Three Reasons Why Summer is NOT the Time to Slow Down Promotion

Call it what you will – the summer doldrums, the dog days of summer, the summertime blues. It really doesn’t matter what you call it, but most all of the statistics show that businesses slow down during the summertime.

Now, if you’re content to follow the crowd, by all means, feel free to follow suit. But, I certainly can’t run my business based on seasons of the year – and as a marketer and CEO, I can’t understand why other businesses would, unless they’re seasonal in nature. So, if you’re able to disagree with the crowd logic (or as I see it, “illogic”), then while everyone else is following the trend, you could be spending your time and energy transcending it.

But, don’t take my word for it. Just ask Dan Fellman, head of domestic distribution for Warner Brothers. Just last week, the latest Harry Potter film chalked up a record-breaking $476 million for its opening weekend. And, Warner Brothers is also spending advertising dollars promoting its summer 2012 blockbuster The Dark Knight Rises, the last chapter in director Christopher Nolan’s Batman film trilogy. The release of the trailer trended high on all the news search engines over the last two weeks, and according to some fans, added more reasons to see the Potter opening weekend debut.

Granted, summer loves the movie industry, but it’s not so much about the industry as it is about one glaring fact: people and businesses don’t stop spending money over the summer. So, in defense of summer, let me offer a few important reasons why now is the perfect time for a full-court promotional press.

• People Still Spend Money - According to the U.S. Census Bureau, retail sales rose .01 percent in June, maintaining a 20-month streak of monthly increases in consumer spending. In fact, despite a lackluster recovery, the U.S. is barely .02 percent away from breaking the record for consumer spending in a single month. That’s not half bad for the summertime. And wait until they calculate a few hundred million dollars worth of movie ticket sales for July.
• Opportunities Abound - While others are sitting back, you could capture the spotlight. One of the truisms about the media is that it never sleeps. It never takes a single day off. And, with iPads and smartphones enabling people to take the news with them, the media is more and more becoming a moveable feast. Consumers don’t have to be home anymore, listening to the radio or sitting in front of a TV, to receive your message when it’s delivered by the media. If things actually do slow down for your business during the summer, then factually, the only answer to turning them around IS promotion, promotion and more promotion.
• Planning Smart - In the event that the summer isn’t a good time for you to promote, it is still a good time for you to prepare to promote. One of the pitfalls in promotion is that you don’t realize you need to do it until it’s too late, and then you’re constantly behind the 8 ball trying to get it done. You wind up behind schedule and you settle for something less than perfect because of the short timetable. Whether you are actively promoting or simply using the summer months to prepare to promote, one thing is for certain – summertime can be the most productive time of the year for your marketing effort.

The summer doesn’t have to be slow. It can be a time when you recharge your promotional efforts and move yourself forward. But feel free to take a break to go see Harry Potter, so you can see how the big boys use the summertime to do more than just take in a little sun.

Just last week, I showed you an interview I did with Lisa Hess, our TV campaign manager, about a typical day in her life here at EMSI. In it, we learned a lot of the different things she does in order to get our clients booked. Although I can always count on Lisa to arrange good TV bookings each week, last week she outdid herself with 4 national TV appearances and 5 local TV appearances on network affiliate stations. So I thought it might be helpful as a follow-up to share with you how she got these bookings.

In her world, there are two kinds of pitches that she uses to garner the interest of national TV producers. While national news programs and talk shows tend to follow the news cycle and seasons, they also sometimes respond to a pitch that is more evergreen, a message that’s not tied to the news but is one that’s timeless. However, in order to generate interest on the evergreen pitch, it has to be creative and really offer the viewers some serious added value.

For example, one of our clients is a world-class certified investment advisor and so our challenge was to make him more attractive to a broad audience that may not have a large portfolio. So, we developed a simple pitch called “Finance 101,” in which we had our expert break down the complexities of the financial markets into short, basic lessons to help people understand how the markets work.

After we sent the pitch out last week, a producer from a FOX Business Network show called back and booked him for the interview. The idea is evergreen, and all we did to make it work was figure out how to take the experience of a guy who helps his clients juggle millions of dollars in investments and boil it down to something that would be applicable to Joe Six-Pack.

Seasonal topics are also important to producers, so we recently put out a pitch for a client of ours who is a dentist and an expert on bad breath, as he has his own line of branded bad breath cures in national chain pharmacies and supermarkets. We pitched the top barbecue foods that cause bad breath, and booked him on local shows in cities he’s traveling to. Seasonal pitches are almost always sought by producers, as they will often dedicate airtime to summertime issues like sun burn and weight loss and holiday stories in the winter. Our success with our dentist client has been built on seasonal pitches, as well as pitches focusing on holidays like Valentine’s Day and New Year’s, when people want their breath to be kissably fresh. I’ll stop there, because I am now sounding like a commercial.

