Creating a Climate on Campus for Media Relations Success

by Dick Jones
Dick Jones Communications

You have on your campus "The World's Greatest Living Authority." The problem is that he won't talk to journalists. Every school has one or several of these recalcitrant experts. I've had only limited success at changing individual media hermits into media hounds, and if you have a foolproof method, I welcome your advice and counsel on the topic.

There is, however, a way to create on campus a more positive climate for media relations generally, a process by which the faculty can be encouraged to help you out. I'll explain, but first some background.

There is, on most campuses, no motivation for faculty to assist with media relations. Professors typically are rewarded for their performance in three categories: teaching, research, and service. Those are the criteria upon which tenure and promotion decisions are made.

At many schools, "service" means that the professor will serve on the parking committee, the commencement-planning committee, or the search committee for a new hire. Does "service" also mean that a professor should aid the college in media relations? You and I think so. But will the departmental tenure and promotion committee feel the same way? The answer at most schools is "only sometimes."

You can help to create incentives, however. Ask the president or the dean to write a short note of appreciation to professors when they help you out with news media placements that result in major positive visibility for your institution. The recipients of such letters then have something tangible that they can place in their "service" folder to show the tenure and promotion committee that they have done valuable service for the college or university.

You, of course, are the one drafting the letters of thanks from the president or dean. The letters are then printed on the prexy's stationery and signed by him or her. That makes it relatively painless for those busy top-level administrators to buy in to such an effort. But it certainly shows faculty that cooperation with media relations is a service that is valued at your school.

By creating a climate on campus wherein media relations is officially valued and recognized in the area that counts most Ñ promotion and tenure review Ñ you should see increased willingness by faculty to help you out with a quote, a media interview, or an Op-Ed when you need one.

We invite your discussion of this topic on PIOnet.

Book Review: The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Differenc

by Diane Dobry
Teachers College, Columbia University

The shortage of available flu shots this year has people concerned, wondering whether it could result in an epidemic. Malcolm Gladwell, a former Washington Post reporter who covered the AIDS epidemic years ago, wrote that there is a moment when an epidemic reaches critical mass that epidemiologists refer to as "the tipping point," after which the disease becomes widespread before dying out. Ideas, he says, can be contagious in the same way that a virus is, and will spread from person to person in much the same way.

As Public Information Officers, we are required to be more and more aware of marketing in our professions -- how to tip the scales in our direction. In his book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, Malcolm Gladwell, currently a staff writer for The New Yorker, looks at how and when the crucial moment of change occurs and how to make that happen.

Through stories from the worlds of business, education, crime, fashion, and media, Gladwell strings together a series of examples of how the phenomenon of a social epidemic is spread. Contagiousness begins with a messenger who has a sticky message to deliver, he explains. Like rumors that take off uncontrollably, messages are best carried through word of mouth. And as with an epidemic, it only takes a little input to start something spreading very quickly.

Gladwell uses case studies that illustrate how an effort to start a positive epidemic can work. Through his analysis of what this approach entails, he breaks down the way a small gesture can start a trend. From how Hush Puppies made a comeback to a sudden drop in New York City's crime rate, he makes his case for taking a small, seemingly insignificant idea and putting it into the hands of the right people -- whom he calls "connectors" and "mavens" -- to make it spread.

We all know people who are connectors and mavens -- those who know almost everyone or whom everyone seems to know (the connectors), and the people who always have lots of information at their fingertips (the mavens). Put these two together and you have the makings of a social epidemic.

In the foreword of a related book by Seth Godin, Unleashing the Ideavirus, Gladwell says, "Advertisers spent the better part of the 20th century trying to control and measure and manipulate the spread of information....But this notion [that an idea can become contagious] says that the most successful ideas are those that spread and grow because of the customer's relationship to other customers -- not the marketer's to the customer." And that is what is at the center of successful marketing, he says -- the customer.

We invite your discussion of this topic on PIOnet.