GoPro Is Perfect Example of National Media Pitch for PR

by Jayme Soulati on 01/26/2012 in Branding, Media Relations

I looked at the byline of the reporter; was I reading this amazing story in Fast Company? Close, but not. Tom Foster “has been an editor at Men’s Journal and Fast Company. This is his first story for Inc.”

My two all-time favorite ‘zines for business news, company innovation, entrepreneur success, and so much more. This story, “The GoPro Army—How a scrappy little camera company turned its customers into a stoked sales force and became a $250 million industry leader.”

Crumbs. You can’t beat that headline; it tells the story right there (and it took the whole page with 16 images from GoPro cameras to illustrate the first spread of the article). In true Fast Company form, the first two pages are in its style, while the last four are Inc.-esque.

What’s needed to get this kind of coverage money can’t buy?

Before I go into the elements for a national story pitch, I want to reference my message mapping articles again, and for good reason. I started writing this with the angle of “backing into a message map” because I had no idea this company existed (I’m not an extreme sports fanatic, nor would I ever consider the daredevil stunts GoPro does). As I was reading the first two pages with every line circled in three out of four columns (as blog fodder), I saw what the reporter told me come to life, “GoPro is a company that’s deeply invested in storytelling (primarily in the form of extreme sports videos.”)

As the reporter told his story beginning with hair-raising visuals as a passenger skedaddling through the Santa Cruz mountains in a Ford GT40 replica Le Mans racing car with GoPro CEO at the wheel, I was hooked. Not only was GoPro being acknowledged for its storytelling finesse, a master storyteller in Editor Tom Foster was recanting his personal adventure, too.

Just read the article, OK? You’ll get what I’m saying spot on.

Story Elements for National Media

So, let me try to share the elements you need for your company or client to be considered by national media.

The basics in this story are covered well.

Zany and photogenic CEO under 40-years-old

Proven profits and exponential company growth

Successful product with adoring consumers

Market monopoly (90% market share)

Industry everyone and anyone will drop jaws about.

 

The added bonus to making the pitch all the sweeter:

Product Line.  It’s a suite of “wearable, mountable and affordable HD video cameras that make all kinds of previously impossible shots much easier to capture. …they pack a surprising amount of power and versatility, especially for their $300 price tag.”

YouTube Views. The writer references three YouTube videos shot with GoPro cameras each with 12.4 million views, 2.8 million views and 2.1 million views. These postings are part of the arsenal of video posted to YouTube every two-to-three minutes (either by customers or the company’s 20-person in-house media team).

Industry Analysts. While it’s not always up to you to include industry analysts in your pitch to national media, it is an added bonus. “IDC estimates GoPro’s revenue at $250 million, on sales of 800,000 cameras world-wide. He (industry analyst) calls GoPro “the fastest growing camera company in the world.” (Redirect to sentence above – “coverage money can’t buy.”)

Customers/Users. GoPro has a Facebook fan base we can all drool over. “In 2011 alone, Facebook fans grew from 50,000 to more than 1.3 million.” (Gasp, who manages that community?)

Customer Engagement. Using the BARE (brand audience rate of engagement) score to track activity on Facebook, the CEO mildly states, “I think we have the most socially engaged online audience of any consumer brand in the world.” Indeed.

Social Brand. Read those words again. What do they actually mean? When you have a tiny video camera (any large corporation could’ve made, right?) you can wear, a global army of camera users is created every single day. Their videos of bungee jumps, an Alpine downhill, a coral reef exploration, or a kid’s race track excursion are all posted to YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Tumblr, Twitter, Google+ and every limitless social media channel imaginable. Globally. This exponential, ubiquitous growth is unimaginable, but here it is right in front of us being presented by an upstart. (Is this CEO the future Steve Jobs?)

I’m blown away. No way in my lifetime will I ever get the chance to pitch a company story like this, and I’ve been pitching media too many years to count. I’ve had success with national media, for sure, and I know what it takes to see it through (sweat and tears). I also realize the challenges media relations professionals face to tell a story like this.

Here are my summary tips:

Get your message map(s) in order and tell your story. Put them into a format that lends itself to storytelling and not just word reading. Words on a page must come to life with passion.

Not involved in social media yet, Company X? OHMYGOSH! If this story is not your kick in the pants, nothing is…Get on it. I cannot tell you how serious I am; look at the fan engagement and the social branding (that alone rocks) behind GoPro success.

