The call for the Media magazine’s Asia Pacific PR Awards, the PR Student of the Year award has been announced. The award is one of the most prestigious awards in Asia Pacific among the PR students community.

The PR student award category was first announced in 2006 in conjunction with Weber Shandwick. The winner of the award gets USD 6,000 in prize money, a paid for trip to Hong Kong on Nov 20, 2008 for the awards ceremony, and a paid internship at a Weber Shandwick office nearest to the student.

Any student enrolled as an undergraduate student at an institute or university in the Asia Pacific region, irrespective of whether he/she is majoring media or maths, communications or chemistry, can enter the contest. To participate, students needs to write a PR campaign for MasterCard and showcase his/her creative and real life PR skills in drafting the same. The entry kit can be downloaded from here. The detailed brief for developing the campaign is provided in the entry kit, but in a nutshell, it is like this.

In the lead up to the holiday season (December – February), when consumer spending is at its highest, MasterCard is keen to launch a financial management awareness campaign that specifically targets women in Asia Pacific. Based on the strategies outlined in the existing website, MasterCard wants to launch a holistic program that helps women manage their finances.

The entry should be on these lines:

Your proposal should be no more than four typed pages, 10pt font, and should include the following six components:
1. Objectives – Outline clear, measurable objectives to ensure success of your campaign
2. Audience – Specifically identify the people or groups you want to target
3. Strategy – Describe the overall strategy to achieve your objectives
4. Research and planning – Explain how and what type of research would be relevant
to shaping the planning process
5. Execution and tactics – Explain your program in detail. Break it down into major
components
6. Evaluation/Measurement of success – How will you evaluate the success of your
campaign?

Standard campaign elements that you must produce (in addition to the proposal) include: one written press release; a sample pitch letter to a particular media outlet; and a list of targeted media contacts. No budgets have been allocated as yet, but budgets will be commensurate with the program put forth. You must demonstrate strategic thinking, creativity and flawless execution in your proposal.

The entry deadline is September 12, 2008.

We started the Linkedin Group: Network of PR Professionals in March 2008 and in the last four months or so, the group has grown to more than 1,000 members. I did a quick search and these are some findings:

Number of members from specific countries: US: 500plus; India: 335; UK: 33; and a few members from other countries too.

Number of CEOs: 34; VPs: 75; Director: 174; Managers: 196; Executives: 131; Heads (Group Heads, Practice Heads, Corporate Communications Heads): 38, and so on.

Thanks to all the members. Hoping that we all can connect and benefit from this common platform.

Click here to join the network now.

Now that Hancock is out in all big theaters across India , PR folks must be getting a sweet surprise to see that even a super hero sometimes needs good PR. We have Jason Bateman, a PR guy who after being saved by Hancock deciding to use his PR skills to change the poor image that the drunk super hero has. So what happens next? Hancock surrenders himself to the police and lands up in jail, shaves, dons a clean super hero suit, say nice things to cops, and learns to save people without causing collateral damage.

I quite liked the Hancock’s PR campaign, if you’d call it that. There was no excessive media scouting. The focus was on Hancock and what he needs to do to change his image. There was no ‘this is what I do’ and we have to spin it to make it to look good in front of the public. (are our clients listening? ) No TV and newspaper interviews. You focus on doing something good and the media ultimately follows you. Of course with some good creativity like the PR shock factor in the movie when Hancock surrenders himself to the law, standing apart as a classic PR stunt.

Ultimately, the movie has done some good PR for PR. Cheers to that.

Photo credit: IMDb

I was chatting up with a colleague, who is a part of our four member media team in our office, on blogging and the new PR.

The media team, as we know, plays a big role in large PR agencies where events and crisis happen on multiple clients almost every day. While the client servicing teams need to concentrate on a whole lot of things in servicing an account, the media team can just focus on building relationships with key journalists across the country. So in times of crisis and big events, they can leverage on their networks to value add to the client servicing team.

Now the part that we were discussing was that the media team should now look at PR 2.0 seriously and gear up to equip themselves with knowledge of the blogosphere and start building relationships with key bloggers across the country across verticals and subjects. And why not. Media teams have been building relationships with journalists in the print media, tv, online media, and now social media should be a natural extension. Talk about digitally enhanced media teams.

