The Art of Pitching and Relationship Building in PR with Annie Pace Scranton

Welcome. This is the Public Relations Review Podcast, a program to discuss the many facets of public relations with seasoned professionals, educators, authors and others. Now here is your host, Peter Woolfolk.

Welcome to the Public Relations Review Podcast and to our listeners all across America and around the world. Now I'm very pleased to announce that, as of September 2023, apple has ranked this podcast among the top 1% of podcasts worldwide. So thank you to all of my guests for providing the great content that makes this possible, and to my audience for your continued support. Now we, as public relations professionals, know that securing earned media is an important element of our toolkit. Now the question becomes what are the most important techniques you must know and use to successfully pitch reporters to secure story placement for your clients? Well, my guest today and return guest at that is Annie Pace Scranton. She is the founder and president of Pace Public Relations Headquarted in New York City. Annie started Pace Public Relations as an entrepreneur in 2010. The company grew from her solo apartment with one employee, that being Annie, into a multi-million dollar business focusing on business strategy development and public relations, using her strong broadcast television background. Now, today, with 20 employees in multiple office locations, they handle over 40 clients that span the globe. They strategically customize and tailor each client's publicity plan and PR campaign to meet their specific needs to maximize their media exposure. The firm specializes in television, radio, print and web placements. So we are here today to talk about her new book, the Guide to Earned Media. So, annie, welcome to the podcast again.

Oh, Peter, thank you so much for having me. This is a real treat.

Well, considering the wisdom that you bring by way of this book, I thought it was important that we have you on to talk about that. So my question really now, to begin with, is what caused you to want to write this book?

Writing a book has been sort of a lifelong dream, I think, from the time I was a young girl and loved reading, loved writing always, and I always thought, like bucket list, writing a book would be something that would be just so cool. And I will say I didn't set out intentionally to write this exact book, but I believe in sort of like the idea of if you think positively, you can manifest certain things to happen, and that was just like big vision board for me, right Like writing a book. And one day I was just spending in my office where I am now and an email came in to me from Kogan Page. They are a publisher based in the UK and the contact there said that he had seen a speaking engagement, a video clip of a speaking engagement I had done, speaking about PR and some of the tactics that I wound up writing about in the book, and he asked to have a conversation about potentially bringing me on as an author. And that's how it all came together. And obviously the book is very closely written about just what I do day in and day out and you know my decades of working experience, so it was a very sort of natural fit for me.

Well, considering that your background was primarily in TV in terms of, I guess, being a producer that part of that included booking or guestful particular shows you know what it took for people to get you to look at what was required. So let's begin to talk about some of those things that are required in terms of earning media, whether you want to start with TV or radio or wherever, but let's begin about what you look for to get a successful placement.

Well, it's not enough to just think that your client or the company that you are pitching is enough. Basically, I would say that most of the times, producers and reporters probably don't care about what you're actually trying to promote. What they care about is getting a story that is going to resonate with their viewers or their readers or their listeners. So it's really important to kind of begin implementing the tactic of thinking of your client, whether that's the CEO or the founder, as a thought leader or subject matter expert within their industry. And then, seeing what is trending in the news, what are people talking about? You know, how can we get that client some great, earned media, but how to be about something bigger than just exactly specifically what their company has going on. And that's a really good starting point, I think, for a lot of PR professionals to start implementing as a way to educate your client and also meet producers and reporters where they're at you know, so you can deliver to them the content that they're looking for.

Well, you know you touched on a very important subject right there thought leaders. Talk a little bit about what thought leaders are and how do you get yourself, or your client no-transcript into that position, because if, in fact, they want to be seen as one, they have to have certain credentials to live up to that vision that some people have of them.

Yeah, 100%. So I think it's actually kind of surprising to me how many big time CEOs or founders don't think of themselves as thought leaders, and a lot of times this can be due to the fact that they're just working really hard to make sure their company is successful, or perhaps the confidence may not be there as much as it should, or other people think it should be. So what I think is a great first step is to work with your clients to say to them we found such and such and this and this story trending in the news right now. What's your take on it, what's your perspective on it? It started as kind of like a conversation, so that way you can build up that trust element with your client and it doesn't feel quite as forced Once you get their unique opinion, because chances are they're going to say something that makes a lot of sense or maybe that hasn't been said yet in relation to whatever news item you're talking about, and from there you could start small, by suggesting maybe just a quick hundred word LinkedIn post on the topic, or if their website has a blog section or a place where they could write an article. Starting out with owned media could be a really natural way to get that ball rolling. And from there, once you kind of get them in the routine of thinking of themselves as a thought leader and sharing stories on a regular basis to get their perspective, it'll be a lot easier to then transition to pitching them to national media.