This story is a perfect example of what national media want to see in a perfect national story – social media engagement on a variety of channels along with this BARE metric. (Don’t worry,  I bet only the top 10% of companies are likely to have that metric clocked with any margin of influence.)

Engage with industry analysts. This is an aspect of public relations often ignored. It’s called industry analyst relations…simple. It’s different than investor relations and important for privately held companies that hold market share in their respective verticals.

This story is both an inspiration and a freak (no accident). As a public relations professional, work hard to touch upon these elements and show proof points in as many as you can. I’d hasten a guess this company is a media darling and one in a million, but it’s sure exciting to wonder what it’s like to be in the media relations and social media hot seats for GoPro.

(Image courtesy of GoPro Facebook page.)

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Christine O’Donnell — Say NO More

by Jayme Soulati on 08/25/2011 in Media Relations, Public Relations

For the first time in my 27 years in public relations and media relations, I watched right here as a guest walked off a national prime-time, LIVE broadcast based on the recommendation of her “handlers” – those PR peeps who sit on the sidelines and direct traffic for their spokesperson while nodding heads or coaching silently. (I know, I’ve been one of those frequently.)

Christine O’Donnell, you may recall, is a Tea Party candidate who tried to run for U.S. senate in Delaware, and her book, “Trouble Maker,” details many of the issues she either believes or doesn’t believe in.

When Piers Morgan queried her about gay marriage and masturbation, she began to unravel.  You can watch the interview with link above and form your own conclusions. It’s a good lesson for everyone including public relations/media relations as well as those figureheads who deem themselves prepared for prime time television.

There are so many other links you can go find, and many are attempts by Christine to massage her weakened brand and accuse “the producer” (she calls Piers the producer albeit he’s the host) of sexual harassment during the CNN interview.

The point is, PR, that if your spokesperson, client, company executive is NOT ready for live, national, primetime and potentially raucous interview tactics (do you remember Sarah Palin and Katie Couric?), then by all means KEEP THEM OFF TV!

Here are some media relations thoughts for everyone’s digestion:

** In media relations, it’s your job to comb previous interviews with that particular host to understand the style and potential for the segment to go downhill fast. Always expect negativity!

** Negativity sells, and there’s absolutely no way a former politician (especially in the Tea Party movement) can be safe. I say “especially in the Tea Party movement” because their policies and beliefs are strong, and when you get the “liberal” media going 1:1 with a candidate, there’s going to be bashing and addressing the issues.

** At the first sign of discomfort by an interviewee, the host is going in for the kill. Obviously, Christine was not prepared for a negative interview and did not expect to be thrown off course – book promotion, not running for office, I don’t want to speak about this issue today, “you’re being rude.”

** I fault Christine O’Donnell’s media relations people for this debacle. Either they didn’t prepare well enough or thoroughly enough to identify all the possible land mines any host would attempt to uncover, or they were not seasoned enough to manage this situation.  With issues as contentious as gay marriage, abortion (I don’t know if she addressed that topic in her book), masturbation, and the like in a book she wrote and is promoting, it’s open season!

** Preparation for an interview of international importance like this should be oriented to diving into all the Q&A with possible discomfort zones. Role playing and watching tapes of previous interviews would be part of the prep; in addition, dog earing book pages with highlighted text should have also been part of the prep.

** Piers Morgan is an investigative journalist; it’s his business to uncover scuttle butt on everyone who sits across from him. He wants ratings, and boy was he enjoying himself – trying not to laugh at Christine’s obvious discomfort.

** Finally, when has a PR person EVER stepped in front of the camera on national live TV? Are you kidding me? Terminate.

What thoughts can you offer based on your own experience, your experience being interviewed, and the prep that needs to happen in this contentious media age?

(Image: CNN)

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Open PR Pitch to NY Times Small Biz Editor

by Jayme Soulati on 03/04/2011 in Media Relations, Public Relations

This is a media pitch I delivered by email at 4 p.m. ET March 3, 2011. If you’re on board and support the public relations profession fighting back with a balanced and positive blog post of its own on the New York Times small-business blog, then please indicate  yes in the comments section. If you’re wondering whether Gini Dietrich knows about this; she has been forewarned! (For those just tuning in, search on the NYX for “P.R., restaurateur, Hamptons.”)

credit: businesspundit

Mr. Loren Feldman, Small Business Editor

You’re The Boss Small-Business Blog; The New York Times

Hi, Loren:

The pulse on You’re The Boss in several columns has been lacking in, shall we say, balanced professionalism, and I’d like to suggest your consideration of a perspective written by a public relations agency CEO, Gini Dietrich. In every profession there will be those who do not uphold standards, ethics, civility, respect, and the like; we agree there are those in public relations giving others a bad name. I’d like the opportunity to lend perspective to what is highly disturbing to me and many of my colleagues – the one-sided bashing of a profession at large for the behavior of a few.

