling me about your widget – because it’s not newsworthy.”

This being said, products have a special place in editorial and it’s usually in product roundups, reviews or gift guides. 

A product roundup is editorial that features all the newest accessories for your mobile, all red lipstick shades for Christmas or the best new electric vehicles to consider. 

A product review is a listing of all the newest laptops that have been tested at PC Magazine, Consumer Reporters, CNET or the like. The Good Housekeeping Institute may do a story about all the most waterproof mascaras or non-streaking window cleaners.

Gift guides happen all year long and are organized by a product genre that appeals to the reader / listener / seer of that media outlet. Holiday gift guides are the biggest, created for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, followed by Valentine’s Day, Moms/Dads Day and everything in between, from wedding, graduation to new baby gifts. They may be organized by “Gifts Under $10”, “Gifts for Pet Lovers”, “Gifts for Boyfriends” or “Sexy Gifts for the Guy You Want to be Your Boyfriend”.

So, all in all, get clear on this: anything that describes how your product works is a feature or benefit. Any trend, statistic, or something that’s hot in the news, which points back to the features and benefits of your products is newsworthy.

Got it? OK, go and conquer.