What’s It All About, Al G?

I’m asked what I do all the time. Occasionally I’m asked why I do it. Kind of a “what’s it all about, Al G?” question.

My answer? Stories.

I’ve always been attracted to stories: reading them in books, watching them on stage and screen or listening at my grandfather’s knee. As a youngster into early adulthood I acted in plays and occasionally tried my hand at writing stories–partially because I’m a big ham but mostly because I loved being part of a story. Of course, I’m not the only one.

Since we first took breath thousands of years ago, humans have used storytelling as a means to learn and share information. Campfires, cave drawings, coliseums, prosceniums, books, radio, TV…humans have found ways to spread the word as quickly as spilled water finds cracks in the desert floor.

Today we are no different, except we have so many more ways to tell stories. Besides the “classic” methods–books, newspapers, radio, TV, smoke signals–we now have the electronic behemoth of the World Wide Web. Blogs, chat rooms, message boards, Twitter, YouTube, eBooks, webcasts…if you’re reading this chances are you know something about all of these tools for information sharing.

These tools have changed the game on the news media. The internet has made it possible for everyone to share his or her story. That’s good. It’s also not so good if you have a story you want to tell about your product, service, organization or cause. Why?

Millions of stories flood the web, all vying for the attention of the most credible sources. Sure, you can tell your story on your own blog, but who’s reading it? The ideal strategy is to get your story into the hands of credible sources with lots of eyeballs watching. That starts with news media and high traffic purveyors of information and opinion on the web.

In that lies the challenge and the reason why experienced public relations professionals are important now more than ever.  But don’t just take my word for it (from the Jan. 14, 2010 edition of The Economist):

According to data from Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS), a private-equity firm, spending on public relations in America grew by more than 4% in 2008 and nearly 3% in 2009 to $3.7 billion. That is remarkable when compared with other forms of marketing. Spending on advertising contracted by nearly 3% in 2008 and by 8% in the past year. PR’s position looks even rosier when word-of-mouth marketing, which includes services that PR firms often manage, such as outreach to bloggers, is included. Spending on such things increased by more than 10% in 2009.

PR has done well in part because it is often cheaper than mass advertising campaigns. Its impact, in the form of favourable coverage in the media or online, can also be more easily measured. Moreover, PR firms are beginning to encroach on territory that used to be the domain of advertising firms, a sign of their increasing clout. They used chiefly to pitch story ideas to media outlets and try to get their clients mentioned in newspapers. Now they also dream up and orchestrate live events, web launches and the like.

“When you look at advertising versus public relations, it’s not going to be those clearly defined silos,” says Christopher Graves, the boss of Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide. “It may be indistinguishable at some point where one ends and the other begins.”

PR has also benefited from the changing media landscape. The withering of many traditional media outlets has left fewer journalists from fewer firms covering business. That makes PR doubly important, both for attracting journalists’ attention, and for helping firms bypass old routes altogether and disseminate news by posting press releases on their websites, for example.’

As I said, it’s about stories. Advertising is great at telling people about your products and services, but people still innately know it’s a sales pitch. Public relations professionals identify what is most interesting (sexy, funny, informative, odd, crazy, etc.) about you, your product, service or cause and package it for the media in a way that gets their attention. If the media finds your story interesting and tells it to their audience, you are granted something advertising will never get you: credibility.

So, when people ask me what I do, I say I tell stories. Sure, I still write fiction and one of these days I’ll get back into community theatre (if they will have me); but my profession is based on telling your story–getting your message out.

That’s what it’s all about.