Difference between revisions of "Publicity and General Media"

Latest revision as of 16:40, 1 August 2018

Publicity is a much sought after, and sometimes elusive, avenue to building membership. For organizations just starting out, and even those already established, it is important to be constantly aware of opportunities for publicity and to learn to create these opportunities.

Everything you do is an opportunity for publicity. Start small, and be aware that even a new angle on an old activity might prove newsworthy. Regularly announce meetings to the local papers and radio stations. Invite reporters and photographers to your events. Make these events personal—with the permission of a person involved in the activity, highlight his or her participation. You can also get information into the local media without paying for space by submitting a calendar item or press release.

Publicity and General Media

Patrick Terry, PXE International

"In our first few years, we were pretty desperate for ways to get publicity so that we could find new members. So we cooked up this scheme—we'd announce a meeting for affected individuals—before there was a meeting planned! Thus the newspaper or radio in Anytown, Anywhere would carry the calendar item for free and we'd get phone calls from people with PXE! If there were only a few people, we'd plan a meeting for another time, or a regional meeting, to combine several cities. In the cases where a large number of individuals emerged, we'd have a meeting in someone's home or a church hall and grow our membership at the same time we provided support. PXE International knew that as an organization representing a very rare condition we'd have to be very creative!

Another method: having planned a dinner dance, PXE International negotiated free billboard space on the central expressway in Boston—instead of emphasizing the dance, they used the event to again attract members. The billboard read, "Dinner Dance for Pseudoxanthoma Elasticum (PXE). Call 781-784-3817." People familiar with PXE driving by the billboard reported almost driving off the road with surprised delight that someone knew of their condition."

Another way to do this is to submit a press release. A press release—more properly called a news release—gives a brief description of a new event, discovery, or achievement, and then provides a short description of your organization with contact information. You can use wire services to distribute these releases, which newspapers then pick up as source material for articles or as notes for future articles.

Wire services also distribute calendars that indicate when information needs to be submitted to publishers in consideration of special calendar dates, such as holidays. If you plan events in conjunction with holidays or have other ways to tie your organization to a holiday, you can coordinate a news release with this editorial calendar to increase the impact of your release.

You can contact major media outlets more directly with your story—look for radio, newspaper, and television connections. Do you have a member who has an interesting story? Does one of your members do something incidental to the condition, but the condition can be mentioned as a part of the story? Is the individual or family willing and ready to go public with their story? Your story is interesting, and news outlets are eager to tell it, you just need to connect with the media. Does someone in your organization have media experience?

Be sure to let media know about every event you create, including all your fundraisers and meetings. Don't just alert them. Give them a press kit, educational information, contacts they can use for interviews, and story angles. Relate your event to other newsworthy items wherever possible. A media report on gene therapy, the Human Genome Project, and all kinds of studies and discoveries can use a human interest story—you just need to show the publications the connection between the big event and your condition. The media rely on personal examples to help flesh out the human dimensions of these stories for readers, and your organization can help them while getting visibility for itself.

That said, do not compromise the safety or comfort of your members just to get some air time. Make sure you know the implications—particularly when affected individuals and their families are being interviewed or having their pictures used. There are, at present, no federal protections in place for genetic discrimination in employment or insurance, so be sure that interviewees are not risking discrimination by being public about the condition—and that they understand the implications of participating.

Getting the Media Interested

Whether it's to increase awareness of your organization or to seek funding, it's important to be able to offer a quick sound bite about your organization that will capture an individual's attention and get the media interested.

Another way to get the media interested is to include stories in small, hometown newspapers.

Beth Anderson, Founder, Executive Director, and President of the Board

PAGER Association

"As part of a big awareness campaign, we want to get stories about our members placed in their hometown newspapers. We don't have time to do the placement work or write articles ourselves, so we put out a plea for volunteers. Most small newspapers will take human interest/first-person medical articles from independent writers.

Our ad was for a "virtual" opportunity, which means the volunteer can work from home. We titled it "Amateur Journalist" and said we would match them up with a family that wants to be interviewed. I sent out instructions with each match, telling them how to work together to place the story in small newspapers where the family lives.

We got dozens of responses from writers who answered our volunteer announcement on VolunteerMatch.com. In fact, the response was overwhelming, and we had to take the announcement down after just a few days."

You should also be aware that the media are looking to hook their audience as surely as you are looking to hook the media. For human-interest stories of good deeds or with good outcomes, this can be a very helpful thing. But understand that the media may also find a less than flattering angle, particularly if there is controversy surrounding some aspect of your condition or the research or treatment for it. Understand that the media usually illustrate controversy by focusing on two extreme and diametrically opposed opinions—and this could create a negative impression for your organization or your condition. Know what your interviewees will say, and work with all members who have media contact to agree on a strategy for that contact—a party line, so to speak. You may want to have a half page of "talking points" about the condition and your organization for the person being interviewed. Keep in mind that the media organizations are all in business to make news and not necessarily to educate the public or fulfill the goals of your organization.

