The PR value chain

For PR to work, every player in the value chain must get fair value. This is the secret of good or great media placement. It takes an extraordinary commitment from those who sign the cheques and those who write and place the stories, but the value that is unleashed is extraordinary.

Value-add... that`s what it`s all about.

This is the secret: Good PR depends on the PR selling a value proposition to the client, who then accepts this value proposition. Without this we have no game.

This is the value proposition:

• I am the client. I have needs. These needs are paramount (they should be; after all, I sign the cheque that makes the whole darn thing work). Often my needs are ego-based. If I don`t get exactly the message into print that I want, I`m going to throw a monumental tantrum and replace the PR agency. Or, rather, the PR agency is going to convince me there`s a better way. And the better way is to focus on the needs of the reader. For surely if I focus on the needs of the reader, my article will be published. By focusing on my own needs I`m sure not to get my article published. And at the end of the day, the PR is there to get material published, so it can be read, believed, absorbed and acted on at decision time.
• If I`m involving a real-life customer in a customer success story, the customer`s needs must also be serviced. It`s simply no good to have an article that extols the virtue of the client but doesn`t, in parallel, service the needs of the client`s client. This implies adopting an unselfish, solutions focus when writing articles mandated on your client`s offering to his client. The alternative is to write articles where your client`s client disappears against the brilliance of your client`s solution.
• The editor. Ah, the editor. Need it be stressed that for the PR the editor is the equivalent of God? That the editor carries within him (or her!) a BS detector? That the editor really couldn`t care about your needs or those of your client? The editor cares only about the needs of his/her reader; and, therefore, that which adds value to the reader adds value to the editor.
• The reader. The end goal of all we do as PRs, as clients, as editors. No reader, no value proposition. So, if we want to get to the reader, why do we focus so heavily on our own, parochial, narrow, self-serving needs? The reader is so important in the scope of the overall effort that it is worth steering the whole discussion offline to focus exclusively on the reader`s needs.

A strange animal, the reader. We`re not quite sure who he is (again, the male pronoun for sake of convenience). What we do know is the reason he reads. He reads either to be entertained or informed.

In the history of man, these have always been the only two reasons people read. Therefore we must entertain without being flippant and inform without being boring. The best writing in the world is always able to accomplish these two objectives. Really good writing informs while entertaining, to the extent that you should breeze through an article, no matter how weighty the subject. The very best writers (Steve Mulholland, Ken Owen, John Dvorak) accomplish this. So should we, as PR writers.

It`s easy, of course, to say that having to meet the needs of our clients, and their subject matter does not lend itself to clean, easy writing like this. But that`s a copout.

Value-add... that`s what it`s all about. So when you have added value to the client`s client, the editor and the reader, well then your client`s also going to derive value, as are you.

Understand therefore that by putting the client and yourself last, you ultimately will be first. There`s something biblical in this paradox.