Media Relations and Your Catalog (940 words)

Media Relations and Your Catalog

Every business wants and needs to create awareness of what it does. Catalogers are no different. They can advertise, whether it's a big splashy campaign of the sort Lands' End, L.L. Bean or Lillian Vernon have undertaken, or simply a small classified ad.

But another way to get people thinking and talking about—and hopefully ordering from!—your catalog is the "free advertising" generated by effective use of public relations (PR). The "public" in PR encompasses media, government and community relations. Let's focus for now on the media.

Is there a story here?

Catalog consultants and PR practitioners agree that targeting the right media outlet with the right story at the right time is the way PR works. You can try canvassing the media yourself, or have someone in your marketing or advertising departments try, but a professional publicist can see "The Big Picture." They have contacts and are familiar with how to approach different media.

Maxwell Sroge, a catalog consultant in Evansville, IL, reminds his clients that if they are seeking national coverage of their business, they should make sure that "you have something worthwhile to say … Of course you'll feel warm and fuzzy sending a press release, but if you're not thinking of the editor, you're not building a good relationship." He says these relationships are very valuable: "If you go out to advertise [your catalog or product], it could cost millions of dollars; if you write a good story for the editor, and cooperate, for $500 or $1,000, you can have editors all across the country picking up the story."

Much of what you choose to communicate about your company depends on the media market you are approaching.

In the realm of news-related trade publications, Sroge believes you should restrict personnel-change announcements to senior personnel, i.e. officers of the company, and should include their past credentials.

Sroge: "Any financial data one wants to release would be welcome, especially if your is a private company. And if you want to talk about how much you've grown, you'd better be able to provide some concrete figures."

Finally, Sroge recommends always making a key company officer available to talk to the press and publicizing that in the release.

Kelly Fordyce is director of client services at AGG International, a public relations firm in New York City whose clients include a large direct marketing company with numerous catalog titles and e-commerce sites.

What are her dream placements? She is always looking to place her client and its products in consumer publications and on national TV to build brand. As is common knowledge, a mention on "Oprah" is money in the bank, for instance.

"Trade placements are always important, including the tech trades, for news about e-commerce innovations," adds Fordyce. She says the advantage to trade coverage is "to lend credibility to what your company is doing." This pleases investors and can put you in a favorable light for vendors, potential business partners or new hiring prospects.

The benefits of placement in the consumer media are to "break free of the clutter," to build brand and to showcase for consumers why your product is "unique"—though beware, it's an overused word in PR!

Some PR pitfalls to avoid

Jack Baer, a partner with Muldoon & Baer catalog consultancy in Sugarloaf Key, FL, offers a caveat to using PR: A press placement can get you a lot of catalog requests, but will the requesters convert to buyers? With an outlay of tens of thousands of dollars, those conversions are important. Baer recommends targeting niche publications that match your product line. "If you're selling running shoes, and you get an article in Runner's World, it will be great—[requesters] will convert," he says.

Baer re-emphasized that media mentions are golden because, unlike advertisements, press coverage means an unbiased source is passing along the (hopefully positive) word on your company.

Lisa Hahn, president of Caugherty-Hahn Communications in Glen Rock, NJ, suggests catalogers start a PR campaign early and sustain it, but warns, "PR should not be used thinking it will drive dollar-for-dollar return, in terms of sales, unless you have strict measurement controls in place to ask the question, 'How did you hear about us?' Most companies don't."

"In formal PR campaigns," Hahn says, "you start with measurement, and measure something specific [such as an event or product], then test it again, just as you would test a catalog offer."

Other techniques Hahn uses are helping clients repackage third-party media endorsements to send to business associates and incorporating the endorsements on their Web sites. "We alert [our clients] that a product is getting a lot of media play, so they bump it up to their home page." Also, Hahn says, her agency's outbound communications to the media always contain links to clients' Web sites. Furthermore, "We'll ask clients to tell us about related products to promote over the phone and the Web site."

Another function of PR is crisis management. One of Hahn's clients had a holiday shipping "situation" in which orders were getting fouled up because of a computer error. "We had to monitor it and be ready to respond; the client was doing the right things [to fix the problem], but we had to be ready to respond to the media. When the story broke [on TV], we were able to nip the bad press in the bud in one day."

Companies that use an outside public relations professional must remember that they, too, have a role. Says Hahn, "They have to trust their agency or publicist, trust that [the latter] fully understand their business."

—Scott Shrake