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| Issue No. 200403
| March 2004
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PIOnet Newsletter is produced monthly to support media relations' vital role in integrated marketing for your institution. This role is not always adequately recognized, understood, or acknowledged. Our goal is to give you data, arguments, evidence, and ideas to enhance the understanding of and appreciation for media relations at your institution.
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On Good News and Bad News Stories
by Dick Jones
Dick Jones Communications
How many good news stories does it take to offset the negativity spawned by a bad news story? No one ever puts the question in terms as stark as that. But I hear it -- and maybe you do, too -- from presidents, trustees, and deans.
It is the wrong question because it is based on a faulty assumption. It presumes incorrectly that positive news media coverage of an institution's good works acts as a "blotter" that soaks up the stain of negative media stories.
Let's be clear. There are excellent reasons for us to score as much positive news media visibility as we can for our colleges and universities -- especially during times of crisis -- but not for the reason that many suppose.
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It's helpful to understand what news media visibility does and doesn't do in the communication process. Here's what more than 25 years of experience in media relations has taught me about positive news media coverage:
- Is most valuable in reinforcing the attitudes and opinions of people who already think well of the institution.
- Is useful in influencing the views of people who are neutral toward or unaware of the institution.
- Is not effective at changing the views of people who hold negative opinions of the institution.
To illustrate this last point, think about some organization about which you hold a strongly negative viewpoint, possibly because of some personal experience you've had with it. Are you going to change your mind because you see a positive story on the local television news about that organization? More likely you will discount the story because you think, "I know what that place is really like."
The most effective communication strategy for changing negative opinions is personal contact. That's been well-accepted among communications theorists for years.
Positive news media visibility, however, does have important functions in times of crisis. One valuable role is to "preach to the choir." Your constituents in such situations are looking for reinforcement that the school they support is indeed worthy of their support. And the battle is still on for the "undecideds" -- those who are neutral toward your school. They can be swayed to some extent by negative and positive publicity.
As for those who don't like your institution, the president or dean is going to have to devise some sort of personal communication strategy to win them over. You can't do that job from the media relations shop. Do you have an anecdote to share on this topic? Or a confirming or differing opinion? We'd like to hear from you.
We invite your discussion of this topic on PIOnet.
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Increasing Coverage: The Gender Pitch
by Zoltan Bedy, Ph.D
Oswego State University of New York
The Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus theory talks about the different ways in which the two sexes view relationships, society, and life in general. Those differences, it seems, also extend to the ways in which male and female reporters do their jobs. The differences are based on two models. The gender model says that females and males have different values and priorities and different moral thinking and gender-linked language. Thus, they socialize differently into the workplace. The job model, on the other hand, says that although males and females bring different values and perspectives to the job, factors within the organization -- such as the ratio of male-to-female reporters and editors and the newspaper's size -- are the socializing elements.
Shelly Rodgers and Esther Thorson set out to assess the differences, if any, between male and female reporters regarding story topic, tone, and sourcing by testing three hypotheses:
- Female reporters will source differently than male reporters by using a wider variety of sources that include female and ethnic minorities;
- Female reporters will stereotype less than male reporters in terms of story topic and story tone; and
- The newspaper's size and ratio of male-to-female editors and reporters will mediate reporting differences due to gender as expressed in the previous hypotheses.
In "A Socialization Perspective on Male and Female Reporting" (Journal of Communication, 2003, 53: 658-675) the authors found that female reporters used more female sources in preparing their stories than did male reporters. There was also significant evidence that female reporters seek out and use female sources for a wider variety of story topics than do their male counterparts. They also use more underrepresented population/ethnic sources in stories about health, medicine, science, human interest, social issues, business, and politics than do male journalists. In addition, the authors found "that the reporter's role in storytelling is much more complex than previous studies would have us believe."
As for the size of the newspapers, the findings in this study generally supported the gender model of socialization at small newspapers, while the job model seemed to hold at medium and large newspapers. Thus, while there were still differences between the reporting of male and female journalists, those differences seemed to lessen somewhat at medium newspapers and lessen somewhat more at large ones.
Why is this important for PIOs and news and communication managers? Knowing that such differences exist between male and female reporters and the variations in those differences from small to large newspapers can help in story pitching and placement. Reporters can be offered stories and sources tailored more to their interests, thereby providing a better chance for coverage.
We invite your discussion of this topic on PIOnet.
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Book Review: The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR
by William J. Johnson
Halstead Communications
Those of us in public relations probably look at corporate advertising with a tinge of envy. And why not? American industry spends nearly $100 on advertising for every $5 on PR, and this traditional view of marketing's pecking order carries over and colors perceptions of PR in higher education.
So it was not surprising that as I read The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR, I basked in the warm glow of validation heaped on by authors Al and Laura Ries. According to PR Week magazine, Al is one of the "100 most influential PR leaders of the 20th Century," and Laura is a highly successful player in her own right.
The book's premise is simple and, in advertising circles, heretical: PR builds brands; advertising maintains them. Create a category for the product, find celebrities or other influential people to testify for it, and build news coverage slowly. Only after the product is firmly entrenched in the consumer's mind through credible news coverage and resulting word of mouth does advertising become useful. The authors write: "Publicity provides the credentials that create credibility in advertising. Until a new brand has some credentials in your mind, you are going to ignore its advertising."
