27 Sep The Value of Personal Contact in Publicity and Media Relations Efforts
One of the 10 earth-shaping, megatrends that John Naisbitt foresaw in his bestselling book of the same name — Megatrends — was something he named High-Tech, High-Touch.
In my 30+ years of working with high-tech clients and employers, I have seen Naisbitt’s premise borne out again and again.
“Whenever new technology is introduced into society, there must be a counterbalancing human response…that is high touch…or the technology is rejected. The more high tech, the more high touch.” John Naisbitt
For example, when I first entered the professional world as a Junior Account Manager for Tycer-Fultz-Bellack in the heart of Silicon Valley, there were only three ways to pitch a story idea to a journalist:
- Face-to-face (highly inefficient),
- Via mail or personal delivery (either costly, lengthy or both), or
- By a phone call (typically the most effective, but often the path with the highest risk to one’s self-esteem due to the increased prospect of being rejected).
But that was it, no other prospects existed.
Now thanks to a myriad of technological advancements, it’s possible to identify and reach out to journalists anywhere around the globe — regardless of where you might be or the time of day — all within a matter of seconds, using everything from
- Twitter DMs (Direct Messages),
- Facebook Messenger,
- LinkedIn InMail messages,
- Email (obviously), and of course,
- Via phone call or
- SMS/text message.
{And to be clear, I recognize that I’m just scratching the surface here with my abbreviated list.}
Each of these tools/methodologies can be quite useful in helping you achieve Publicity Success, regardless of your industry, company stature, products or services.
However, I have learned during my career that if I wanted to achieve long-term success in the worlds of publicity, media relations, public relations, and analyst relations, I had to incorporate High Touch activities into my plans.
At a minimum that meant phone calls. And at a high level, that meant face-to-face meetings and personal interactions.
Case in point, I am now consulting with VentureCapital.org, one of the leading Venture Capital Accelerators in the world, a non-profit that’s been around for 33 years. And yet, I discovered recently that my client had never met (face-to-face) with one of the top business journalists in the state. {Then again, it had also been some time since VC.org had conducted any true media outreach.}
So with a solid “breaking news” story in hand for this journalist, I picked up the phone, called him and gave him the lowdown. After learning that other stories would preclude an immediate write-up, I suggested a face-to-face meeting with Brad Bertoch, the CEO at VC.org, and the reporter agreed.
That sit-down happened yesterday morning, and what I find fascinating about that experience is the fact that the three of us spent the first 30 minutes talking about just about anything except the “breaking news” story I had originally pitched, from favorite TV shows to U.S. States visited to the prospect of coming up with a new name for North Dakota.
For the record, we did get around to talking about the story at hand, which was published online overnight and in print this morning, as shown in the photo below. {Here’s the link to the story: http://bit.ly/2cAhYbD.}
VentureCapital.org featured in the Deseret News for winning a contract to run Salt Lake County’s $7 million revolving loan fund.
However, as important/nice as that story is for my client, it’s not as important as the new relationship that was born yesterday between VentureCapital.org’s Bertoch and the reporter — especially when he asked us to make sure we shoot him future story ideas and subjects. And that wouldn’t have happened via emails or tweets or IMs alone; it ONLY could happen by getting together, face-to-face.
In other words, it required a
High Touch Connection
à la John Naisbitt’s Megatrends.
And that’s the point of today’s blog post:
The more technology takes over our day-to-day lives, the more important
personal contact becomes in all aspects of business, but especially in
publicity, media relations, public relations, and analyst relations.
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