Tag Archive for: bespoke pr agency

3 Reasons Every CEO Needs a Ghostwriter

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What do Jack Welch, Stephen R. Covey, and Richard Branson all have in common? Well, besides being some of the best-known business leaders in the world, they’ve all used ghostwriters. Hmmm…could there be a connection between those two things? Almost certainly. Why? Because executives have a lot on their plate, and to stay ahead and run competitive companies, they need to stay at the 100,000-foot level. This elevated perspective often makes executives great thinkers but poor writers. And that’s OK. In fact, it’s expected. As many as 60% of nonfiction books are supported by ghostwriters. Ghostwriters articulate the grand ideas of thought leaders. So what does a ghostwriter do for you and how can executives use a ghostwriter? Consider these 3 reasons every CEO needs a ghostwriter.

CEOs: Publish or Perish

It used to be that only academics were expected to publish ideas, and CEOs were exempt from that expectation; today, CEOs truly need a ghostwriter to fulfill content expectations.

Despite the dearth of content out there, stakeholders from your board, investors, and even customers expect CEOs to lead, and part of leadership today is sharing original thoughts. Now, notice this does not mean that you must post on Instagram every day, and it doesn’t even mean you need to post on LinkedIn every day. It does mean that you must create thoughtful, original content regularly. Good news, a ghostwriter can help you with that. Ghostwriters have two very particular skills: listening and extracting. For ghostwriters to be successful, they sometimes need to ask probing questions and articulate the idea in the originator’s voice. So help your ghostwriter help you. Sit down with them and share ideas, let them see inside your point of view, and your ghostwriter will come up with a consistent stream of ideas from a few hours together.

Watch What You Say: Platform and PR

As a thought leader, publish your ideas consistently. Sometimes that may be on a platform you can control – like your corporate website or even Medium. Which platform you choose will depend on your thought leadership strategy. For example, if the CEO’s job is to secure investment, then Medium.com is a great place to publish, it’s still a Silicon Valley content darling, even after all these years. But if the executive wants to be seen as hip but accessible, perhaps as part of a larger corporate branding initiative, then a Substack newsletter might be more appropriate. If the CEO is creating commentary on something currently in the news, then a contribution to an industry vertical or a national newspaper could be in order. It’s important that the platform strategy be part of the ghostwriter’s process so they can take into account not only the CEO’s voice, but the culturally accepted tone within the platform or outlet.

A ghostwriter can help a CEO decide on platform and tone – just another reason every CEO needs a ghostwriter.

 

Fill Up the Trust Bucket

It’s no secret that CEOs have a spotlight on them like never, as do their companies, this a truly compelling reason why an executive should use a ghostwriter. Over the years, we’ve seen thousands of CEO apologies on almost as many platforms. Not all apologies are created equally and not all crisis responses are the same, each situation is truly different. But, for a CEO who is comfortable with a ghostwriter, an apology can be a much easier, and faster process. Like anything, when there is a relationship, the ghostwriter can be a critical partner to the CEO, and the PR agency tasked with developing a response or apology. Having a trusted ghostwriter not only helps in a crisis, but they may also help reduced the severity of the crisis because the CEO’s thought leadership has lead to increased trust in the CEO and the brand. And nowhere is trust more important than an unpredicted crisis.

 

At Avaans PR, we offer thought leadership programs as part of our bespoke PR programs, but also as a stand-alone option with our thought leadership PR program. We offer this as a stand-alone program because we know every CEO needs a ghostwriter and a strong PR strategy for thought leadership.

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There are 500 Ways to Screw Up PR – Here’s 3

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Over the years, I’ve learned there are over 500 ways to screw up PR. I’m going to be honest with you – I have a lot of conversations with people who say they hired an agency and got nothing, or not what they were promised. The consistent takeaway for these folks is often “PR doesn’t work.” You can imagine my skepticism when people say that because, without exception, we know it does. We have launched brands, driven record sales for brands, and sent them through IPO. But it’s totally worth diving into a few of the reasons PR doesn’t work, with one caveat, it’s RARELY just one of these things.

 

PR Agency Mismatch

Perhaps one of the most important keys to success is agency fit. The most successful relationships align on experience level, ambitions, and cost. Let’s dive into that a little more.
Experience level. Some stories, some products, and some movements are just harder to pitch. If you’re one of those companies, you probably know it deep in your heart. Does that mean you won’t get any PR? No, it means you need to find agencies who either have direct experience telling stories like yours, OR you need to have an agency whose storytellers are seasoned enough to know what lessons they’ve learned and how to apply them now.

