How to Manage a Successful Press Conference

Ralf Leinemann,Elena Baikaltseva

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351930109
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Commerce
• Categoria: Relations publiques

Despite the ubiquity of new forms of communication technology, press conferences remain a vital way for companies to share news. One size or message does not fit all and the content showcased must be of interest to every member of the audience. This book highlights the importance of understanding the needs of those who will attend; an ever-more critical skill as stretched editorial teams make it increasingly difficult to lure journalists from their desks. In the international press arena, journalists from different countries have particular needs and can react differently to the same situation. The authors show that to ensure success, PR professionals need to take account of the event, speakers, style, content and tone; and follow through to the all-important tasks of obtaining feedback and analysing results. How to Manage a Successful Press Conference is essential reading for PR teams working in a national or, particularly, an international environment and enables you to address the whole range of activities necessary for success, from the basics through to advanced issues such as managing press expectations across borders and cultures.

Objective of the Book

This book is intended to be a handbook for PR professionals containing food for thought and recommendations as to what to consider when planning and executing international press conferences. The book should also be a good resource for event managers who are managing press conferences oil different scales. We hope that they can also leverage some of the ideas discussed on the following pages for other events. Finally, we hope that marketing professionals and communications managers in general find this book useful.

This book is written by European PR professionals. It is based on experience in the European market. Since PR and media patterns differ from region to region (sometimes even from country to country), not everything discussed on the following pages is for consideration outside Europe.¹

Turning this argument around, however, results in this book being highly appealing to audiences outside Europe.² In particular it may be of great interest to companies from outside Europe that are expanding outside their home market. Marketing managers, PR and non-PR communications professionals in those companies may want to learn what media work is like in Europe. Also, non-European PR professionals who do not have sufficient public relations support in Europe may want to supplement their knowledge. And finally, small PR agencies or individual professionals based outside Europe who need to gain some education about the European market, and even larger PR agencies that want to use this as part of their training with non-European staff, may be interested in learning about executing press conferences in Europe.

The goal of the book is to provide tips that make any conference successful and a memorable event for all participants.

It should be noted that the participants of a press conference typically have different individual needs. As a result, they have individual agendas and objectives and they will pay particular attention to different parts of the conference. Thus, different participants could easily walk away from the event with very different impressions and thus with very different perceptions of what has been communicated and if the event was successful.

It must be in the interest of the PR manager organizing a press conference to ensure that most participants of a press conference have a pleasant experience and, most importantly, that they understood the messages and, ideally, received them in a positive way.

It is obvious that the audience at a press conference are representatives of the media. It should be noted that this community is not homogeneous. Depending on what audience they communicate to in papers, radio, television or online, the individual reporters have different needs.

But it is also important to understand that there are additional participants at the conference, such as your own executives, who deliver the news in speeches and interviews. They probably pay attention to different aspects of a press conference. They want to be briefed properly, they want to leave a good impression, they want to meet interesting people. And, of course, they want to ensure that the journalists write positive stories about their message – and ideally also about themselves. Also, you need to take into account that for a company executive, the internal impact of his or her performance at a press conference is important. Success certainly strengthens an executive's position in the organization.

Finally, the organizers of a press conference are the third group of participants. You as the organizer want to ensure that everything runs smoothly and you are not caught by surprise during an event or during the preparation. You want to be prepared for everything. You are happy when everyone else is happy.

So, there are at least three different parties at a press conference who should be able to enjoy the event: the journalists, your executives and yourself. Nowadays, however, there is typically at least a fourth party involved in a press conference. This could be a partner company, a guest speaker, or another external organization or individual that endorses the news of the day. An example may be a software vendor who endorses the introduction of a new hardware platform (for example, a company developing games endorsing the introduction of a new game console, or a database vendor endorsing the introduction of a new processor generation). Another example may be the endorsement of a strategic company decision by an analyst company. And finally, your product launch may be supported by a customer who signs a significant order right away. Regardless of who the fourth party is at your press event, it is important to ensure that they enjoy the event as well.

