The Wax Blog

People don’t realize that the Average Joe or Josephine has a decent chance of being featured on The Martha Stewart Show.  Although it’s usually famous chefs or celebrities, producers at the show sometimes like to find guests that are relevant, interesting, articulate and perhaps just aren’t quite famous yet. So it’s a great venue if you have a special talent for crafts, food, pets or any kind of homemaking topic. Here’s how to pitch the show: (more…)

I once got a celeb to wear my client’s bunny slippers on the red carpet at the Academy Awards. How did I do that?

Photo from fOTOGLIF

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Because I’ve worked with a pretty wide range of celebrities – from Ralph Nader to Bode Miller -people sometimes call to find out how much it would cost for a celebrity to attend their event, endorse their product or contribute to their non-profit cause.   No matter HOW GREAT your product is, or how important your cause, stars generally don’t do anything for free unless its for their own foundation (or for George Clooney). The good news is that almost any celebrity can  be booked if you have enough money. Here are a few tips for figuring out how to find someone, how much they cost and what the process might be like.

First, find out who reps the star. The easiest way is to buy a subscription to Who Represents an online listing of virtually every celebrity’s agent, publicist and manager.  Although some people like to go through managers first, I always call the agent. Agents are usually straightforward, no BS types who will give you prices and explain the ins and outs of back-end deals and endorsements. (more…)

We’ve had some juicy celebrity crisis’ lately that make writing this post lots of fun. When your company, product or personal brand encounters a crisis it’s important to decide what ‘voice’ you’re going to use.  Choosing the right approach is one of the reasons little-known (but uber-powerful) flacks like Marty Chalmers and Eliot Mintz make the heavy wood.  Let’s take a look at some of the characteristics of voices being used most recently – as well as a few thrown in from the past.

Above It – How can I write this post without addressing Tiger Woods’ current situation? As I write this, he has refused to meet with the police and has posted a note on his website thanking his well- wishers and telling everyone the rumors are all lies and he wants to keep this ‘private’. First of all, not cooperating with the police right away sends the message that the guy has something to hide. Second, he doesn’t tell us what happened. Apparently we aren’t privileged enough to hear the real story. How would we feel if Oprah showed up 50 pounds thinner and refused to tell us how she did it? This voice implies arrogance and an attitude that Tiger’s above it all. Not a good move for America’s favorite sports hero and NEVER a good move if the law is involved. (more…)

NOT Lance's assets

Once you start dabbling in the world of PR you hear the question “what’s the back story” quite a bit. In fiction the back story is the character’s history – it’s key to how much we identify and care about that person.

For news stories, and particularly for talk shows and feature ‘packages’ the back story is often more important than the actual product or service. Lance Armstrong is perhaps the best example of a great back story. Before he battled cancer, Lance was just another racer in a sport Americans cared little about. After winning his battle with cancer and subsequently becoming the Tour de France champion umpteen times we cared a great deal (as did the sponsors.) It’s the classic story of winning against all odds. We love it!

I had a client once that developed a beautiful card game based on the idea of teaching kids how and why to do random acts of kindness. Very nice product, but the reason behind that product was compelling.  This woman had experienced the loss of a baby and was devastated. She finally was able to overcome her depression by practicing random acts of kindness.  When she recovered she felt so strongly  she created a way for others to learn about the powerful benefits of practicing random acts of kindness. Although sad, it’s an inspirational story, one that Montel Williams picked up on right away. Although she was hesitant to use it, people totally connected with her story.

It’s so important to put forth your STORY…editors and producers get tons of pitches on products and books and services all day long. If they fit into another story they’re developing you might get lucky. If you can create your own back story you’ll have a much better chance. Here are some steps to create a great back story:

• Think about your own history. What obstacles have you overcome in your life? Illness, divorce, bankruptcy? What drove you to create your product or service in the first place? Be careful here…many people are quite humble and don’t realize how interesting they really are. Facing and overcoming a huge obstacle is always a great story.
• Re-write your bio so that it covers all the struggles you’ve faced and your accomplishments, and make sure you include your volunteer work. Many journalists look at a bio first to see if there’s anything unique. Remember, news stories and features are about PEOPLE not THINGS.
• Find research to support your story. For example, everyone knew statistically few survive Lance’s form of brain cancer. This made his story that much more dramatic. For the random act of kindness project, we found research that explained positive psychology.  Editors and producers want FACTS to back up their stories.

