Don Crowther’s
GreatPR Newsletter
Published by 101PublicRelations.com

Issue #113

In this issue:

Removing Fear Through Effective Public Relations
Our Favorite Online Press Release Distribution Services
What's That Again - Please Drive Safely
Two Messages For Each Issue? What's Going On?

Removing Fear Through Effective Public Relations

I like my neighbor, with one small exception - he raises pit bulls. He's got 8 of them, with 3-4 rotating in to live right next door all the time.

Justified or not, the entire neighborhood is scared of them, with parents being unwilling to let their kids play outside unsupervised (a first in my small subdivision.) My wife's terrified of them, and if she's outside when he lets them out to do their business she goes inside until they're done.

It's even gotten to the point where calls have been made to the police several times by various neighborhood members for various infractions.

So I admired the way he pulled off a public relations coup this week.

Most of the neighbors were out enjoying a summer evening (hey, when it's too cold to go outside for much of the year, we Northerners take advantage of every nice evening we can get!), watching the kids play and enjoying parental conversation, when the neighbor walked out of his house carrying a laundry basket onto his driveway.

That attracted a few eyeballs. But when he reached inside and pulled out a 10" long, 4-week old puppy, it took just a few minutes before the entire neighborhood was gathered around, and each of the 8 puppies had someone cuddling it.

They were awfully cute puppies and they did what puppies do naturally - they captured the hearts of everyone.

As I was holding the puppy, I mentioned to him that I should get my wife to try to remove some of her fear of the pit bulls. He not only thought that was a good idea, but told me to take a puppy to her. A few seconds later, my wife was right in the midst of the cuddle session.

It's been interesting to watch my neighborhood ever since. Each night, the puppies come out, and everyone gathers around. Barriers are being broken, fear is being reduced, comfort is increasing.

I'm not saying that the neighborhood has lost their fear of his adult dogs, but the edge has definitely been taken off, conversations have changed from fear and accusation to intelligent communications, and he has made progress in gaining acceptance in our small community.

There's a PR lesson to be learned here. When you're trying to remove fear, one of the best ways is to educate through experiential interactions.

There are lots of ways to do this.

We've all heard that you're 29 times more likely to get killed driving in a car than in an airplane, but those facts aren't enough to change the minds of many of those who have a fear of flying. What does seem to work is fear of flying lessons, putting people into classrooms, then airplanes sitting on the ground, and eventually an actual short flight.

Another example: there's an upscale neighborhood in the Milwaukee area that suddenly had a huge printing plant built right beside it. The printing plant put up a 40' berm between them and the houses, but it wasn't until they held openhouses for all of the neighborhood, fed them, and most importantly took them on tours of the facility, showing them that the chemicals in the plant were relatively harmless solvents, and that they were properly stored and carefully disposed of that talk of mass selling dissipated.

But my favorite fear removal story comes from my days as a salesman for a paper company. We had just launched thin disposable diapers (remember the old thick ones that took up half your shopping cart for a week's supply?) and were trying to sell them into all of the retailers. One major chain refused to buy them, not saying why.

Salesperson after salesperson, even up to corporate VP's and marketing people had come in to present to the buyer, with no luck.

I was the youngest, most junior salesperson in the district. But when I heard that the district manager had given up after 7 unsuccessful calls, I asked permission to try one last time.

As I arrived with my district manager at the appointment, the buyer gave a wisecrack about how all of the old guys had failed, so now he was turning to a teenager (I looked really young in my 20's). I sat down and said, "I hear that you've said no to this product 7 times now. I'm not going to give you all the reasons why you should buy them, you've probably got the presentation memorized. I'd like to make a deal with you. If you'll tell me the real reason why you're not buying, I'll make sure that nobody else will waste your time trying to sell you them anymore."

He looked at me and scowled... and thought... Finally he said, "OK, I'll tell you. I'm sick of you guys wasting my time anyway. So, [turning to the district manager] you'll back his guarantee?"

My district manager had already given up anyway and he quickly agreed.

"OK," the buyer said, "I'll tell you. But you've got to keep your promise. I'm terrified that we're going to get dragged into a class action suit for killing some baby by exposing them to dangerous chemicals next to their skin."

My reaction? I laughed. Not only had we just made a breakthrough, but it was an overcomable objection. I reached into my bag and pulled out a little bag of the magic stuff that makes thin diapers work, a white powder called superabsorbent.

(By the way, you wouldn't believe the number of times that I got pulled aside in airports, and even strip-searched one time, for carrying little bags of white superabsorbent powder in my carry-on...)

I carefully explained that the superabsorbent used to make the thin diapers had gone through literally years of testing that proved it harmless. In fact, it is an ingredient in many different food products, including beer. I ended by saying "You could eat this bagful, if you wanted, and it wouldn't do anything to you, besides giving you a very dry mouth and throat."

"Really?" the buyer said.

"Really."

"Prove it!"

Now, I'd heard in the sales meeting that eating it was perfectly harmless, but I'd never actually sampled any. But I decided that the risk was worthwhile. So I asked "Another deal? If I eat it and don't die on you, will you place an order?"

Big grin "Sure, but you won't do it."

"OK," I said, and gulped down a full 2 tablespoons.

Now I have to admit, my mouth, throat and stomach got really dry instantly, and I felt like I was turning into a prune. But once I got a quick couple of glasses of water, everything was fine.

I offered him a bag to try for himself. He declined...

But I walked out of his office with a 1.5 million dollar order.

