This Week in PR Takes - Week 40

Take of the Week:
Anyone who has read this newsletter this year knows that Carly is cited often, in part because she has such great takes. However her latest take on spokespeople warrants a Take of the Week.

We have all been there….a journalist wants to talk to an expert, only the CEO is approved to talk to the media and yet that CEO is jammed for the next two weeks. The result - we lose the opp and credibility with the reporter.

Carly dives into how to fix this problem (which I recommend reading), but I also wanted to add in my two cents. Of course the CEO should be media trained, but the CEO should not be expected to talk to every detail of the company’s doings. A company of any size should have a spokesperson bench and general narrative lanes for spokesperson to “own” when an opportunity comes up.

Case in point, at the car shopping company I used to work at we would often have our industry analyst front and center for the more mainstream business and consumer press (think USA Today, Forbes, NPR). Why? Because he was close to the data that spoke to the trends impacting car shoppers like prices for pick up trucks have increased and there is low inventory for used Teslas. However, we would use the CEO when it came to talking about our business to publications like Automotive News and CNBC because they were more interested in company performance.

Granted, we had more spokespeople for more lanes, but this is an example of how you can create those lanes, take the onus completely off of one spokesperson and create a more comprehensive spokesperson bench.

Resource of the Week
For those of us at an agency, there is nothing more soul crushing that losing a client pitch. Rachel Huff is holding a webinar next week about the patterns she’s seeing for agencies to get invited to a pitch, get hired and more importantly what’s turning clients off; details are here

A Special Note:
For those of us in B2B tech PR, we have all likely interacted or pitched Tom Krazit over the years. Whether at GigaOm, Protocol or his must-read newsletter Runtime. Please make sure you read his “Update on Runtime” post and if possible become a paid supporter to keep it going.

A message from Reportable:
Not only is Reportable a great resource to send LLM-friendly press releases with an amazing value, their Reportabot is an equally amazing tool to use the power of AI when creating a press release. You just Reportabot what the news is, who is quoted and a few details and you get back a near-ready release to issue.

It’s free to use, and of course you can then use Reportable to send out the release:) If you want to learn more or have questions, schedule a 15 minute call with Reportable’s Karen Reynolds using this link.

The Rest of the Takes:
PR Misc.
- We have all been there, we work tirelessly on a campaign/project/announcement/other only to have it go unnoticed. Alysha summed it up nicely, “what’s the most above and beyond thing you’ve ever done in the line of duty that didn’t get acknowledged?” and then talked about how she had to do a client’s makeup (certainly not my strong suit).
- Of course story matters, but Colleen dives into why audience is even more important in today’s media landscape.
- Why the CCO also has to be the Chief Truth Teller to the CEO, according to Stephanie. 
- Even if we all scream PR is essential, it should be positioned as a growth lever - per Danny.
- Gabie wished she knew this one thing in 2015, and now she’s become a bona fide customer service rep.

That’s it for this week’s takes, thanks for reading.

-Brian
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bkramer/