Executive Series: Doug Wright

Doug Wright is our resident consumer electronics and music tech expert. He has an extensive background representing major brands, including Sharp, Maxwell, Sony, Kenwood, Yamaha and Pioneer. He’s also worked with clients in other industries, including video games, professional video, marketing premiums, health care, financial services and others.

What is the biggest change you’ve seen in PR? 


Media relations. One thing I remember distinctly about my first jobs was how easy it was to get reporters out of their offices. Trade magazine writers and even mainstream media made time to meet with clients over lunch, which helped to build relationships.Nowadays, no one has time. The economy and the way business is done has effectively changed the way relationships are built. Editorial teams are often short-handed, and any time out of the office is at a premium. In fact, it can be difficult to get an editor you do not have a relationship with on the phone.This has made it all the more important to tighten up the other aspects of media relations. Pitches, both written and verbal, must be very efficient and even more compelling to get the attention of writers and editors.

How do you generate news and build buzz for clients?

Finding and engaging key influencers. For instance, you may want to offer an exclusive story to a major media outlet that your client is most excited about. If an exclusive is not possible, seeding stories to top mainstream or trade media under embargo is a great tool as well. This way, you can prepare them with materials/interviews/etc. to publish their stories when the news hits, not days later. It also lets the writers know that your client believes this is big news and will help you cut through the clutter of all the other news they may cover on a given day.

Social media is also key. By helping a client to build strong social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Pinterest, Instagram, etc.), they can hint at upcoming news that would be of interest to their audiences. By engaging social media influencers in your client’s field (media, industry experts, enthusiasts, etc.), you can build a great deal of anticipation for a pending announcement and extend its reach.

What is the most challenging thing about PR?

Prospecting for new business. This is the life blood of any agency and it can be a challenge to find the time to find new clients. I have found that the proper mindset is to make sure new business prospecting is part of the normal work week, to be tackled alongside regular client work.

I try to make time to consider opportunities for business among colleagues, friends and new contacts. You never know, a well-timed phone call or email can be the first step to gaining a new client.

Is there anything happening in the industry that you find interesting?

Newsroom and editorial changes. With smaller editorial staff and advertising shifting to online media and other areas, print publications are getting thinner and even transitioning to online-only formats. The editorial landscape is changing rapidly and it is important to keep up to date with changes and new opportunities for more timely coverage.

An upside of a more online-centric media base is its tie to social media. Online stories can be more easily shared with clients’ audiences and other social media influencers to spread key news farther and faster.

What is one thing you wish you’d known when you started out?

Being creative in the job hunt and adapting the job to your preferences. The need for PR is everywhere—in corporations, financial institutions, art organizations, health care companies, non-profits and on and on—so there is a great degree of opportunity to find your passion within the field. As for adapting a current job, I now know you can use your strengths to bring a position even more in line with your interests—and maybe even create a new position. This, of course, needs to fall in line with your employer’s needs and goals.

Words Really Do Matter!

As professional communicators, public relations practitioners are true believers in the persuasive power of words, regardless of the format in which they are presented. However, many of us worry that information overload – brought on by a seemingly unending creation of snazzy, electronic gadgets – has forever distracted and fragmented the audiences we strive to reach.

The good news is that those we aim to influence are no more ready to throw in the towel and look elsewhere than we, as originators and purveyors of newsworthy information, should be. As a matter of fact, the rationale and need for strategic wordsmithing has never been greater. It’s all about making what we have to write and say for our clients be both compelling and accessible.

At least that’s my take from a recently released major study, “How Much information? 2009 Report on American Consumers,” conducted by the University of California San Diego’s Global Information Industry Center (http://hmi.ucsd.edu/howmuchinfo.php). This report confirms that our thirst for knowledge and novelty has actually kept pace with the plethora of devices and technologies for conveying all that information.

UCSD research finds that the average American’s information consumption was 100,000 words, or roughly 34 gigabytes per day in 2008, equivalent to about one-fifth of a notebook PC’s hard drive, depending on the model. Over the past 30 years, the study estimates that information bytes consumed by U.S. households increased by 350 percent, for an average annual growth rate of 5.4 percent. In 2008 alone, total bytes consumed equaled the information (words!) stored in thick paperback novels stacked seven feet high over the entire U.S., including Alaska!

It’s perhaps noteworthy that the researchers chose this “written word” analogy to illustrate their point about rising American information consumption. Contrary to popular wisdom, we’re reading three times more words than we were in the early 1980s, before computers entered the information mainstream to challenge and ultimately displace TV and radio. While the share of printed words read by Americans for informational purposes declined from 25 percent in 1960 to 9 percent in 2008, the share of words read from the Internet and computer programs is now about 27 percent. E-mail, texting and “a lot of Web browsing is still in the form of reading,” according to Roger Bohn, director of the UCSD GIIC.

As the tremendous popularity of Kindles, BlackBerrys, notebook PCs and now iSlate tablet e-readers demonstrates, the importance and weight of the written, or filed, word to convey news and ideas remains vital. UCSD’s report concludes that “reading is the overwhelming preferred way to receive words on the Internet,” rendering press release writers’ output more relevant than ever in the Age of e-Information Technology.

To paraphrase loosely the other-wordly message that inspires farmer-baseball fan Ray Kinsela (Kevin Costner) in the 1989 movie classic, Field of Dreams, “If We Build and Strategically Issue Good Content, They Will Read It.”