May - Public Relations Center of Excellence
A place where shared learning happens; extending the reach and value of public relations.
Welcome to the May StoryMap for the Public Relations Center of Excellence!
Our goal is to build and support a community where conversations, brainstorming, collaborative ideas and successes about public relations are encouraged and where content, success stories, best practice collaboration are shared and celebrated.
Here's what you can expect this month:
- Trending News = Supply chain's global impact
- May Topic = Imagery
- PR Best Practice Tips = Preparing Spokespeople for Media Interviews
- The Think Tank = Examples of story-telling from around the globe
Trending News
Global supply and demand shocks are forcing suppliers, manufacturers, and consumers to reassess a new way to make, deliver and purchase products. From logistics to fulfillment, we continue to see opportunity to showcase how GIS and location intelligence provides real-time and predictive insights for this industry.
A new predictive modeling technology helps organizations understand how climate change could disrupt global supply chains decades from now.
Ask a global supply chain executive or COO what types of scenarios keep them up at night, and there’s a good chance you’ll hear about the 2011 floods in Thailand.
May Topic - Imagery
One key to a successful PR program is focus. Being focused on key topics that are important to your organization gives you the chance to develop a PR strategy that can amplify your message and raise awareness. Here at Esri, our 2022 topics include innovation, infrastructure, imagry, climate, equity, and major trending news.
This month's focus is imagery. Drone, aircraft, and satellite-deployed sensors provide views of our planet from every possible vantage point, creating massive volumes of untapped information. Imagery helps people understand problems by putting massive data volumes to work using powerful mapping, geospatial analytics, geospatial artificial intelligence (GeoAI), and modeling tools.
Using imagery as part of your public relations strategy gives editors an easy opportunity to further amplify your organization's brand through easy-to-use visual components that support the story being placed.
The ArcGIS Imagery Book is a great resource as you learn how imagery and remote sensing power modern GIS. The book contains a number of images and links to web apps and maps that highlight interesting stories about our planet and the issues we face.
The ArcGIS Imagery Book
Here is another resource you might find useful. Wayback Imagery is a digital archive of the World Imagery basemap that enables you to access over 150 versions of World Imagery captured over the past 8 years. The different vintages of imagery are published as tile layers that you can add to your maps or can use as basemaps.
Questions? Contact us at prcoe@esri.com
PR Best Practice Tips
Each month we will focus on one key best practice that can help you build a PR program. In addition, we will offer practical steps that you can begin to implement immediately. Our goal is to offer you simple, straight-forward ideas and advise.
Preparing Your Spokespeople For Media Interviews
Your spokesperson may be an expert in their field, but if they haven't taken the time to adequately prepare for the interview, the journalist might barely reference them or your company in the article, or misunderstand key points and include wrong information. Worse yet, they might not include anything your spokesperson covered during the discussion because they were not clear with key points, inconsistent with answers, or unable to demonstrate value to the publication and its readers on the topic being covered.
The media will also remember spokespeople who were under-prepared and will likely not want to speak with them in the future. Being unprepared damages the reputation of your spokesperson and your organization.
The goal with any media interview is to clearly communicate your messages with real impact, while also strengthening the reputation of your organisation. Here are several things you and your spokesperson can do to be better prepared.
- Key Messages. This is the most important part when preparing for an interview. Key messages are one or two points your spokesperson should make during the interview. Without them, your spokesperson will have little focus and will leave the journalist wondering what point they were trying to make. Several important things to remember when developing key messages:
- They should be simple and brief. The spokesperson must be able to recall them in an instant and share their perspective without it feeling like they were memorized. The audience must be able to easily understand them.
- They need to be relevant to the audience. For example, there is no point talking about supply chain inefficiencies if the publication's audience wants to learn about theft prevention.
- They should be positive. Don't bring up anything negative, and never (ever) talk poorly about your competition.
- Supporting Information. While key messages are extremely important, they are not enough and your spokesperson needs to have several pieces of supporting information ready to use as they can add validity to your discussion when the journalist asks for more details. There is no need to have lists and lists of additional information, but we do recommend you have several for each of the key points. There are two types:
- Facts and Figures. These are any kind of numbers, statistics or research to substantiate your key point. Be certain you can reference the original source, and be careful that you only reference those that make the biggest impact. If you use too many, the journalist might not use any.