Now write your pitch using the back story as the general theme, with supporting facts from reputable academics or foundations. Add the product or service as a footnote, not as the main idea.  You might be surprised at what happens next!

(Photo by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)

Sorry old school journalists, savvy advertising experts and prickly control-freak publicists but it’s time to realize something. To survive you can no longer be storytellers – you have to be information managers.  Here are some examples:

Rachel Maddow is an information manager. She takes the current news trends, analyzes them and offers up her opinion. She translates and disseminates information using a liberal, celesbian lens. We know it, we’re fine with it, we’ll watch her if we like that slant – and her numbers are through the roof.

Katie Couric is a storyteller. She takes the current news, tells the story she thinks we will find most interesting (called a HOOK or ANGLE) and puts a pretty package together hoping no one else has that same ANGLE.  Boring, yawn, her numbers are in the toilet.

Jon Stewart is also an information manager. He takes the current news, translates and gives it to us with using the funny lens. His numbers are great. Even Perez Hilton, as much as we love to hate him, is  an information manager. Perez takes the celebrity news and translates it with a snarky, ‘I used to be a geek and now I’m more powerful than you’ lens. His traffic numbers are still incredible.

Just try to ‘package’ a story or launch a brand these days with a clever message and a nice dose of spin. What happens? The public’s immediate attitude is that ‘WE WILL TAKE YOU DOWN, MOTHERF*&#ER’. (Remember Motrin Moms?) Today’s social media/citizen journalists love nothing better than to debunk a story, expose an exclusive, steal a headline from a print paper, or do whatever else it takes to prove they can get there faster and more provocatively than traditional media. And guess what? They’re winning the race.

It’s time to admit what we haven’t wanted to admit for a long time -  information is  too real-time and too accessible for us to believe the ’stories’ any more. We want to pick our chosen lens and get our information there.

Who’s your favorite information manager?

A product, service or book is probably the greatest thing in the world – to its creator. But when an editor or producers says “pass” it’s the publicist who has to tell the client .Sometimes ZERO  media are interested. And for anyone who has written a book, started a business or provided a service, that can be a pretty personally hurtful message no matter how carefully it’s couched. For me, it’s the equivalent of having to tell clients “your baby is ugly” 95% of the time, without hurting their feelings. Nearly impossible.

Why do I bring this up? Two reasons -

1) People need to engage in the public relations game knowing their odds. The chances of getting on national television or major print are very slim unless you are a celebrity or just did the impossible – like climbed a mountain for the first time while drinking martinis in pink bloomers. And even if you are a celebrity, you still get bumped. Michael Moore was bumped by Paris Hilton on Larry King Live (and boy was he pissed)

2)  Publicists need to tell their clients this. I love DIY publicists like Joan at the Publicity Hound. She gets that most people and companies don’t have the money to keep a PR campaign going as long as it takes. So she teaches them how to do it themselves. That helps them get PR in the first place and it also helps them understand the process, which helps ME when it’s time for them to engage in a PR firm.

Here are a few things people should know before they go into this.

• It’s not personal. The editor at Health magazine told me one month she got 400 new fitness DVD’s in the mail. How could she possibly go through them all?
• It has to be relevant – not only to the current media environment, but to the editorial guidelines of the pub or broadcast show, to the preferences of the producer, to what they’ve done in the past 12 issues or shows, to the juxtaposition of Mars to the moon (okay I’m exaggerating) Point it, we can’t possibly know all that before pitching. Whether or not something will hit is at best an educated guess.
• You might have the best publicist in the world and due to circumstances out of their control, you might get nothing despite their best intentions.

So why do PR if it’s such a crap shoot? First of all, if you’re consistent and pitching the right thing to the right media, it will work – eventually. Nothing is more effective long term than public relations done well. (and I emphasize DONE WELL)

So bottom line? Don’t take it personally if someone doesn’t like your pitch. Change the angle and move on. We really aren’t telling you your baby is ugly. It’s just not the right size, right now.