Creative Ways to Get Your Message Out

Wendy Hubbard

PXE International

"Also look for any related story or letter in popular magazines and newspapers. When Prevention Magazine ran a story on the importance of walking to ease cramping in calves caused by low blood flow, PXE International wrote a letter, and asked my permission to submit it with my name as the author. The letter thanked the magazine for the article and mentioned how I had sent it to PXE international to tell them how great Prevention Magazine is. The result for PXE International was 10 new members—all of whom read the article and learned about us!"

Press Release Service

Question: How does your organization send out press releases? Are there services that offer this free of charge? Have your organizations ever paid for a service?

Answer: We pay for a VOCUS service, which is part of PR http://www.vocus.com/pricing/#compare

We are allowed distribution of five press releases a month, social media monitoring, some help with writing and pay $2,500 per year. (Please don't reveal our rate to them) It is a wonderful option as we do all our own work ourselves whenever possible and very seldom hire consultants or pay for services. We needed something semi robust since we have a large undiagnosed base. What is VERY important is to do some extremely hard negotiation with companies such as this as they will try to sell you their biggest PR kit, which most likely won't be used. You never want to use PR extensively, just when there is a major event or when you make news about the organization. If your organization is anything like ours, we are very tight with the dollar…and tough negotiation is absolutely essential to get twice as much with so very little.

When writing our press releases, we do pass them by those in our base who are journalists, so they can clean them up for us. The social media aspect is so very important because that also shows up on Google … to keep it fresh every single day… as far as the website, put as many relevant links as you can so you can be in the top five discussing your mission!

Pre Publicity Considerations

Be sure to assess the type and amount of publicity your organization wants. Research your possible avenues carefully. Here are some good resources and points to consider when starting to plan:

Preparing for and Handling Publicity

At times your organization may receive requests from individuals who are fundraising for a specific person, or for personal expenses. While there are some nonprofit organizations, such as HelpHopeLive, whose mission is to aid families with covering their own medical expenses by raising philanthropic dollars, there are many organizations that may feel this could result in the loss of their 501(c)(3) status and the misrepresentation of their mission, logo, or website. However, there are ways to protect your organization’s mark. For example, Genetic Alliance and PXE International keep their marks protected for free by using the trademark website TEAS.

Jim Moore

AXYS

“Copyright often is more of a declaration than formal registration of ownership. A trademark is slightly different. AXYS trademarked its name/logo, and we registered the trademark. We paid over $700 to research and register the trademark, and that was only a fraction of the true cost, most of which was donated as pro-bono services.

Meanwhile to copyright your material, you can go through a formal process, but few do that. Instead, you simply declare it with the symbol and statement. I worked in television, and we copyrighted every newscast, and all other media respected the copyright, or risked vigorous litigation. We never registered those copyrights; we produced about 8 to 10 live shows per day. For Example: © Copyright 2014...all rights reserved. (The copyright symbol is in your symbols font.)

The simplicity of a copyright is fairly important to managing the huge volumes of original material most organizations produce. Registering a copyright on anything less than a book or movie is too onerous.

As I understand it, a trademark protects you from someone else actually stealing your name, as opposed someone trading on your name. They are not pretending to be you, or using your name to describe another organization, they are, instead, pretending your organization endorses or supports their work.

My personal inclination is that you should fully enforce your ownership and enforce “fair use” and “crediting” standards. As I understand it, in the eyes of the law, failure to enforce is tantamount to permission once it can be established that the owner of the copyright is aware of the infringement. The use of your logo is absolutely verboten except when legitimately referencing your organization...but not trading on its “good name.” The following links have information on Fair Use: [1] [2]

Furthermore, the following link is a Google search with a lot of resources on Crediting: [3]

Your organization may not choose to declare a copyright or trademark, but this does not necessarily mean your rights are limited. A college professor was recently fired and sued for plagiarizing a student’s work. Students do not copyright their work, and yet they own it. This illustrates that a work that exists prior to the plagiarism and can be traced to the owner/author is still owned by the owner/author. It’s a harder struggle, but being able to trace the origins of a work and subsequent “unfair” use by another party is quite compelling.

Disclaimer: I am not an attorney or a CPA. All comments shared are opinions only, and they are not, nor should they be construed to be counsel. Please seek counsel from an attorney or CPA.”

Dean Suhr

MLD Foundation

“In addition to putting the copyright notice on all materials, including the footer of each web page, I would also suggest that organizations consider having a usage/reference policy in their websites’ terms of use. We find that having things written down makes it easier to respond to requests, and certainly makes it easier to enforce/notify if someone is stealing/violating/infringing because the policy is written and we can show it pre-dates the infringement (notice that we keep a revision history on that page as well).