So are you a media relations expert? If yes, my next questions could be ‘how many bloggers do you know well?’ Knowing and engagibng with bloggers is no longer the perogative of the client servicing person alone.

My question is can the media teams of today adapt themselves to the new challenge (or opportunity), or will  there be a new class of blogger relations teams in agencies? For now, there is just the socal media team that do everything.

An interesting part of our work-in-progress ‘PR agencies and PR freelancers directory’ project might be the community ratings of PR agencies. Any reader of India PR Blog can do a rating out of 5 stars on an agency or a freelancer listed on the directory. We can use the comments section to share our constructive views on any agency. That will be nice.

Have look at some of our pages (in progress):

Index of the PR agencies and PR freelancers directory

Delhi PR Agencies and PR freelancers directory

Maharashtra PR Agencies and PR freelancers directory

Tamil Nadu PR Agencies and PR freelancers directory

Chandigarh PR Agencies and PR freelancers directory

Update:
Orissa PR Agencies and PR freelancers directory

We are adding more. Keep your information on your agencies and services coming. Details on submission are here.

We all have pitched journalists on the email and on the phone. We can also remember those times when we chatted up with journalists while on a media round and threw in a pitch. Now all these are the regular ways. I am wondering if any of us have pitched in a unique manner and have been successful at that.

Talking about this, I googled the topic a while back and found this article from Read Write Web - Five Wrong Ways to Pitch RWW and One Great Way, which seems to suggest a lot of ways of how not to pitch. The only way it thinks is okay is bundling up all your client’s information in an RSS feed and sending it to the journalist. Now while this might be working for RWW, for others, this seems as unpractical as coming up out of a geek to the normal person. I mean while a few techie PR professionals might send this to another techie journalist, the rest of the PR professionals and journalists in this country won’t be able to figure it out. Besides it doesn’t seem to serve many other purposes than keeping a journalist updated on developments.

There are no best ways to pitch a journalist. A lot of bloggers seems to love taking out their ‘how to pitch me’ sermons for PR professionals, each with his/her own individual preferences. However basic rules stand. Like spelling the journalists’/bloggers’ names right on your email salutations, researching well what he/she writes on, understanding that every journalist/ blogger is different, not giving a unsolicited phone call out of the blue, not flooding journalists’/bloggers’ inboxes with irrelevant stuff and press releases.

To take this conversation a bit further, we have written about the five key things to keep in mind while pitch a journalist, which includes the quality of the story peg, relationship with the journalist, knowing what the journalist writes on, industry knowledge, and media list. We have also written that perhaps the first half of the day is the best time of the day to pitch a journalist, because that’s the time when a journalist is mostly free. Calling in the morning has the advantage of also helping the reporter plan the day. Nothing will cheer him or her up more than an exclusive landing in the lap in the early hours itself.

Now coming back to the topic, consider the pitch methods below. What do you think? Have you done any of them succesfully? Are there more?

1. Post interaction pitch: Remember those times when a journalist is through with an interview of your client and you are generally chatting up some niceties before saying bye. Or remember those times when you and the journalist are waiting for the spokesperson, or when you are on way to the meeting the journalist. I mean all those times when the journalist is keen to know what other clients you handle and what are the new things going on. I have pitched stories at such occassions successfuly for many clients, and these are priceless moments that I never get on the phone, when you can explain evrything in detail.

2. Gtalk pitch: I notice some of our young PR colleagues today have many journalists on their Gtalk. Not so much when I was doing the client servicing actively. They chat away with these journalists like they were good friends and say they have pitched many stories succesfully from GTalk. Wonder how they did it. It’s understandable when you know a journalist personally but what I am talking about is people using GTalk as a social networking platform or as a common internet chat forum where you get to invite new people, accept invites, and then start chatting about anything in the world including pitches.

3. Twitter and Linkedin pitch: Almost same as Gtalk pitch, but out here you direct message a journalist or the blogger on Twitter or on Linkedin. I think this method depends a lot on how well you know the journalist. Note that many have written that they consider direct messaging quite intrusive and would prefer a public message update instead. You can consider the Twitpitch.

4. Blog comment pitch: When a blogger writes on a particular topic, you can leave a nice and valid input on his/her post and maybe on your service, that he/she takes notice and perhaps checks out your service. That could be a good way to start a conversation.