Let's also talk, then, about preparing them to talk to the media, because that, for a lot of people, there's a very uncomfortable situation to be in, obviously because they haven't done it before. But if that is part of getting them the exposure, then they need to be prepared for it. Let's talk a little bit about the preparation, if you will. I guess, for lack of a better term, media training that perhaps they might need to have to do a good job.

Absolutely. I mean, I think a lot of people just are maybe shy or don't like to be in front of an audience. It's funny I teach at NYU and I teach PR consulting in their graduate school and I ask my students next week and I ask them. I told them that they have to stand up in front of the class and give their 30 second elevator pitch and you could see the look of horror and fear on their faces and how it's just standing up and talking for 30 seconds in front of a classroom. And I make this analogy because I think even with a lot of CEOs and founders there is a lot of hesitancy and fear that goes into it. I think, first, just taking the temperature of the client that you're working with and what is their attitude or comfort level in doing media is really important because that is going to inform you of how much time and effort and energy you're going to need to put into that media training. But the first step really, I think is to hire a great media trainer or work with you know if you have somebody within your agency who can do it and to be in person, if you can, with that client is so important. And now we all meet over Zoom and location doesn't really matter, but for something like that, a personal touch, I think, really goes a long way. The second bit of advice, which is not, you know, earth shattering, but is to record the media training and make your client watch it back. That, I think, is really the thing that gets a lot of these CEOs saying to themselves alright, and now I understand why we're doing media training, because most of us don't like to watch ourselves back. We don't like to sound the way we sound or, you know, we don't like to see how we look on camera or whatever the case may be. But if you're getting somebody prep for especially a broadcast interview, they have to understand what goes into it and without creating or recreating what that TV news interview would look like, you're not going to get them to fully understand everything that goes into it. You know there is the element of working with clients to find their messaging like what is it? What are the points that we definitely want to make sure we can get across in this interview? But at the same time, it's so important to make sure the client understands that for most news interviews the anchor is going to have an idea of where he or she wants to go in the interview and a lot of the time that is in the context of a larger story and perhaps they are interviewing your client as that subject matter expert. So it's really important to I know this sounds so basic, but to listen to the question and answer that question and you have your talking points ready to go. But if it's not feeling really relevant to insert those talking points in the conversation, just give the anchor a great interview, because what is more important than anything else when it comes to TV is you want to do a good job, so you get asked back. You know that's the way that you sort of build up that groundswell and that brand awareness which is so important in terms of PR.

Well, you know, having been spending a long time in radio, one of the things that I'd always do, if somebody is, or if I'm going to be interviewed, I would always ask ask the person ahead of time what questions will you be asking me, which is a lot of people perhaps might be afraid to do, but you certainly can do it. That way you can prepare yourself Mentally, will find, as you said, to answer the question, and then I'm always thinking, well, is there any way for me to weave in some other things that makes sense to that question? But the first thing is that that is okay to ask. What questions will you be asking me to help prepare yourself mentally.

It's completely fine to ask that question. The worst that can happen is you won't get a response. You know which you know I mean can happen sometimes whether the producers busy or they don't. Producers aren't required to tell you what the questions will be in advance. Obviously, you have to understand what the subject is of the topic that you know You're going to be speaking about. But it's absolutely fine to ask that question and as long as it's also like framed in the context of I want to make sure that we're going to give you the best Interview possible, that is. That is the way that you'll get more luck out of the out of the producer.