Gini makes an effort via her blog, Spin Sucks, and as a guest author on many other blogs to set the record straight against shoddy public relations and clients, as well.

The post she’d write, however, would not be a point-counterpoint; it would instead communicate the value of public relations, the strength of relationship necessary between client and firm, and the factors that weigh in that relationship to be successful. In this era of instant communication, the relationship between client and agency is precarious and thoughtful strategy is required.

Gini has a strong influencer presence in North America; she is a natural educator in our profession, and as a thought leader, small business owner, and CEO of her firm, she absolutely knows what it takes to service clients. Please consider a guest post from her (short bio below), and we can provide more in-depth info should you need it.

Thanks for your consideration,

Jayme

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Tumblr, Fashion Week and Tourism PR

by Jayme Soulati on 02/11/2011 in Media Relations, Public Relations

I have a confession. I love “America’s Next Top Model,” I subscribe to In Style and Vogue, and I relish the models’ make up, style, poses, photography, and settings – forget the clothes.  When I saw in the Wall Street Journal this story, “Fashion Week Tips Hat to Blog Site,” I eagerly scanned.

This week is New York Fashion Week, and guess who’s getting a seat to the party? Tumblr! Tumblr is a blogging platform, much like Blogger and WordPress. How it differentiates from the two latter is with its 13.4 million blogs, about 20 percent related to fashion. There are 24 Tumblr fashion bloggers (independent writers) attending Fashion Week because of their influence (there’s that subjective word again).

When you take a lens to more data, Tumblr is on to something. Tumblr had 1.6 billion U.S. page views in December 2010 only; whereas, Blogger had 697 million and WordPress had 141 million, according to comScore.

You can read the business story associated with Tumblr; what I’d like to offer up is the uncanny similarity with Tumblr’s public relations and the familiarization (fam) tours of yore in travel and tourism PR. I used to arrange these fam trips for travel media back in the day when I worked in Chicago’s agencies. These all-expense paid media getaways lavished everything imaginable on reporters in exchange for a story; you can imagine how popular these were, until the FCC swooped in and changed the gifting rules across industries.

So, here’s Tumblr, the publisher, if you will, inviting Joe and Jane “fashion” blogger (some with no experience at all) to attend Fashion Week with free hotel, tickets to events, and a rooftop party (will it be inside?).

You can bet the blog posts will flow freely, among other things.

(photo credit: NYDailyNews)

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Traditional Media Relations By Firefox

by Jayme Soulati on 01/27/2011 in Media Relations

In the battle for users, the search engine wars  heated up a notch with Mozilla Firefox pulling ahead a smidge with a recent front page Wall Street Journal Marketplace article regarding tracking deterrence.

The irony is that while Firefox announced it had launched a web tool to deter privacy infringement, the sites that scam, phish, scan, and covertly “steal” our data must agree not to practice this behavior for the web tool to be effective. (That’s an LOL if I ever heard one.)

The other two major search engines, Google Chrome and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer have the capability to launch a web tool similarly but Firefox snared the limelight for a minute with its traditional media relations thrust and first-out-of-the-gate positioning.

How important is traditional media relations to companies?

Very.

Imagine the stakeholders and business audiences reading this story. Now look at how much that story will influence users. I, for one, had a positive reaction after reading the piece and was glad I use Firefox.

As for media impact, any time a story appears in a national print daily the likes of the Wall Street Journal or New York Times, the cascade of resulting media impressions is fierce.

As a business, your company needs to consider all communications strategies to positively influence your business goals:

  • Start with defining your business goals and set communications objectives and strategies to align to the company’s growth.
  • Conduct messaging to develop your foundation and platform for communicating to various audiences and how.
  • Include in your public relations mix traditional media relations ala what I mention above along with social media communications or online engagement marketing (the term I now prefer).
  • When there’s a good story to tell with all the elements for a national piece, ensure you hire the professionals familiar with pitching media. How we conduct media relations today varies greatly from how we used to secure story hits. The internet has altered how business is conducted; yet, media continue to operate with some of the same principles as pre-internet days.