Ambitions. If your ambition is to double your sales, then the brand commitment needs to match that, and no single one lever can change sales overnight. It’s also important that you weigh the time-money continuum here. The faster something gets done, the more upfront work it takes.

Yet, if you say “we want to double our sales in 3 years,” it could cost you more than 3X, even if it feels cheaper on a monthly basis. So be clear on what it will take to meet your objective and be sure you’re attacking that aim from all fronts which you control.

If you’re a DTC brand, make sure your SEO and PR teams are operating together. If you’re a consumer tech brand, make sure you’re tapping into trends with your social media. If you’re a CPG brand, make sure the rest of your branding (internal and external) matches the values your product projects.

Cost. PR cost and ambitions are closely tied, because time and cost are deeply connected. There are PR agencies that are cheap, and you will find that some PR agencies are extraordinarily expensive. I would say if saving money is your biggest ambition, then maybe PR isn’t right for you. PR is a lot like building a house and no one ever advises you to pick the cheapest contractor.

If your budget for PR is less than you would pay an executive assistant, then you’re probably undershooting your goals. Whenever someone tells me they hired a firm and got nothing, I usually find that they hired a firm and were the cheapest client that the firm had, OR they hired a scary cheap firm. There’s value-driven pricing and then there’s scary cheap. Learn the difference.

There are only two ways to get scary cheap: hire inexperienced people, or spend no time on the account. That’s it. That’s the only way scary cheap PR agencies work. You’ll get a sense of which one you’ll experience when you meet the team. A seasoned team won’t be spending a lot of time on the account. If the team is inexperienced, then they’ll spend a lot of time learning on your dime. That’s a signal you should watch for.

Your Agency isn’t REALLY a PR Agency

Sometimes agencies try to be all things to everyone and offer every marketing, branding, advertising, and PR service under the moon. That’s a REALLY difficult thing to do.

PR agencies absolutely overlap with other agencies regularly.

There are parts of what we do that a branding agency will also do – like planning word-of-mouth opportunities or creating publicity stunts. Sometimes a branding agency will also create content for their clients, or surveys. That’s also something that PR agencies do-both can usually do them equally well depending on the purpose of the content. But where branding agencies and PR agencies are separate is media outreach, journalist relations, and understanding of the media. And candidly, very few PR agencies have the talent to develop a well-rounded brand from a visual standpoint.

Unbelievably, I’ve seen “entrepreneurial coaches” pitch themselves as PR experts. I think these people understand a lot about self-promotion, and believe me, that’s a true skill, but they rarely really understand media relations outside of sending a press release. Which isn’t the reason you send a press release.

Ad agencies and PR agencies have very little in common. If your ad agency says they can also handle your PR (or vice-versa), that’s typically a red flag.

SEO agencies aren’t PR agencies either. Now, as a digitally savvy PR agency, for our bespoke clients, we absolutely dive into the SEO of our clients so we can incorporate keywords and important links. But let me assure you, we are NOT an SEO agency. Nor is your SEO agency a PR firm. Don’t confuse the two. Unless you’re working for one of the world’s largest agencies, there are very few exceptions to the fact that the two rarely go together.

 

Collaboration or Miscommunication

The root of this is usually either the personalities just didn’t fit, or there wasn’t bandwidth for consistent communication on either side. A truly bespoke PR program is highly intimate and collaborative. If that isn’t happening, you will find results suffer. Another aspect of this is executive or spokesperson availability – when the executives aren’t making time for journalists on deadline, then the success rate falls dramatically, AND your PR team is reluctant to pitch him/her to their best contacts because relationships matter and no one client is worth burning a long time media partner over. Sorry, but that’s the truth.

The media, and especially journalists, are under extreme stress these days. When clients don’t get back to us immediately about opportunities, that makes it really difficult for us to take advantage of the most interesting and timely media opportunities. PR agencies often receive inquiries from the media, but those inquiries have tight deadlines, sometimes even less than a day. So if your PR team is promoting you 2-3 times to get back to them for a query, that’s a red flag.

 

Since there are over 500 ways to screw up PR, that’s the reason we structure our programs the way we do. If you’ve ever talked to us, you know, we take our partnerships exceptionally seriously – our bespoke PR results and client reviews prove it. If you’re in the middle of hiring a firm, and you’re having a hard time differentiating, call us. We’ll give you our unbiased opinion of the top PR agencies you’ve identified.

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