Our Legal and Trademark page on our website has the following sections: - Copying, Pasting, and Copyrights - Linking & iFrames (re-purposing our website pages) - Trademarks (note that for clarity we list/show our trademark phrases and logo)

You are welcome to copy any use any and all information on our legal & trademarks page for your own organization(s).

Families, and even some organizations, often copy our disease descriptions word for word to their site. Their hearts are good in terms of education and awareness, but that' simply the wrong approach. We often do a Google search for some key phrases we have embedded in the disease description to find violators.

It is very import that you notify all infringers in writing; frankly, it's less important from a legal perspective if a family infringer actually removes the content than it is if it's another organization or company, but your obligation is to treat all infringers equally and you must notify them all -- otherwise an infringing organization could say you are selective about, or not, protecting your ownership rights.

Second to our disease description and research updates, the most commonly copied MLD item is our logo butterfly. Often it's for private fundraisers (or tattoos!). They equate, thanks to our hard work, our butterfly logo with the disease so it makes sense to them. We usually will grant permission to use the butterfly, as long as our URL and the copyright symbol are both present - and where possible, we try to keep the branding colors intact, too. We often give use permission for private fundraisers as long as they make it clear that donations are not coming to us and are not tax deductible - this builds awareness & credibility of our organization, strengthens relationships, and often nets us some direct or indirect donations.

Some ask how we can copyright a butterfly ... take a close look and you will see this is not an ordinary butterfly. It has faces in the bottom of each wing. See story here. Notice how we, in a more subtle way than on the legal and trademark page, have also reiterated portions of the usage rules on this page (note that generally it's not a good idea to have a policy printed in two places, unless you are very careful to maintain consistency).”

Publicity Opportunities

Several groups have been approached about being featured on a program entitled "INSIGHTS," a show hosted by Hugh Downs and aired on Discovery Health. Many groups report that after talking with individuals associated with the program, they learned that groups are asked to pay ~$22,000 to $25,000 to be featured.

[This paragraph submitted by Dean Suhr, MLD Foundation Oct-09 In short, Insights offers to produce a professional video and then have 400 national TV placements on Discovery Health, PBS, CNBC, Fox News, CNN, etc. But each market is one placement so your piece will likely play only once to a given audience. You are essentially left with a very expensive professional video. Probably not a good cost/benefit ratio for most foundations. They were careful with me to describe PBS as a potential distribution channel, not an affiliate - others have described being told they were part of PBS. You can see the sales documents and contracts on their website: Insights, click on the Medical Picture (upper left), Scroll down the left column and click on the "Special Invitation" key and enter Username: guest Password: 2009

A response from PBS (who the program claims it is affiliated with) stated:

PBS is not affiliated with this program.

There is some information about companies making similar claims or offers to the one you received under the Frequently Asked Questions section of the PBS Web site. Scroll down to the heading “Other Frequently Asked Questions.” You’ll see several questions regarding situations that are similar to the one you described in your message.

Here is the answer PBS posted:

PBS wishes to clarify that it is not associated with and does not endorse, distribute programming for, review underwriting for or otherwise have any business relationship with the following production companies: VM Television, Vision Media Television, Paradigm Media Group, PMG, PMGTV, Infinity Media Group, Roadshow Productions, Family Television Studios, United Media Communications Group, American Review TV, Business Break TV, Event Media TV, or Global Television Studios. PBS does not oversee the production or distribution of any programs associated with any of these companies.

If you are solicited by a production company that claims or implies an association with PBS, please notify PBS.

Public Relations

Good public relations (PR) is key to getting upcoming research and advocacy viewpoints into a wider professional and public arena. Some forums for PR projects may focus on community newspapers, setting up and managing social network sites (Facebook, Twitter, Volunteerspot, Foursquare, Youtube, etc.), press releases about your research or upcoming events, and documentary style interviews with key participants and staff. These help you share what is going on within your organization while also opening the dialogue between the members of the public and specific field.

Assembling a PR team, whether it is through a student run university organization/class or a professional team can offer assistance with interfacing with the media. While student run projects can be a more cost efficient option because they are more likely to offer their services for free or at low cost, the time commitment they can offer may not support all of your organization's needs. You also may have to devote more time to informing them about your organization and making sure projects are wrapped up in a meaningful and useful way by the time their project concludes. Hiring a professional team allows you to devote less time to guiding them through the process as well as guarantees greater time commitment to support ongoing PR projects. The downside to hiring a team is that their services can be quite expensive. When deciding between your PR options, you must weigh the needs of your organization and the cost that it would incur, both financially and for those responsible for interacting with the PR agency.

National Awareness Days

Information on creating a national awareness day for rare diseases that do not already have an official day. National Awareness Day