5. Online pitch tools and platforms: We have platforms for journalists and PR professionals like PitchWire that help both parties to manage pitches. How successful are these, I have no idea. anybody any luck?

Don’t forget to check out our top media relations tips.

In PR agency workings, client servicing experts would talk about going out for lunches with clients and many other hi-funda things when asked about the best ways to get pally with your client. I won’t go into such advanced details, but focus on two simple day-to-day client contact mediums for an executive or a manager - the phone and the email. What’s the big deal, you’d asked.

Perhaps there’s no big deal. But given that most of the smaller agencies in India (and even some of the big ones) do not have a standardised system of client servicing manual, it’s important for the young PR professionals to know the advantages and disadvantages of both these contact mediums.

Phone -

1. Works well if the client contact is manageable and is the friendly type. You can explain issues and things in proper and in length over the phone than on email.

2. One disadvantage is that you don’t have any written record if things go wrong or the client suddenly turns around.

Email -

1. Many of us in our earlier years tend to think getting into a mobile phone chit-chat everyday with the client will break the ice and help get into a smooth client-agency relationship. Not true for some kinds of clients. If the client contact is the hard-to-please type with unreasonable expectations, make sure your correspondence is more on the mail, copied to his/her boss and yours. On every mail. Why so? Because on the phone, you are more likely to get gobbled up with no very less room for negotiations. For example, if the client contact calls in the morning and asks you to draft a case study and provide it to him/her by the end of the day, demand that she/he send you an email on that. I think most of the unreasonable client demands are done on the phone, hardly on the email. Well, I don’t have any stats to prove it though.

2. Disadvantage is that email is time consuming (writing, sending, receiving, reading), and many clients in particular sectors are not that comfortable with the emailing business.

What do you say? Any more tips. Please share on the comments.

We have just created an India Business Feed on FeedBurner Network in order to aggregate the best business blogs in India and post their updates in a single feed. Blogs chosen are selected basis the influential capability of the individual blogger, quality and frequency of posts, page rank of the blog, number of subscribers, and page views. Over time, we expect to feature more business bloggers on the network.

The objective is to a) provide the readers the best of business bloggers in India in one master feed, and b) help encourage and support business blogging in India. Readers can subscribe to the feed or subscribe to the latest updates on email (check the Daily Network Digest on sidebar of the Network page). On this note, we would appreciate if the member bloggers can use the network badge or BuzzBoost to help highlight posts of fellow bloggers on their blogs.

Membership is through invitation only, though you can email editor@indiaprblog.com with your blog details for consideration.

What is a FeedBurner Network?, Subscribe to India Business Feed,

Big PR agencies normally have 5-10 pitches and RFP responses every week. Now the RFP responses and pitch presentations that we give and what we include in them vary from client to client. Some clients give out clear briefs on what they expect from the PR agency in the initial meeting. Now others don’t have any specific brief. They leave it all to the PR agencies. Now lets talk about this second variety and list down what we present to them.

Agency Credentials - Introducing your agency is something you cant skip.

Relevant work experience/ case studies - companies you have worked for in similar vertical.

Team Profiles - Some agencies make it mandatory to include the profiles of their key people.

Industry Understanding - You can create a good impression if you talk something good about the industry in which the client operates.

Media dipstick - Proactive agencies run a short media dip stick survey on the industry and the client vis-a-vis competition and put the results as part of their presentations. Something that the clients loves.

Headline Recommendations - Recommending some top notch ideas for the client on how to take the PR campaign forward.

Timelines - Some agencies go into length and define the timelines and monthly activities in detail about say how to launch a campaign, etc.

Financials - Approximate quote of the PR agency based on the scope of work the agency envisage.

Is there anything else? Please leave your feedback on the comments. Also, what do you think is the most important factor for a company while choosing a PR agency? I know there cannot one single factor, but do give your vote to the one you think is most important in the poll below.

PowerPoints can often make or break a career and we need to master the art of creating good looking PowerPoints, especially if we are working in the corporate world. Here are some good reads and tools from across the web and the blogosphere to help you get started in creating a good design.

Remember like experts say, creating a good PowerPoint is a work of art - the visual appeal and construction of words should harmoniously depict and help in what you intend to say.