The hard news cycle is also very important to the national news guys, and there is one story in the news cycle that dominated over the weekend – Jaycee Dugard. Her interview with Diane Sawyer and the launch of her book was big news this week, and we knew it would be. So last week we pitched a client who had written a memoir focused on his experience being kidnapped by his estranged father when he was 8 years old. For a six-month period, his father held him in captivity and subjected him to physical and emotional abuse until he was rescued. Our client’s book was part of his healing process, so in that respect we felt he could comment on why someone like Dugard would want to write a book about her ordeal. Last week we pitched him as a guest to all the big networks in the U.S. and Canada, and as a result he appeared Monday morning on A.M. Canada (the Canadian equivalent to the Today Show). The interview went so well that the CBC reached out to him on Twitter to ask him to be live in studio for their nightly interview show Connect with Mark Kelly, the highest rated evening talk show in Canada. The moral of the story is that you never know who is watching. We’re also in discussion with a CNN news show for this client.

So while all of these pitches were successful, they all staked out a different territory – seasonal, evergreen and the hard news cycle. It’s the strategy we use to get our clients on the air.

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I can’t tell you the number of clients who ask me, “How many press releases will you send out for me?” Some want us to put out numerous releases a month, using the tiniest of reasons as an excuse to reach out to the media in the hope that their messages will drive sales when read by consumers.

The problem with this strategy is that in order to reach the consumer, you must first interest the editor who holds the key to running your story. They are the gatekeepers. The disconnect for most people is they think writing and distributing numerous press releases chocked full of sales messages will get them the coverage they’re hoping for. And, it’s this primary misunderstanding that leads to the failure of more PR campaigns than I care to think about.

When I speak to groups, the principal message I try to get them to understand is that editors do not want to be viewed as a messenger for those trying to sell things. They see their role as providers of valuable and newsworthy information for their readers. So, if they’re hammered with press releases that have a sales type message, the two most likely results are either no response at all (they delete the release without reading it) or an email in return that reads, “Sounds nice. Let me direct you to our advertising manager.”

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In order to get the positive response you desire, you have to provide quality content that’s meaningful to a publication’s audience. For example, press releases that focus on tips for their readers from your position as an expert not only help the journalist do their job better but it also positions you as a valued resource. And in today’s print media world, when so many news organizations are short staffed and few releases even get read, those that provide the gatekeepers with valuable information are the ones that win that coveted print space.

Another misguided strategy I’ve seen (that results from this same disconnect) is using the myriad of free press release distribution services – or even those who charge a nominal fee – to distribute copious press releases to the media. These organizations sell their services with the justification that even if you don’t get a lot of press, their service will get it plenty of Google recognition. My attitude, to be a little uncharacteristically blunt, is “so what?” A Google ranking on a press release that never received news coverage is not a valuable thing. It lacks the third-party verification that comes with legitimate press coverage.

I know at this point that I may sound a bit like a broken record, repeating myself about issues like this over and over again, but it’s only because I hear it over and over again in my daily communications with people seeking PR for themselves or their companies. There is no substitute for coverage from the legitimate media. No SEO, no SEM, no Google-driven press release scheme as a side door to obtain legitimate media works. Well executed PR gets press and nothing matches the power of real media coverage from real media outlets. Anything else just isn’t worth the time or the resources.

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My Senior Campaign Manager, Tony Panaccio, wrote a great piece the other day about the state of TV advertising and I thought it was so interesting I wanted to share it with you.

The Nielsen Company tracks the audience viewership of TV programs so that programmers and advertisers can get a handle on how many people are watching certain shows. Programmers take that data and figure out how much they’ll charge to advertise on their shows. Of course, they pay attention to key demographics and more granular statistics, but at the end of the day, this is the data that helps them figure out that they’re going to charge $3 million per minute to advertise on The Super Bowl broadcast and $1 – $3.80 per minute on reruns of the recent reboot of Hawaii Five-0.

I think I’ve got that right, but now Nielsen is tracking ratings for shows people record and watch on their DVRs later. They even have it segmented to track people who watch shows on the same day they record it and up to 7 days afterward. I just have one question, and forgive me if I seem obtuse here, “Why?”

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Most people fast-forward through the commercials when they watch their favorite show on their DVR. I know I do. Even Nielsen acknowledges the phenomenon. They reported in 2010 that of the 33 percent of Americans that own a DVR, 56 percent fast-forward through commercials. Of course, this was not a survey of general Americans, but rather of Nielsen families who are accustomed to keeping an electronic diary of their viewing. So maybe they’re on slightly better behavior than the rest of us.

The key thing I’m wondering about is how much longer does the TV commercial have as an advertising tool? The trend is clear that the DVR is becoming more common and that people are typically using it to avoid the constant barrage of advertising they are subjected to every day. Billboards on the highway, commercials on the radio, banners and pop ups on the Internet, people are simply tired of the constant assault of advertising on their senses. So they use the DVR, they switch stations on the car radio when the commercials come on and many even choose more scenic routes for their morning commutes.

