I had a great conversation with Simply Put author Ben Guttmann, as a follow-up to his appearance on our PR, Done & Doner podcast. The reason, in a word: Salience.
sa·li·ence /ˈsālyəns/ noun
- the quality of being noticeable or standing out
In the field of PR, it is not easy to stand out – being salient means doing just that. Fall short, and your news and campaigns go unheeded.
It is just one of the cornerstones of clear and simple communications, the topic of Ben’s book. According to Ben, you should strive to craft messages that are beneficial, focused, minimal, empathetic and yes, salient. The book offers excellent tips on how to be salient and hone the other attributes mentioned above. It is a great read, and I highly recommend it.
But achieving success in media relations, the harshest of attention battlefields, requires special tactics. In short, I wanted to dig deeper into the topic, so I invited Ben to a follow-up conversation.
I have been in PR for decades and have helped countless clients achieved success with the media. Yet the field is constantly changing and has become more challening. It’s always good to stay on top of our games and try new things, that’s why I like to explore these kinds of ideas.
Here were some of topics and takeaways:
- There are no silver bullets, magical hacks or shortcuts that work every time.
- What worked yesterday might not work today or tomorrow.
- You need to constantly mix things up, zig when others are zagging.
- Undeniably hard news (big deals, brands, funding, true breakthroughs) are the best attention-getters but can’t just be ordered up.
- If you don’t have any of these, you have to find other ways to break through.
- This means optimizing the “real estate” most PRs rely on to draw initial attention; the headline, subject line, first words in a pitch email.
- These offer a limited palette, and its important to break out of the box of the usual tactics; through events, stunts, even hype (but in a good way; more on this below).
- The medium should inform the message (avoid dense blocks of text that are harder to read on small screens).
- We also revisited topics from the podcast, like how AI can help, and reducing jargon and acronyms, instead relying on the 1000 most common words in the English language.
As a follow-up, Ben suggested I speak with Michael F. Schein, author of The Hype Handbook for additional ideas. I did, and and happy to say that he agreed to come on the podcast, to share the insight with our audience.
The episode will be coming out shortly, stay tuned. Subscribe to the podcast and our YouTube channel.
