Use the Language of Grant Proposals to Generate Publicity

by Dick Jones
Dick Jones Communications

Grant awards can be a source for more than the standard news release.

We've all written stories about five-, six-, and seven-figure grants given to our institutions to help solve the world's problems. These releases frequently make the local news but are ash-canned by editors beyond the region.

That's because a grant award usually represents the beginning of a process of investigation into a problem or issue. As Roger Johnson has documented and reported in his studies of the use of contributions to Newswise, processes tend not to play well in the media. Results get much more attention, particularly if they are unexpected or controversial.

So what can you do when all you have is the announcement of a grant without any results to report? I suggest that you obtain a copy of the grant proposal, which describes the problem to be solved using the award. Even better, it explains and demonstrates Ñ often with statistics Ñ why it is important to solve the problem. The language of the grant proposal also provides a rhetorical well into which you can dip to produce an Op-Ed piece, for example.

We were once asked to publicize a grant given to a university library to begin an information literacy outreach program to community libraries. The problem: science has shown that the very term "information literacy outreach program" induces sleep faster than Sominex.

The grant proposal, however, was filled with statistics showing that kids can't tell a good source from a bad one on the Internet. Much of the language in the grant proposal was grist for an Op-Ed by the library director advocating collaboration among classroom teachers, school librarians, and university librarians to solve this problem. The Op-Ed ran in the newspaper in the state capitol and in several other papers around the state Ñ and the tag line for the Op-Ed noted that the university had begun an information literacy outreach program with the grant money.

More recently, a release about a university's six-figure grant to improve physical education classes in an urban school district had been "deep sixed" by the local paper's editors. When we examined the grant proposal we found documentation that a significant number of students in the district were overweight and that most were able to "duck" gym class. With that and other facts taken from the proposal, we produced an Op-Ed by a professor of kinesiology on the need for changes in gym class. It ran in the local paper, with the grant mentioned, and also resulted in a nationally syndicated public radio commentary by the professor.

So the next time the dean calls you to publicize a grant, be sure to ask for a copy of the grant proposal. The dean may think the story is the dollar amount of the grant, but the real "gold" for you is probably in the language of the grant proposal.

We invite your discussion of this topic on PIOnet.

Book Review: Tough Calls: AT&T and the Hard Lessons Learned from the Telecom Wars

by Wilma Mathews
Arizona State University

Devotees of true crime books will love this one.

The victim: An aging corporate matriarch whose seven children have gone their separate ways while she seeks the magic potion that will keep her alive for another century.

The suspects: Agencies of the federal government, financial analysts, competitors, and several CEOs and their henchmen.

The detective: A veteran public relations (PR) man who has seen and heard it all.

Dick Martin completed his 32-year career with AT&T serving as executive vice president of public relations from 1997 to 2002, where he provided counsel to three CEOs. It is this insider's view that makes Tough Calls a must-read in both the PR and business categories.

Martin's clear writing style not only details the fall of a great company but also provides the PR counsel that was heeded Ñ or not Ñ and the lessons learned from the experiences.

With chapter titles like "Don't Dance to the Music of Your Own Buzz," "Don't Confuse Politics and Public Relations," and "Expect the Dumbing Down of Reality," Martin helps take the sting out of many of Ma Bell's more painful death throes.

The how-to pieces are built into the narrative, providing a needed punch to the lessons learned. Those lessons include how to build and sustain favorable brand recognition, how to balance internal and external communication, how to avoid the most common mistakes that executives make, and how to make PR more strategic.

Along the way are snippets of advice worthy of their own compendium:

• "While most executives go into an interview the way mediocre tennis players walk onto the court Ñ focused on returning whatever is lobbed at them Ñ the better players have a clear strategy for making points, no matter what comes over the net."
• "CEOs should no more depend on the media to be their primary means of communicating with stakeholders than depend on the media to run their board meetings."
• "You can't detect the currents of society unless you're in the pool up to your neck."
• "If you dance with the media, you don't get to sit down until they get tired."
• "Employee information is not the same as employee communications. Information flows off the presses and out of personal computers. Real communication flows two ways."
• "The practice of public relations is not defined solely by media relations. But that's what every CEO I've known has focused on, almost to the exclusion of other functions such as employee communications and community relations."
• "[The media] serve no master but a public that values entertainment as well as information, and sometimes mistakes the one for the other."
• "While few single events are potent enough to alter a brand's image fundamentally, a succession of actions that are inconsistent with a brand's values can undermine it just as quietly and just as surely as slowly dissolving limestone can suddenly create a sinkhole."

We invite your discussion of this topic on PIOnet.