The upshot is this, as people reject advertising more and more, what happens between the commercials becomes more important. That’s why PR is still the best value for the money, because no matter what technology people come up with to block or ignore advertisements, they only do so because they are far more interested in what is happening on the shows they watch and listen to, and the publications they read online and offline. Moreover, advertisements lack any kind of third-party verification, and consumers have become so media savvy, they know the difference between an ad and a show. They know advertisers pay big money for those spots on The Super Bowl and on their favorite shows, and they understand that they control their messages. They also know, and generally trust, the editorial side of the media. That’s what they read online, what they listen to on radio and what they tune into when they watch TV.

You can’t buy that kind of trust with an ad and the only way you can get on the air or in editorial print coverage is through PR.

So don’t mourn for the TV commercial just yet. But feel free to wave as you pass it by on your way to your TV interview.

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“What may be done at any time will be done at no time.” — Scottish Proverb

Okay, don’t ask what the Jewish grandmother from New York is doing with a Scottish proverb. My chief strategist found it for me, and it fit the tone of my message today.

In my time counseling clients, I have found that the two biggest obstacles to a good PR campaign are the two Ps: Procrastination and Perfection. Too many times, companies will procrastinate in getting their campaign started, and tag their campaign launch to something artificial like a product launch (which isn’t news, unless it’s the iPhone 4) or a new initiative. By and large, the media could care less. Your message, combined with something that is hot in the news cycle, is your hook, and if you’re doing it right, waiting is not an option. The second element, perfection, is something that drives many companies to delay their campaign. Executives will debate messages and news angles to the point of diminished return, and wind up unnecessarily delaying their PR campaigns.

My point is simply this: you need to start now. Not next week, not next month. Now.

After all, isn’t that when you want your potential customers to act? Many consumer businesses have taken to using the “right now” message in their advertising. A leading brake service provider uses the “now” message in their radio ads, stressing that waiting to take care of a potential brake problem could cause more costly damage to your car’s brake system. Empire, a leading manufacturer and provider of flooring and carpet solutions for consumers, has even changed the name of its company to Empire Today. Their point is that waiting for the “bargain” will cost their customers more money in the long run.

So, if you want your potential customers to act today, that’s exactly when you need to start your PR campaign. Getting ready to get ready never got anyone any additional business. What’s more, the dog days of summer will soon give way to the busy days of Q4, and if you want to have a chance at making an impression during the busiest time of the year, you HAVE to start now. Here’s why:

The Holidays – Yes, I know that when it’s 90 degrees outside, it seems like a weird time to be thinking of the holiday season, but the media doesn’t think in those terms. Media folks like to take time off for the holidays as well, which means they have to start working on their holiday coverage early. Long lead publications are already working on their October and November issues, and if you want to be included, you need to start communicating with them now. Moreover, short leads start working on their holiday gift guides and reviews in August and September. If you have a consumer product or service that is compatible with the holiday season, this is when you need to start communicating with the media to promote it.

Authors – If your book is a fall release, you’ll be competing with a hundred thousand other authors for the attention of book buyers. If you want your book to rise like cream to the top, you need to make sure that as soon as your book becomes available, you will be on the air and in the news to talk about it. Furthermore, the holiday market beckons for you, as well. The summer reading season is over, so you need to focus on your book as a holiday gift.

Revenue – If you’re like most businesses, the year is going by faster than you’d like, and you are behind on your revenues – either falling short of your projections for 2010, or compared to how you did last year. Either way, the only way to increase the inflow of business is to increase the outflow of marketing. There is no better value in marketing than PR, so why let your campaign languish as your revenues stagnate? If you’re going to have any hope of picking up the pace, PR is your best friend.

At the end of the day, the old Scottish proverb rings true. If you’re comfortable putting off your PR campaign until tomorrow or next week or the week after, what guarantee do you have that you’ll ever launch it? Start today, right now, and you’ll be surprised how fast your campaign can be up and running.

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Over the years, I’ve always advised my clients that if you want to get in the news, you have to watch and read the news. I know it sounds a little like “bumper sticker” advice, but it’s really not meant as a sound bite. In fact, we use a practical application of that advice every single morning at our agency.

It’s actually a very simple list of easy steps that anyone can do, and it can get blockbuster results.

