ICAWC 2009: Day Two – The value of PR pester power
Dogs Trust Head of Communications Charlotte Speedy took to the stage this morning to talk about the value of PR pester power!
She gave a few examples:
Deborah Meaden of Dragon’s Den (whom we worked with on the YooDoo Dog after she supported YooDoo Doll maker Sarah Lu) had a feature in the Sunday Telegraph which mentioned us. To pay for that would be £19k – the PR costs were some phone calls and a few biscuits.
A video of Clarissa Baldwin on the BBC talking about the Canine Charter for Human Health would have cost £700,000. The PR cost was one early morning start for Clarissa, and a few dog treats for her canine co-start Charlie.
Blue Peter: the new show dog was rehomed from us to a presenter. It took nine months to organize but appeared on BBC news as 4th most popular story of the day. Charlotte showed a video of this.
The media landscape is changing.
Twenty years ago, news was scheduled by a staff of thousands. Today news is instant and mostly produced by freelance journalists who rely on news coming to them – particularly online which works far faster than offline. Stories last forever in archives, and it needs to be right first time as it’s hard to remove or correct.
We need to surf the Google wave – what are people searching for? If we know that we can provide timely, interesting news that is worth running.
We need to create news and think about who were are talking to – it’s not just the media, there are lots of channels. Is it for staff? Supporters? Are we being reactive and waiting for people to come to us or proactive and going to them?
Some story ideas:
- Dogs coming in
- Dogs at centre
- Dogs leaving centre
- 50 other story ideas sown (presentation will be online)
- Seasonal eg, halloweeen, snow, fireworks.
- Abandoned dogs, reason of abandonment
- Positive statements to counteract negative stories
- Change dogs names so that media will like the story, name after celebrities – for example, Maggie the dog became known by her nickname of ‘Ugly Betty’.
- Before and after
- Lookalikes
You’ll find more ideas like these when all the speaker presentations are made available on the ICAWC website after the conference. See the Resources section for past presentations on a huge variety of subjects related to running an animal welfare organisation.
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