- Examples. These can bring a story to life and humanize any facts and figures you have referenced. Customer stories are a great example, but be certain you have explicit permission from the customer to share their story. It's also important you are able to connect the journalist with the customer should they ask for an introduction to hear directly from them.
- Bridging. Sometimes the journalist asks all kinds of questions, but not any that let your spokesperson talk about the points they want to make. Rather than waiting for the journalist to ask the 'right' question, your spokesperson use a technique called Bridging. It takes a bit of practice, but it follows the A-B-C rule: Acknowledge the question with a direct answer, Bridge with a response that takes the answer back to where you want, and Communicate your key messages. Here's an example: " ... but what's really interesting is what our customers told us when we surveyed them." ".... but the key issue for users of this product is not what you might think." "... what's really important is how our work has been helping a wider group of people."
- Difficult Questions. It's always a good idea to think about questions the journalist may ask, and more important to think about questions they may ask that you don't want to answer. The answer 'no comment' is never an acceptable response is it looks like your spokesperson is trying to hide something. Here are a few strategies your spokesperson can use:
- The anticipated difficult question. These are the central big issue for your organization or industry. Address the question directly, accept responsibility where appropriate, and explain what is being done to fix the problem.
- The question not related to the interview topic, but still within the area your spokesperson can address. For example, a competitor might have launched a new product and the journalist is looking for your opinion. Your spokesperson should acknowledge the question, avoid any response that could be deemed negative, and bridge back to the technology and capabilities your product/service currently offers.
- Off-the-wall, irrevelant questions. Maybe the journalist is trying to catch your spokesperson off guard, or maybe they simply don't understand the topic being discussed. These are the questions your spokesperson can reasonably explain why they are unable to respond. It's also the perfect time to bridge back to the topic being discussed.
- Practice. Take a few minutes before the interview to review the key messages. Practice your responses to anticipated questions. Practice speaking with clear, simple to understand points. Practice being concise and short. Be aware of long-winded, difficult to follow responses.
Industry events are back! Next month we will offer ideas on the best way to amplify your participation to media covering the event.
Previous PR Best Practice Tips
- How to Build Effective Media lists: https://arcg.is/00yWP
- Media Management; Building Relationships Beyond the PR Pitch: https://arcg.is/KT9mz
Let us know what you think about this topic, or others you would like covered. We can be reached at prcoe@esri.com.
The Think Tank
The Think Tank is where we will share thought-provoking examples of story-telling from around the globe to offer ideas on how GIS, mapping and location intelligence is used. You can expect examples from Esri StoryMaps, industry podcasts, social media posts as well as traditional media coverage. The goal is to help you think beyond your traditional business message as a way to create an opportunity for a conversation with your selected media audience.
Causeway Coast Community: Earth Day Highlight
Infographic: Using Statistics That Highlight Child Climate Risk Index for Easier Understanding
LinkedIn: Star Wars
Contact Us
Drop us a note at the email address below to share What would you like to see highlighted and discussed in a future StoryMap? Drop us a note at the email address below
The PR Center of Excellence team....
Joanne Beth Shaz
"My vision is to be a teller of stories about our customers, our brand, and our capabilities ... and how we pioneer problem solving using GIS. I'm passionate about sharing these compelling stories - to show the value & benefits of location intelligence for better decision making about our economy, our environment, and our society." --Joanne McLaughlin, Head of Marketing, Esri Ireland
"I have always enjoyed public relations and communications. The opportunity to help Esri and our customers share their stories across business, industry, and social media channels keeps me energized every day." --Beth Ambaruch, Senior Media Relations Strategist
"As Esri Inc’s Marketing Lead for Europe, I develop and execute the European marketing strategy for the world’s leading digital mapping and analytics provider, collaborating with marketing directors across 28 countries, and the European business development team, to drive growth across the region. As an ideator, I am always working on new and innovative concepts to deliver results." --Shaz Qamar, European Marketing Lead