Talk a little bit now about pitching. Let's say that you don't have a specific person you want to pitch to a producer, but you have a story idea. What are the things that you believe that PR people need to make sure they know when they're calling up a producer to pitch a story idea?

well, the first thing that is so critically important is to Make sure you have researched the producer, a reporter that you're about to email and pitch. I can't tell you how many times, as a producer myself many years ago, or when I'm at Conferences and about PR and pitching and media, the common refrain is I'm getting a lot of pitches that have no Relevancy to my coverage area, and that is probably just the worst mistake that you can make, because you just you lose the trust then of the, the media that you've reached out to, because they're going to say to themselves Wow, well, annie has no idea what I cover you know, so that's really, and we all, as publicists, rely on the great tools like Vision and muck rock and building media lists, and that is part of what we do and we have to do that. But make sure that your media lists are pretty tight when you're reaching out. If you have to and sort of like a Bigger, like a bigger capacity. What I would recommend to you is that switch up your tactic when you're reaching out to Media. You don't have to always send the same type of pitch to a reporter or a journalist. Sometimes it's really nice to try to just develop a relationship and more of an organic way by sending an email that says hey, so and so I really enjoyed your article that you wrote. You know I'm reaching out just to say that was a great read, congratulations. I see it's getting shared a lot. Hope we can stay in touch in the future and something like that can really go a long way. Whatever tactics you can think of yourself to build up a genuine relationship with a journalist is Going to go so much further than just blindly pitching. You know as many people as you can. I had a story from a client that I was working on today and I wound up texting my friend who I've known for years, you know, who worked at a major cable network, and I said, what do you think? And she was like this is perfect being able to have that closeness to the journalist. That's going to make your job a lot easier and more efficient.

Yeah, I think that's a huge point right there having a relationship with them. Now You're not going to have a relationship with all of them, but a certain few you certainly will. And and that helped me tremendously when particularly when I started working on Capitol Hill, because one reporter told me she said if you really want to get some things done, bring everything you need that a reporter has to have for this story, so so that we don't have to ask for anything. We completely prepared, because there's some reporters that might not have the time to ask you know what it is that they do need to do a complete story on this. So have everything that you think the reporter might need to do a good story on this and begin the form relationships I have been part of my experience of to getting a lot of things done 100%.

And I think also, you know we all now, all of us have public profile. Journalists are on social media a lot of times. Their profiles are public, like it's not just researching Every single article that they've read, but like see what they're about personally, you know, like maybe you go on their Instagram and you see that they have a dog Well, maybe you have a dog and you know, and it comes up sort of naturally in a conversation like it's all about just Information and getting as much information as you possibly can, so that way you can develop that relationship. It's here point, peter come armed to that conversation with a couple of very unique ideas or where your client can say I know you cover this topic frequently, but you know what is really interesting that no one's talking about is this thing, and that way they can start to understand oh okay, this person is not only trying to just promote what they're doing, but they actually get how journalism works and the kinds of stories that we're looking for.

You're absolutely right. Forming relationships is hugely important. In some media markets it might be a little bit difficult, but the first thing to do is work at it because, again, when I was in Congress and one of the guys I worked for was from New York, so I had to deal with New York media and one thing I learned real quick is that those reporters up there they want substantive stuff. So if you're coming to them, bring it. So you've got substance up there and background material, whatever else it is, and they'll begin to listen to you.

A hundred percent. Most journalists are not going to go into a conversation immediately trusting whoever they're talking to for the first time. You have to earn that trust and build that trust. So have your backup information, have some stats, have anecdotes to share, or maybe your client themselves has customers or clients that can support the narrative that you're trying to persuade the journalist to talk about. All of that is so critically important.

The other thing I found also important too is that if, in fact, you can offer them a first, if they've been helping you along the way and you've got something that is going to be important and you can let them in on it, to be the first to add it, that will give you a lot of mileage with them. Those things might not come along that often, but if one does and you've been working with somebody that serve it up to them, that will gain some mileage as well.

Pitching exclusives or under embargo. That's always going to give you a competitive edge when you're trying to get a story played. Just make sure whatever you're pitching actually weren't an exclusive, or to send it out under embargo, because a lot of times I think publicists may say, oh yeah, we should pitch it out. Pitch is not an exclusive, but it's not really new. You have to publicists, I think, need to really just get that journalist mindset and if that can happen, you're going to be so much further ahead of the game.

You brought up something that I hadn't thought about in a long time, and that is an embargo. I don't know if they're still using that often, but on many occasions that did use them and it does pay off. Because it is a good story, I'm going to give it to you in advance because you might need to do a little extra homework with it, but as long as we have the agreement that you won't let it go until I'll agree upon time, we'll move forward on this. That again is building relationships and helping everybody get something done that can show up later on down the road as well.