Take the story of the Mustang, which Lee Iacocca introduced in 1964, positioning it as the first sports car for people who didn't want to drive sports cars. He invited journalists to preview the car and disc jockeys to test drive it. Ford then unveiled it at the New York World's Fair. Iacocca and the car appeared on the cover of Newsweek and Time in the same week, and Ford sold a million cars in the first two years, all through creative public relations.
Current examples of brands built through PR -- Starbucks, JetBlue, Palm, eBay, and others -- are offered. There's even a higher ed example: Quinnipiac University is cited as an example of creative brand building through PR. Relatively unknown a little more than a decade ago, the university sponsored a poll on elections and other topics that helped it turn up in countless news stories, quintuple its budget, and more than triple enrollment.
The knock against this book is that it tends to repeat its mantra about PR and brand-building. And that it sometimes overstates the case. For example, I doubt ad agencies can create TV ads just to win awards and ignore the bottom line, as the authors claim, although they do put forth compelling evidence -- well-known ad campaigns that won awards but failed to boost sales. Creativity is more important in product positioning and the product itself, they write.
This book is worth reading because it makes a convincing argument for turning the tables in marketing, putting PR first in building a brand. For those of us in higher-ed PR, we know that a national ad campaign for our relatively unknown school is doomed to fail. We know that finding one thing that our college or university is good at, and then "riding that horse," whether it be a basketball team, a poll, or innovative curriculum, can be effective in building our brand. The book endorses this approach by saying it's more important than people heretofore have thought. And for those insights, the book is invaluable.
Having said that, I would also recommend Ries's Positioning: The Battle for your Mind, the book most agree is the seminal work on creative positioning and offers practical advice. In a way, The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR is the author's way of saying, "I told you so."
The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR, by Al Ries and Laura Ries,
copyright, 2002, 295 pages, published by HarperBusiness.
The Ries father and daughter team have a website.
You may find the book on Amazon.com
A Google search on the book gives an interesting list of 466 documents
We invite your discussion of this topic on PIOnet.
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International Media Relations
by Tom Miller
Imperial College London
A global ranking of universities released in December 2003 reported that just 15 of the top 50 exist outside the USA*. While higher education PIOs everywhere are born to cough and splutter at any league table ranking methodologies their institution doesn't lead, the real interest here is that the global academic competition for staff, students, funding, and influence has been measured and is now a reality that can be quickly understood beyond our world.
Political leaders may repeatedly stake their countries' future economic prosperity on skills, education, and training, but for higher education to get major prolonged interest on an international or national scale, something far spicier and more intriguing has to go into the story. This is just what has happened in the UK over the last two years, culminating in a nail-biting political moment.
Under Tony Blair's premiership no vote on his government's legislation has ever gone so close as that on January 27th. With a majority of 161, the Higher Education (HE) bill was received so acrimoniously that 71 of his own MPs voted against him, and the bill scraped through by a majority of just five.
To understand the reason behind this near defeat, it's important to know that of the 100 university institutions in England and Wales, only one is private; all the rest take money from the government for teaching. Controversially, the new HE bill proposes to allow universities to set their own level of tuition fees to a maximum of £3,000 ($5,600) per year.
For the ideologically opposed in its party, the sight of a Labour government introducing a market in undergraduate course pricing was too much to stomach, and a rebellion from within its own ranks of MPs became public in November.
After a few months of intense lobbying, parliamentary 'whipping', and horse-trading, the government won the day. The Bill still has to pass line-by-line scrutiny by a committee before a debate in Parliament's second chamber, the House of Lords. So, battle continues and at the end of February, the National Union of Students and the Association of University Teachers jointly 'walked out' in protest against the 'marketisation of higher education'.
Two notable successes for university PIOs stand out from all the drama thus far.
First, education reporters have been making headlines. With political bite to the stories, news desks have had a long spell of interest in higher education. Seeing strength in numbers, lobby groups including Campaigning for Mainstream Universities (nee the Coalition for Modern Universities) and the Russell Group (representing research-intensive universities) have done well in airing their respective agenda.
Second, while there may not be more money on the table immediately after the bill becomes law (the first undergraduates to pay will enter university in 2006), there are signs that the dire financial plight of universities has at last been recognised.
In September 2002 the umbrella university lobby group Universities UK told the government that British universities needed £9.94bn to fill the funding gap after decades of neglect. The then higher education minister responded that vice-chancellors were 'living in cloud cuckoo land'.
In February 2004, Universities UK said British universities needed a spending increase of £8bn on top of tuition fees. In the 18 months between the two announcements, the figure was not only accepted by the government, but was actually used by ministers to justify introducing variable tuition fees. So far, no mention of cuckoos.
*Global Top 500 Universities ranking
Follow UK Higher Education in the media at:
The Guardian -- Higher Education
BBC News -- Education pages
Times Higher Education Supplement (weekly also carries daily news)
Research Fortnight (bi-weekly but website also carries daily news)
We invite your discussion of this topic on PIOnet.
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