Who has a success or challenge story to share about media relations these days?

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National Media Vitamin D Confusion

by Jayme Soulati on 11/30/2010 in Media Relations

I had no intention of posting today; in fact, I liked my post yesterday, Thoughts on Public Relations, and wanted it to stay front and center one more day.

But this morning’s news stories in our two national papers (sorry USA Today) for the first time I can recall conflict. I’m shocked and keep reading each story to ensure I’m not seeing things or my brain is misfiring. It’s not:

  • In the Wall Street Journal (everyone knows I read it each morning and it’s my muse for blog fodder) in Personal Journal is the story “Triple That Vitamin D Intake, Panel Prescribes” by Melinda Beck. I read that column and reached for my Vitamin D capsule and promptly popped it. Beck’s reporting is taken from “a long-awaited report from the Institute of Medicine to be released Tuesday.”

How on earth can two highly credible, national reporters cover the same report to be released today with two opposite angles?

Should consumers triple their intake of Vitamin D as encouraged in the Wall Street Journal, or should we avoid Vitamin D and calcium because we already get enough, according to the New York Times?

Media Relations Strategy Gone Awry

As a media relations expert, I am disturbed as a professional with these stories. Knowing how national media work, it’s obvious the reporters each got an advance with the institute issuing the report.

  • But, how on Earth did the media relations practitioners not know the angles these two reporters would take and recognize each was covering the story from opposite ends of the spectrum?
  • Should the finger point at media relations?
  • Were spokespeople trained appropriately and was there a message map created?
  • Should the finger point at the spokespeople toplining highlights of the research during media interviews ?
  • Was the strategy to give each paper a different angle?
  • Was there a media strategy?

The national media must clarify the angles they took to cover this research, and that can only happen IF my recommended public relations strategy was executed right now:

  • Issue a press release clarifying to the nation whether consumers need more Vitamin D or not (and calcium).
  • Issue an Internet press release to crawl the Web immediately to rectify the news.
  • Use social media for this entire week to clarify the news about Vitamin D.
  • Launch a special website with highlights of the research and share the clarified message.
  • Put the spokespeople in front of the national morning show circuit to fix the damage these two stories have done.
  • Immediately contact each reporter with the appropriate news peg and asking for their help to rectify the news.

In my 26 years in public relations with a specialty in media relations, I’ve never seen anything like this. Astonishing.

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Media Relations ala Reputation Management

by Jayme Soulati on 09/10/2010 in Media Relations, Planning & Strategy, Social Media Strategy

One of the first pieces of counsel I give to companies embarking on media relations, messaging or message mapping is to know your competitors. By conducting a regular competitive analysis you garner full understanding of the space in which your company plays. While before competitive analysis was a challenging exercise, the onset of social media and social networking has made this research easy and fun.

To know your competition, who’s the spokesperson, what they’re saying, and about what product/service they’re preaching is imperative. This knowledge helps create a defensible or offensive position to tell your story via traditional media relations as well as social media engagement.

The August 2010 story “Rethinking Reputation Management” in Website Magazine says similarly:

“It’s time to rethink reputation management solutions. Ask yourself: How closely am I looking at my competition’s reputation? Identify companies you actively compete against as the first step. Commercial reputation management and monitoring solutions provide the deepest insight.”

The article goes on to say that tracking search terms produce the best information i.e. key words associated with your vertical. Once search terms yield a treasure of info, save them for constant monitoring via online reputation management tools.

What I mean by developing a competitive position relates directly to how informed you are about your entire industry sector. If there is a company with which you continually vie for market share, then learn everything you can about how they play and conduct business.

This knowledge translates directly to your boardroom chats about how to position your company to your peer group, customers, media, and other influencers. With the wealth of information now available online, you can build industry monitoring directly into tasks accomplished three times weekly.

I recommend some basic starting points to drive business intelligence (please add more to enrich these suggestions):

  • Monitor Twitter for trending topics, company spokespeople, and what the Twitterverse is saying.
  • Register yourself with Twellow and Listorious (with your own Twitter account) and regularly track others in your market there. Be sure to follow “people to watch” and get on lists to track the buzz.
  • Set up Trackur or Radian6, a few online reputation monitoring tools, along with Google or Yahoo! alerts, too.
  • Definitely monitor Facebook and YouTube for posted content as well as commentary associated to respective posts/videos within each social media channel.
  • Blogs tracked via Technorati and RSS are a must to monitor. It’s easy enough to subscribe to a competitor’s blog to see what’s going on and how aggressive their messaging truly is (relating to your market).

