Press Releases and Networking: Pitching the Story - Literature review Example

Pitching the Story This paper entails a story pitched onto media connectors by a local restaurant for free publicity and branding. It begins with a brief overview of the company and its target audience, followed by process of selection of media outlets and connectors who can be effectively used for pitching the story. Subsequently, a pitch letter is designed which shall be used to sell news of the company in a strategic manner such that the connectors perceive the newsworthiness of company’s product and give an opportunity for media coverage. In the final section of paper, we discuss about other special considerations that must be taken into account regarding online bloggers and follow up procedures that shall be deployed to ensure that planned outcomes have been achieved accurately and no wrong message got delivered to the media outlet. Lastly, conclusions are drawn regarding the effectiveness of design and appeal of pitch letter and the impact it was able to make on public image of the company. Introduction Every business acknowledges the fact that marketing, building public relations and gaining spotlight on media is pivotal for success of its operations. For this purpose, management of all incorporations are engaged in the practice of pitching stories to journalists and media persons, seeking to be heard and talked about on media without spending of excessive costs. In a research, practitioners were found to be involved in writing seven pitch letters per month on an average (Napoli et al., pp. 370). This practice is traditional, being followed since decades and shall always play an essential role for marketing of businesses (Rubel, 2008). However, the only thing that has changed is the mode of communication and types of media broadcasting them. It began from paper media, turned to electronic and digital media and is currently resting on the internet resources: conventional media has lost its dominance (Waters et al., pp. 242). Considering these factors, a pitch letter has been drafted and its planning and follow-up procedures have been discussed in the subsequent sections. Part 1: Pre-Pitch The company represents a restaurant, part of a large food chain, that serves its local customers with various cuisines for lunch and dinner meals while regular breakfast and fast food items for catering younger tastes. The customers targeted mainly are those living in nearby vicinity. Mostly, the customers it aims at range between age groups of 18 to 50 years. Fast food items are available to entertain younger customers who frequently hang out with their friends while unique cuisines are offered for enthusiasts and food lovers of mature ages. Other customers include one-off walk-in families or gatherings on weekend dine off meals. Rarely, this outlet might be able to cater tourists and foreigners by offering unique traditional meals that might interest them. Media outlets vary in forms and need to be selected very carefully as each generate a different impact on audience. In today’s technology savvy era, internet media, online bloggers and social media networks have sabotaged the significance of paper media. The remaining market share is captured by digital media, including TV and radio. As a result, selecting paper press media as connector seems highly ineffective as only a minute proportion of audience relies on it. On the other hand, targeting digital media might be most difficult as it needs high quality relationships, expenditures and networking to be able to fall under its radar. Since target customers include significant proportion of teenagers and younger generations, it shall be essential to be heard on platforms where they focus their most of the attention: social networking portals and online blogs. Researchers have acknowledged the vitality of converting businesses into a form acceptable by social media (Anderson & Swenson, 2008). Moreover, many journalists are reported to have grabbed thousands of stories from social media portals due to stringent deadlines and lack of research resources (Jewett & Dahlberg, pp. 241). Various reputable online food critics and restaurant guide websites shall be targeted to ensure brand imaging of restaurant e.g. tripadvisor.com and webcrawler.com. Similarly, social networks including Facebook and Twitter. Once attention is gained on the internet, it is effortless to reach digital media and journalists thereafter. Part 2: Writing an Effective Pitch Letter Dear editor A Wild Affair: Revitalizing your taste buds! It gives me great pleasure to have informed you that this early information is your exclusive property and might be appealing for your readers. Hungry food lovers across the town have now come to realize that the tastiest meals are copyrights of our restaurant, A Wild Affair. At our outlet, we understand what our customer wants and how he wants it: We tailor our food according to the customer needs. Gone are the days when people had to adjust according to tastes offered by chefs of different restaurants. At A Wild Affair, we adjust everything according to your mood. Our latest venture, not introduced at outlets yet, involves giving a customized aura and a memorable ambiance to each of our customers, along with great food that match their taste buds. From Mexican spices to South-Indian coconut aromas, we have got 18 cuisines to offer, with adjustments available according to your mood. With lighting arrangements, selection of background music and tailored display of digital content creating perfect atmosphere for customer, he also gets to choose from a wide variety of adjustable top-ups in their meals including tango spicy, moderate, baked, chilled and other specifications while add-ons according to choice for nominal charges including wedges, fries, baked potatoes and wings. Personalized settings and handpicked food items create an optimal balanced experience for our customers. Apart from lunch and dinner cuisines, we have a large variety of fast food deals to