Not bad for a junior salesman!

What are the lessons to be learned here?

If your product, company, or service scares people, the best way to resolve it is through experiential training
The best education occurs when they actually can get directly involved in the process (if I could have gotten him to eat the superabsorbent) and see that it won't kill them
If you can't get them involved, actually seeing someone else experience it first hand is the next best thing
Sometimes logistics or regulations make it so you're unable to actually get the public directly involved in the training. This can be an excellent opportunity to bring in a reporter and camera crew or a documentary crew and let them record the experience for their audiences.
It is generally much better to reach out and proactively remove fears than to shut down communications. Privacy breeds imagination, which will almost always create fears that are worse than the actual risk involved.

Just remember that justifiable fear never really goes away...

And keep in mind that if your company has something that people are afraid of, you have a special need of a crisis communications plan to deal with situations that could destroy you. We recommend checking out Crisis Communications Planning: Organizing and Completing a Plan That Works

Have fun educating!

Our Favorite Online Press Release Distribution Services

One of the most frequently asked questions we receive is which press release distribution service we recommend.

First, let me make a distinction. We have found that there are two types of press release distribution services.

- Ones that get your release out to lots of different sites on the web.
- And those that get your release into the hands of print and broadcast reporters.

Frankly, we've not been able to find one service that does well with both. Either they do a good job online, or they do a good job reaching reporters, generally not both.

This article will focus on the only one we've found that does a reasonable job of doing both at a reasonable price. In future issues we'll discuss some of our other favorite tools.

The service is called The Yearbook of Experts and it's one of those gems that few people know about, but really seems to work.

The Yearbook of Experts provides you a number of services, just one of which is a press release distribution service. You get:
- A profile in the printed Yearbook of Experts
- A profile in their online online ExpertClick directory
- Inclusion in their Power Media BlueBook and CD-ROM and online access to their database
- Training in how to use their service

And, the part you've been waiting for
- The ability to send out releases and articles through their NewsReleaseWire.

Their NewsReleaseWire service follows one of the classic models: Reporters/editors sign up for to receive releases for free, and those who are submitting pay to do so.

I've found that, at least in my area of expertise, the listings don't do me much good. But the news release service has been very powerful.

Here's what I like about it:

You can issue a different release each week - 52 a year (technically, you can issue more than that, but it's not encouraged.) That's a great incentive to come up with new stuff regularly.
Listings on this service automatically get sent to Google News, Yahoo News, etc. at no additional cost.
Individual releases are part of the package. You pay one time and post all year. So, instead of having to pay base costs plus upgrade costs to get each individual release submitted to different online news services, one fee does it for the year!
At the moment, there are few enough people using the service that you'll almost always be on the first page of their article listings for a week or so rather than getting buried 32 pages deep in a couple of hours like what happens on some other sites.
You have the option to cut and paste your release in, to send a link to your release located on a different site, or to send a pdf file (which is not recommended because it limits pickup)
You can include an audio file too with your release, giving you an additional avenue for exposure. You can also link into a video file
You can indicate a geographical area, allowing those searching for local stories to find your release
If you have a book, you can make it easy for reporters to request a review copy right from your release. These book-related releases also get featured on a separate book review site.
You can upload a picture with your release (this service costs extra at other sites)
You can input two links with your release and can dictate what link text shows up in that link.
We have found that we actually get pretty good pickup from this service. So, for a fraction of the cost (to get pictures, inclusion in the search engines, etc. would cost $200+ with many other services), you get 52 releases a year, and great pickup!
We have found success in getting articles picked up too (tip sheets, quizzes, even feature-length articles) in addition to regular news releases.

One word of warning, the numbers you will see reported from this service will probably be lower than other services. And those numbers are probably correct. But I simply don't trust some of the pickup reports I see from many of the other services. They're usually algorithmically created, not actual results.

So there it is, our first recommendation for a good release service. In fact, we like so much that we contacted them and asked for a special deal in your behalf. They've agreed to cut $100 off their standard rates if you use the link below. Also, until June 30th, they are offering you an extra 3 months, so 15 months for the price of 12.

We use it, we recommend it, we think you should too. Check it out!

And, if you want to write better press releases that are more likely to actually get printed, check Creating Powerful Press Releases

What's That Again - Please Drive Safely

A recent study designed to measure whether people perceived men or women to be safer drivers came up with an interesting answer:

"As a passenger, I feel safer with:
35% a male driver
23% a female driver
42% other"

What's an other? Apparently, whatever they are, they drive really safely!

Two Messages For Each Issue? What's Going On?

About a year ago we tried an experiment. After sending out our regular full-text message, we have been sending out a short message titled "GreatPR Latest Issue Is Now Online" containing a URL link to an online archive of the newsletter.

We sometimes get asked why we do that.

It's simple. Our test showed that a large number of people actually read our issues through that link rather than the full-text message.

We have two theories. First, that, because of our long-winded nature, some people's filters stop delivery of the full newsletter, so it's never received.
Second, some people prefer to read it in a web browser instead of their email program.

Whatever the reason, that's why we do it.

So, if you, as many people tell us, are one who drops everything and reads each issue as it arrives, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. To you we say, "go ahead and delete the GreatPR Latest Issue Is Now Online posts as they come in. You don't need to read them.

Thanks for your loyalty and interest! We love our subscribers!

Let's go get some more publicity!

Until next time,
Keep promoting!
Don Crowther
President
101PublicRelations.com

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