I couldn't agree more. You have to just be able to use your judgment and your expertise to say okay, is it just standard pitch? Am I going to do this under embargo or am I going to give this as an exclusive to one journalist? All of those are the tactics that we all use all the time, right?

Talk briefly perhaps now about maybe the most difficult early from your position as a PR person difficult story to pitch to the media and how you went about resolving or getting over the hump to make it successful. Have you had a situation like that?

I've had it every day.

That's a question you just people ask.

What can I tell you about today? That is giving me a challenge getting into the media, media relations specialist. Our job is not easy. It is not easy at all and, honestly, just the media being in the state that it's in, it's getting harder to get those stories placed. There's fewer media outlets, there's fewer reporters at media outlets because there's the layoffs all the time. The news cycle is crazier than ever and really heavily into politics. There's just not as much real estate I find, in a lot of media outlets to get coverage. I think one tip that I would say is that when there is a big news story, that is right for your clients to jump on it as quickly as possible, because when there is a breaking news story, that is when reporters and producers need guests immediately for either commentary or to get themselves in the studio. We had a client years ago who runs a frozen fruit entree company and they source a lot of their ingredients from overseas, from India and different places in the Asia Pacific area. When COVID happened, it was really difficult to get products and ingredients shipped over here. We had never previously thought about putting the CEO out as a supply chain expert. When it happened, we saw it up. Okay, you look up, you see CNBC is talking about supply chain issues. Well, hey, client, are you experiencing this? Can you tell us a little bit about it? Yes, actually we are experiencing this and it's really challenging what happens? Well, a week later he's on Bloomberg TV, he's in the Wall Street Journal talking about it. And what does that do? It elevates his credibility and legitimacy, it helps build overall brand awareness and it puts him in a category amongst his peers, that of where he sort of should be, you know, in terms of thinking up himself as a thought leader and commenting on industry trends. Those interviews were extremely valuable to that particular client. So we try to wait for those moments when we can as well.

I just want to make sure that I'm not missing anything. What are some of them? Maybe more important items or topics in your book, the Guide to Unmeasure, that we have not touched on, that you think we should touch on.

I think one thing that I would say is pretty important is the beginning chapters, when you're getting to know the client, or if you're working in-house at your company and you're the internal con person, is to really understand the origin story of how the company was created, and also to really understand the background of the founder and the CEO. And what I mean by that is not just like okay, let me look at their resume, but figuring out how you can get to know the founder and the CEO in a personal context, meaning what was the biggest challenge you had to overcome in your career, what was the lowest point for you, what was the turning point moment when you were at your last company and you turned it around? Where do you see the opportunity for our current company to really grow and differentiate itself in the space from our competitors? It's by getting that personalized info and nuggets of really interesting information that's going to spur ideas for pitching, because there probably may not be something trending in the news every week or news from the company every week that you want to promote. So in those down periods you can really lean into like profile pitching, founder pitching and those pieces of advice so many outlets now have stories of the five things entrepreneurs should know or the 10 best tips for new CEOs, whatever the case may be. So I think understanding, taking the time to really understand your client as closely as possible and those interesting nuggets of information will be very useful for pitching.

Well, annie, let me say that you have provided us with some very, very great information here that I think any and all PR people should know. So let me suggest that my list is that you get your hands on a copy of the guide to earned media how to use PR strategies to enhance your brand. The author is my guest today, annie Pace-Scranton, and I want to say once again, annie, thank you so very, very much One for bringing this book to my attention and two for being a guest on the podcast. As you know, we certainly appreciate having you here.

Thank you so much. I really appreciate you having me. People can check out the book on Amazon or right on the Cogan Page website and I'd be happy to connect with any of your listeners personally if they want to discuss it more or ask any questions.

Very good. Thank you so much, and again, my listeners, thank you for listening to this edition of the Public Relations Review and also share this with your friends, so I think they will find it as exciting as we have of having Annie here. And when you get a chance, if you enjoy the show, give us a great review. We sure appreciate that too. And don't forget to listen to the next edition of the Public Relations Review podcast. Have a great one, thank you.

Thank you.