offer at best discounted prices in town. We understand needs of our young college-going customers with limited funds and therefore offer lowest prices for largest meals. Moreover, we serve in-house breakfast early morning when no other restaurants are open. We operate 24 hours with consistent quality food and service. Traditional and modern snacks are available in morning slots for our professional customers who grab it on their way to work. We conducted a recent survey of customers to give opinion about the whole notion for tailored restaurant services. One of the customers exclaimed, “I find it very funny yet interesting about getting customized services at a restaurant. Often, I go to different places to eat and find the food either too spicy or too grilled or too mild for me. I get disappointed and never visit them again since their chic doesn’t meet mine. But how interesting would it be to go to some restaurant and be certain that the food won’t be disappointing since I would be the one running the entire act and not the chef alone! If the restaurant is getting something of that sort implemented any time soon, then I’d surely love to visit again to check out this unique service.” This clearly exhibits the need of customers to be pampered and served with such food services which keep them happy and lively. We are committed to offering our customers what they need and soon plan to launch our services of tailored foods. We will be highly obliged to have your presence at our restaurant on 30 July, 2013 on the launch of this new service. We will be pleased to pay you homage by serving you a complimentary meal of your choice. We appreciate your valuable time and consideration for A Wild Affair and hope to see and hear from you soon. May you need any further information, please feel free to contact us on the given contact information. Part 3: Follow-up and Other Considerations Once the process of pitching is complete, it shall be time to monitor closely the activities of connectors that were targeted. Anonymously the user must log in to the website and blog to read what customers and general public users are commenting to the advertised content. One must study carefully and note the reactions of readers. In case no advertisement has been placed yet, a phone call if possible or a reminder message shall be sent in order to solicit the media coverage of business. Multiple calls or reminders or copies of pitch letters may be sent after regular intervals in order to make an impact on blogger’s or journalist’s mind. However, utmost care must be taken not to nag him with repetitive reminders and time-consuming calls. If after a couple of reminders, no progress is visible, then it is obvious that the journalist has decided not to pursue marketing of this business. The business must move on to the next targeted media outlet without wasting further resources and time. There is a large difference between pitching a journalist as compared to pitching an online blogger. Special considerations come into play in the latter case. Once potential bloggers have been thoroughly researched, enlisted and selected which make sense to nature of business of company, positive relationships must be developed with them such as subscribing to their blog, commenting frequently, following his or her activities and meeting them at official events or gatherings if possible. A hook reference needs to be planted before pitching the idea. Therefore, some past blog must be made a point of reference and must be thoroughly studied in order to talk about it. Using it as an icebreaker, one can explain honest views about some particular blog that one doesn’t agree to. After discussion and gaining familiarity, one can finally throw a pitch which offers a win-win situation for the business and the blogger. This would mean not only traffic to his webpage but also some nominal monetary compensation as part of relationship building. The pitches must be well-researched and carefully crafted to sound appealing to the blogger. Also, they must not be impersonal and too generic; blogger must feel he knows the business people well and should find it appealing to market their product. Conclusion Pitch letters are highly effective for communicating ones’ strengths through connectors to the general public. Moreover, the substantial costs of advertisements and marketing are avoided once the media outlet is satisfied of newsworthiness of information. Therefore, every business must pursue these strategies to benefit from its offered incentives. However, utmost care must be taken since during this procedure, there are likely chances that some unintended negative information about business flows to the journalist. In this case, pitch letter technique radically backfires and such media outlet is then capable of sabotaging completely reputation and goodwill of business since it has authentic first-hand information and there’s no escaping from it. References Anderson, B. D., and R. Swenson. "What‘s Critical About PR and New Media Technologies? Using Professional Case Studies and Expertise to Develop Classroom Content and Learning Objectives." annual conference of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), Detroit, MI. (2008). Jewett, R. and L. Dahlberg. The trouble with twittering: Integrating social media into mainstream news. International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics, 5, (2009): 233-246. Napoli, P., M. Taylor and G. Powers. Writing activities of public relations practitioners: The relationship between experience and writing tasks. Public Relations Review, 25, (1998): 369-380. Rubel, S. Does the thrill of the chase make PR obsolete? Extracted on 30 June 2013 from http://www.micropersuasion.com/2008/08/does-the-thrill.html, (2008). Waters, Richard D., Natalie TJ Tindall, and Timothy S. Morton. "Media catching and the journalist–public relations practitioner relationship: How social media are changing the practice of media relations." Journal of Public Relations Research 22.3 (2010): 241-264. Read More