1. Office 2007 - Firstly, before anything else, lets get the weapons and ammunition right. I kept on repeating this but the US army is the top armed forces in the world not because the Americans are stronger than the people in other countries, but majorly because of the superior weapons they have. So taking that into account,  how about upgrading our own hung MS Office 98s and XPs to Office 2007 (Microsoft is not my client), if you are not already. The visually appealing shapes, templates, and designs you can create so easily in Office 2007 will seem like impossible in the other previous versions of MS Office.

2. Templates - You can use the MS Office themes and download more from here. However one problem with using these templates is that everyone uses them, so your presentation looks like a college student’s homework. You can break free from the default flashy and extra colorful Microsoft templates and use your own templates. Check out the designs of some award wining presentations here. You don’t need to be a master designer. A white background is suitable for almost all types of presentations. Here is a simple one I have used way back, in a plain white background with one picture.

Ok I realised it looks much better on the PowerPoint, but nevertheless to prove a point, I am not deleting it.

3. Layouts - Chuck the standard layout designs and create your own style. All slides need not have the standard layouts throughout, meaning you can move around where you put the text and the pictures. For myself, I stopped using the default ‘Title’ and ‘Title and Content’ layouts long time back, because I see that layout in every other presentation.

For instance, for proposing a event speaker opportunity to a client, this slide below should be sufficient. The presenter has to know the details of the events at his/her fingertips, or have it in a piece of paper though.

3. Fonts - Personally I prefer Calibri. Yes that’s the default font in MS Word in MS Office 2007. It is a sans serif font, the family that is preferred by experts.

Regarding the font size, everybody has his/her own views on this. Read on what experts say about font here at Digital Inspiration. Though a 30 point font size might not be practical for our PR plan and pitch proposals, I suppose font size shouldn’t go down beyond 16. I said this considering what works basis the sizes of most of the conference rooms I encountered. But this might not be ideal for events. So when Guy Kawasaki says 30 font size, probably he must be refering to big events where he give his presentations at.

4. Content - Most experts agreed on writing in phrases, not complete sentences. One or two phrases per slide should be enough. Now the problem with such presentations is that they need expert presenters. For those of us who are few years into the business, we cannot start talking for 5-10 minutes by looking at a picture. Sure I can talk about my blogging habits for hours, but not on the IT consulting industry’s issues and trends in India, unless I have done a big homework. But hey, maybe that’s the clue - homework.

5. Pictures - Pictures are the soul of the presentation. Without pictures, presentations become such a drag and corporate blah blah. Right pictures help bring out an idea more clearly for the audience. I also read somewhere, maybe Seth Godin’s blog, that your words on the slides are for the intellect of your audience, your pictures are for appealing to their emotions. Anything to grab that contract.

I also have another point. If you don’t write much, you don’t reveal much of your ideas in written if you need to leave behind a copy of that ppt at the end of the presentation.

Alos, Ellen Finkelstein says a very valid point that bullets are boring and if you write in bullets, people start reading them and stop giving attention to what you are saying. She says instead of having three bullet points in one slide, you can break them into three slides.

For examples this slide ….

can be broken into this…

this…

and finally this….

You can find pictures for your presentations on Google Image Search. Or if you worry about copyrights, then Stock Xchng provides free images. For Indian images try Dinodia.

6. Golden Rules to Remember from the Masters - I won’t say much here. Read on from the masters. These are my two favorite posts on PowerPoints. The first is a ten tips list from Garr Reynolds. The second is a post from Seth Godin giving his superb tips. Be sure to check these two links out.

Also are 10 points to learn from the world’s best PowerPoints contest as a checklist. Then here are 10 do’s and don’ts from Micrososft Small Business Center.

7. Tips and Tricks -  Learn how to frame your presentation on a Word file and then later import it into a ppt, with formatting intact here. This will be good to just concentrate on the content without going for the design in the initial stage. Then there are also more tips and tricks on this page as well.

More PowerPoint readings - The PowerPoint FAQ.

Do you have any tips to share, or some nice powerpoint slides toshow off, well share the tips on the comments. You can upload your slides on Box.net or some other place and share the link in the comments. If we have enough of the nice ones, we will list them out on the blog together.