Rather than get inundated with data you don’t know what do with, monitor other companies for about six weeks to garner a firm understanding of competitors’ messages. This time period is enough to showcase a decent perspective of the alleged market leader. It also provides the backbone you need to begin to develop your own offensive position.

With the aforementioned, your messaging framework is rooted in competitive intelligence, and it strengthens delivery of your company’s external information to the influencers you’re trying to reach.  Your goal is not only to engage social media and create community, but to do it with aplomb! Hard-hitting, influential message delivery by designated spokespeople to traditional media and social media is how you get ahead of the curve and catch up to those already playing in your space.

  • Incorporate learnings from your peer group into your own messages. Package messages that resonate with a sprinkling of key words to satisfy search marketing, and be confident in your own storytelling abilities.
  • After you have a comfortable working message framework, package it into a message map. (Ask me if you’re unfamiliar with this necessary tool.)
  • Develop content that tells your story, issue many online press releases to build link love, drive traffic to your social media and networking outlets and continually garner attention from consumers at large.
  • Conduct traditional media relations with trade media in your market sector, and when a story appears be sure you feature that in all the respective places you publish content.
  • Give it three-to-six months to earn traction, depending on your aggressiveness.
  • Monitor your own company and the key words associated with your business. By doing so, you remain in an offensive position and can more expediently thwart attempts by the competition to gain the leading edge.

What have I missed? Please add your thoughts to the importance of competitive analysis for pretty much everything in which we engage, right?

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Media Relations and P&G’s What-If Plan

by Jayme Soulati on 05/21/2010 in Branding, Media Relations, Social Media Strategy, Word of Mouth

Today’s post is a compendium of news about Fortune 100 crises. If you’ve watched this space, you’ll recognize these names – Nestle, BP, and Proctor & Gamble. Don’t know the crisis each is managing? Then perhaps you’ve not been consuming social and traditional media, for these corporations are in the news several times a day of late due to rain forests, oil and diapers.

To bring you up to speed, here’s the Soulati-’TUDE! Nestle post. This week, my “Got a What If Plan?” oriented to the oil debacle paved the way for the next day’s post on diapers, rash and Procter & Gamble.

So great to see a sequential flow, and the only reason I re-introduced this content here is as a foreword to this article in Advertising Age “Inside P&G’s PR playbook: How Pampers Battled Diaper Debacle” about a behind-the-scenes look at the public relations machine for Proctor & Gamble. The internal team and its agency kicked into high gear at the onset of mommy complaints that the new Pampers Dry Max caused diaper rash and “chemical burns” on babies’ behinds.

For anyone in corporate or agency public relations, I strongly encourage you read this piece. It is a fascinating unfolding of a public relations machine in synch with product marketing, corporate strategy, and internal response to a brewing external crisis.

The story was written by Jack Neff after Advertising Age was granted an insider view of the marketing public relations team in action. He followed them for half a day to watch strategy and execution. I’ve not seen a story of this nature delivered smack in the middle of a crisis. If I were a stakeholder, you can bet my concerns would be alleviated after reading this piece.

In companies the world over, there is crisis. Social media has elevated these issues beyond comprehension and presented them to the consuming public on a silver platter. This trifecta is a textbook case for students, and I hope academicians and volunteer public relations professors are watching these three situations closely. There’s no better way to teach than by real-world example, and none of us are too old to keep learning.

Only one word of counsel for today:

It’s more critical than ever to shore up external messaging. When social media comes calling, one word gone awry can upset the entire apple cart.

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Vehicle Buying Habits

by Jayme Soulati on 05/07/2010 in Advertising/Selling, Media Relations, Word of Mouth

I’m impressed with my impression of how much a story (good old traditional media relations) in Fast Company has me eager to explore a Ford as my next vehicle. Never in my wildest dreams would I have expected to say that; my grampa drove Ford (enough said!).

Back step a minute…

The quest is on for a 7-passenger SUV (not a soccer mom mini-van, please, although I do coach my daughter’s team) that may or not remain a Toyota. The more news I consume, the more confused I am about which direction to head. Factors strongly in the nay column are companies that accepted government bailout monies we taxpayers funded, as well as the overall  health of the corporation (GM? Nope).