I read Schuyler Brown’s blog on the Huffington Post last week feeling a weird combination of amusement, distaste and even awe. First of all, kudos Ms. Brown for writing “As we speak, or blog, or Twitter, the Information Age is spawning its evil progeny, The Golden Age of PR.” Not because I agree with it, but because I haven’t heard  nonsensical statement like that since I was a ignorant bar manager at wine tastings. When we couldn’t figure out what snotty thing to say, we’d say “My, that was oblique without being obtrusive.” Although it didn’t really mean anything it always came across very well, especially when said with an expert twirl of the wine and an arched brow.

Let me get to my point before I get lost in alcoholic nostalgia. In her blog, Ms. Brown has captured the bias of many people out there regarding PR. A lot of people think we’re just a bunch of liars who will do anything to get a placement. Or, clever spin doctors that we are, we distort the truth to pull the wool over the poor unsuspecting consumer who never knew what hit him. Now, I’m not going to say there zero truth to this or that there aren’t some dishonest, conniving PR folks out there (as there are in banking, telecomm advertising, politics, management…..) As a publicist, it IS my job to present my clients in the best light possible to ALL their “publics” – whether it’s the media, the customer, the government, whomever.  What strikes me as ridiculous is that most of the people who bash PR (like Ms. Brown) don’t seem to have any understanding of what it is exactly that we do.  I’m not going to go into a lengthy description of what we do – if you’re interested the Princeton Review has a pretty good job description. I’d point out in particular their comment that publicists “.. must always be available for comment (even when that comment is “no comment”) and remain friends with the media, no matter how demanding the desires of both clients and the reporters on whom they depend.” That’s  why instead of dreaming up Machiavellian ways to distort the truth for our own evil purposes, we’re most likely working the phone on a Friday night to get a client to a last-minute requested interview.

According to Ms. Brown, brands are abandoning advertising, which is “pretty transparent”, in favor of ” spin and PR.”  I think the people fighting the cereal companies who make those nice little websites for your kids to play with – that also contain hundreds of brand impressions for their sugary breakfast foods – would probably disagree about the transparency of advertising. If you don’t know what an advertorial is, well it’s a very common practice where advertising is thinly disguised as an editorial story in a magazine. It’s a fact that advertising can bevery misleading – just ask all the people writing about the ethics of subliminal messaging in advertising. (Or you can watch this fun YouTube video for some examples too – note the extremely tragic music)

But arguing  the ethics of  advertising aside -  regardless of what the general public thinks,  public relations is usually pretty honest because basically, it’s pretty hard to pull the wool over the eyes of a CNN producer or an NPR correspondent. And guess what – you get caught in just one lie and those people will shut you out forever. Sure, do we write releases to show our clients to their best advantage – of course! Do we try to reduce the damage from a crisis and somehow turn it into a positive? Absolutely! Does Madonna’s rep lie to the media – probably, mainly because she can get away with it. The other 99.9% of us don’t have that luxury.

I know it’s popular to thumb your nose at the celeb magazines. Who cares what Brangelina eats for a midnight snack? We are intelligent people who have no interest in digesting such worthless information – right?

WRONG – and here’s why. The average American consumer is influenced heavily by pop culture. Our fascination with celebrities is a huge piece of that pop culture right now. You can use this to your advantage if you’re smart.

Here’s a great example. I’m working on a campaign for Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. The Rudd Center released some videos  to help raise awareness about weight bias. As I was blasting them all over the internet I found a rapidly growing story about Jessica Simpson’s weight.  A quick blog by the Rudd Center’s Dr. Rebecca Puhl about the story on Ms. Simpson and BOOM. I immediately got a massive acceleration in the spread of my story online.

Newsworthy is newsworthy, my friends. Whether or not WE think it’s newsworthy is irrelevant – the media decides. If  breaking news is making  headlines don’t ignore it because you think it’s stupid.  If there’s an angle to help create a hook for your message, use it. It doesn’t make you less of a person, I promise.

Besides, I know you read that stuff at the dentist’s office.

P.S. Watch the Rudd Center videos here.