Creating a perception

But what is the objective of a press conference? Well, you want to make an announcement to the public. But not only do you want the message to be heard, you also want to ensure that your announcement is received in a positive way.

You want to create a positive perception.

This book is about the PR tools and communication processes that should be used to support the news you want to announce, in order to get the public interested in the news and to leave them with the most positive perception.

1 See, for example, Appendix B on cultural influences on PR.

2 This paragraph is based on discussions with Helen Ostrowski, CEO Porter Novelli.

Part 1 Introduction

Chapter 1 Why is a Press Conference Special?

All conferences have one thing in common: the message disclosed at the event is intended for the audience of the conference. This is so obvious that it need hardly be mentioned.

A conference for physicists will address scientific topics.

An oil and gas conference will address companies and research organizations in that industry.

And how about a press conference? Well, you will argue that the audience is obviously the press and thus there is no exception to the rule, but this is true only at first glance – the true audience is not even in the room during a press conference! The true audience is the readers of the magazines and websites, the viewers of the TV channels and the listeners of the radio stations – your customers!

A press conference is a bit like a game of Chinese Whispers: the speakers present to the press, who in return deliver the content to their readers. In other words, a press conference is all about presenting to the presenters.

An immediate result of this fact is that you need to be prepared to measure the success of a press conference on two levels after the event. The first level is obviously the impact you made on the participants, the journalists. You need to ask questions like 'Did they attend in the first place?', 'Did they like your news?' and 'Did they write what you expected them to write?' The second level is the impact you made on the 'true audience' that the journalists wrote for or broadcasted to. When measuring the results of your press conference on this second level, you need to ask questions like 'Did you create increased awareness for your company or your products?', 'Did the customers change their behaviour towards your company or your products?' and 'Did the customers ultimately buy your products because of what they read?'.

We will discuss the topic of measurement in Chapter 28. For now we want to keep in mind that it looks straightforward to measure on the first level, but it may be complicated to measure on the second level, since measuring customers' behaviour is influenced by many parameters, with PR being only one of them. And it indeed looks difficult to single out the influence of a press conference on customers' behaviour.

Reach your audience

Vendors want to reach their customers. They want to convince them to buy their products or services.

There are several ways to get to customers. The direct one is through trade shows or events, addressing customers directly. These events could be presentations to consumers in supermarkets or user conferences typically addressing commercial or industrial customers.

The disadvantage of these events is that the number of reached customers is very limited. Only a few hundred people visit the supermarket per day or fit into the presentation room during the user conference.

At a press conference every journalist represents thousands or millions of customers, depending on the circulation of the respective publication. This makes a press conference so much more powerful than a customer event – and at the same time so much more challenging. On the one hand, it is a chance to get a strong message across to a large audience; on the other hand there is the risk that the message is misunderstood by the press and communicated in a negative way to customers. And if that happens, the idea of doing a press conference has back-fired on you.

It maybe argued that advertising reaches the same audience. It is also considered safer since the advertiser has full control over the message – the content is not filtered by a journalist, or dependent on a journalist's opinion. While this is correct, it should still be noted that a positive article – and even a neutral one – is much more powerful than any advertising. According to media analysis research, an article generated by PR is up to ten times more effective with the target audience than an advertisement covering the same space in a publication. The reason is obvious: it is in the nature of advertising only to tell positive things about a product, while a positive article from an independent or neutral journalist is much more convincing.¹

The fact that the press is neutral – or at least should be – is one of the differences between a press conference and a customer event.

The press should approach a presentation in a neutral way, be open, but also critical. After having collected all the information, journalists should come to a certain opinion that they then express in an article for their readers.

A customer, however, is typically prejudiced. In the case of a user group conference, customers meet who have already bought certain products; they should already be loyal customers. These customers should have a positive attitude towards messages from a vendor at that conference. Presenting to the customer base of your competitor, however, will be significantly more challenging ...

Competition

Any conference is also a battle for mind share. In business, you compete with your direct competitors, namely, vendors who address your customers with products and solutions that compete with your own. At a p...