I certainly won’t end up “like” Simon…

Simon Dumenco is (sdumenco@adage.com) The Media Guy for Advertising Age. In his opinion column April 12 he writes “What a pathetic, passive, compliant consumer I’ve become! Like, over there, in the kitchen: my incredibly easy-to-use Senseo coffeemaker, which I thought I loved. But it only accepts certain kinds of coffee pods. How devious! And my sleek Braun toaster: Sure, it can accommodate sliced bread and bagels, but could I cook a pot roast with it? No! Does it have a camera? No!”

I’m fiercely loyal to Toyota and have always loved my three-row Highlander from the get go. According to Advertising Age, Toyota sold more cars in March than it did in January and February combined. The “impressive bump” is a credit to the brand’s “almost fanatical consumer base and bargain hunters.”

Case Study with Self

I decided to use my own situation as a case study in consumer-buying habits. As I move through the steps toward this large purchase decision, I’ll share the various communications channels I’m using to get there.  To date:

  • Word-of-mouth marketing — Twitter helped direct me to Ford and Volvo 90. After taking a look, I was impressed by both and swayed by the Volvo brand.
  • A comment on this blog directed me away from Volvo because it’s being sold (don’t want to be stuck like Saturn owners).
  • Upon reading the April Fast Company story, “Ford’s Big Reveal, The next generation of Ford’s Sync technology will turn its cars into rolling, talking, socially networked, cloud-connected supermachines. Introducing America’s most surprising consumer-electronics company.” (And that’s merely the headline!)
  • In a nutshell, Ford’s alliance with Microsoft is bringing leading-edge connectivity to its now pared down and more manageable line of vehicles.  Voice- enabled and hands-free phone dialing and answering, music selection, navigation, climate control, and so much more are putting Ford vehicles ahead of the curve.  
  • Worth looking at, don’t you think? Then again, perhaps the thought of owning a talking car like David Hasselhoff in Knight Rider is what’s compelling.
  • Two soccer moms sat in their Toyota Sequoia monstrosities (I think they were matching). Upon walking up to them (windows were down) I queried them about Toyota. Immediately, they both said, “I’d buy another Toyota in a heartbeat, the problem has been fixed already!”

Indeed.

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Storytelling and Dolls

by Jayme Soulati on 04/26/2010 in Media Relations, Social Media Strategy

Photo by Jamie Chung, Fast Company

A story in the April Fast Company has me thinking three ways:

When Mattel’s Barbie celebrated her 40th birthday, and my colleague and I represented the American College of Foot & Ankle Surgeons as its public relations firm for three years, the opportunity was too good to pass up.

My idea was to issue a press release on PR Newswire blasting Barbie for still wearing high heels every day through her fourth decade. The podiatric surgeons were none too pleased the media preferred to invite comments about Barbie’s footgear over their technologically advanced titanium implants.

Because my daughter was an early adopter of all things Bratz (those too sexy dolls that rivaled Barbie), and I followed progress of the legal battle between the two companies for intellectual property rights (Mattel won), I was eager to learn more about the new Liv dolls by Spin Master Toys.

I tore the Fast Company story for future reference. Upon a second glance at the headline, I was struck – “Watch Your Back, Barbie!!! How Spin Master Toys created the hit Liv dolls, a thoroughly modern marriage of tech, storytelling and 21st-century marketing that has industry giant Mattel looking over its shoulder.” (And, that’s just the headline.)

Storytelling! Forget about Barbie’s high heels and Bratz. Storytelling!

Spin Master Toys offers a perfect example of the role storytelling plays in brand development prior to product launch.

The new team hired by Spin Master developed a narrative for the four dolls in the collection BEFORE the dolls had a name. The team created an imaginary high school, and characteristics for each girl doll were inspired from teen behavior observed at surf shops, malls and frozen yogurt stands. Diversity was added to the story (rather than just in the skin tone and facial features of the dolls themselves) which directly aligned with toy industry trends about how little girls play. The back story for each Liv doll was a critical component of the go-to-market strategy.

Enter media relations.

With storytelling on the marketing and brand side of things aimed at the end user, public relations can pick up and add that rich flavor to content we develop to tell a story to a middle gatekeeper of news (in essence, we’re selling the story with a pitch).

Seeing this reference to storytelling prominently in the headline of a major business publication is a thoughtful exercise in looking at products differently. While public relations may not engage in consumer storytelling when pitching the media, you can bet we will engage in consumer storytelling within the realm of social media.

What examples might you have about how storytelling impacted a product launch, media relations situation, or social media opportunity? While you’re thinking, I’m going to take another look at Liv dolls at Target today.

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