• Read the Feed (or watch the news) – A daily routine of following breaking news and popular stories is the first and most essential step in my formula for how you can get interviewed by the media. If you are Internet savvy and prefer to get your news digitally, tracking news trends will be a breeze. There are many online news outlets, such as Yahoo, MSN, CNN and AOL, that prominently feature on their sites the most searched and significant news events each day. There are also other online services, such as Google Alerts, Digg, and others, that allow users to stay on top of the hot topics. If your preference – like me – is to watch the news on TV and/or read daily newspapers, those are also effective methods for keeping up with the news cycles. Whether you prefer traditional or digital news, the key thing is to establish a news-tracking routine and stick to it. It will orient you as to which news topics are getting the most attention, and will be a strong predictor of which stories are most likely to have a longer cycle on TV news outlets.
• Identify a Hook – As you follow the news each day, think creatively about how your company or your expertise could be applied to comment on news events of the day. I’ll relate something that happened this past month, and how we applied it. We have a client who is a world-class financial advisor. He is a former Wall Street player who made himself very comfortable through that life, but felt another calling for himself. Now he works as a financial planner for families in trouble, and he’s extremely passionate about it. We were looking for news hooks other than the typical “Tips for the Rough Times” pitch that has been making the rounds since 2008. As we were doing that, it hit the wire that the IRS was going to be taxing the claims being collected from BP Oil by the workers displaced by the disaster. At the same time, we had just finished watching a clip of Anderson Cooper of CNN on the ground in Louisiana, covering the crisis. At that point, it rang like a bell – we’d send our client to the Gulf Coast to help those hardest hit by the disaster. So, in a matter of minutes, our team went from, “This is a great hook,” to implementation.
• Develop your Angle – Taking my client example from above, we developed an angle for him using the BP oil story as a launching pad. We emailed him to see if he had any specific tips for the Gulf Coasters, and he came through beautifully. We cobbled his tips into the pitch, and it flowed like this: 
  

  A Guide for Gulf Coast Victims of the BP Oil Spill

  Financial Expert Offers Tips on Getting Through the Worst
  Gulf Coast workers displaced by the BP oil spill have had to deal with losing their jobs, losing their businesses and many are losing their homes. But there are ways that they can protect themselves right now from further damage. Money expert (name deleted, because we’re still pitching him and we don’t want to jinx anything!), has a slew of creative and practical tips for those affected by the disaster.

  He says that uncertainty on when the spill will be stopped leads to the uncertainty about long-term economic activity and its effects on employment, consumer spending and housing prices. So, he is advising people to do the following things:

  • Be Prepared. Prepare for the worst case scenario. Build up a cash position equal to 3-6 months living expenses. Keep a significant amount of cash in your house in case you may be forced to evacuate due to a storm or adverse environmental conditions. Keep enough gasoline on hand to be able to fill your vehicle.
  • Stock Up. Build up a supply of food and water in case a sudden evacuation is ordered or if city water sources are deemed undrinkable.
  • Get Trained. If your livelihood is based on fishing or tourism, consider getting training in industries not dependent on the fishing or hospitality industries. If worse case scenarios develop, jobs lost in these areas will not come back for many years.
  • Fill Out the Forms. Apply for all aid and compensation available from both BP and state and Federal government. If income has stopped or decreased significantly, apply for food stamps and other social assistance.
  • Watch the Real Estate Market. Be prepared for lower real estate values for some time to come. Even if the spill stopped tomorrow, the ecological effects will be felt for years. Gulf Coast real estate, both commercial and residential, is falling dramatically and will not rebound anytime soon.
  • Stay Well. Monitor your family’s health as there have been reports of mysterious sicknesses in Gulf residents and cleanup workers.
  • Read the News. Stay informed as best you can. In addition to traditional news sources, read blogs, where you may find reports that are not widely available to the public. BP and the federal government have not been fully forthcoming in informing the public of the extent of the disaster.

  Thanks for your consideration – let me know if you’re interested.

• Blast it Out – Once you’ve read the news, identified a hook and written up your angle, it is time to launch your effort. When you pitch something that is hot in the news, you also need to call producers individually to follow up, ensuring they received and read your email. Many national producers won’t take phone calls, so at the very least, send your emails with a return receipt so you can track that they opened it.

To follow through with the effort we began earlier this month, we have booked two national TV interviews and six local TV interviews across the Gulf Coast, with the campaign continuing all through the month. So the bottom line here is that by doing this daily exercise, you will enable yourself to take advantage of these kinds of headlines. And who knows? You might even be able to fold yourself into the national news cycle.

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One of the things I love about my job is solving problems.

Sure, it’s great to have a client walk in the door who has a unique product or service, solid credentials and a compelling angle. It makes the work easier, certainly, but it sometimes is more satisfying to solve what a client thinks is an unsolvable problem in a creative way.

One such client was (and still is, by the way) Darlene Quinn, author of the novel Webs of Power. She had been handled by another PR agency previously and spent quite a bit of money to get very limited coverage. She came to us needing new representation, but very skeptical about how we would handle her pitch. Our method, as many regular readers know, is to approach the client as an expert in their field, and then promote their expertise as a way of getting media interest for them and their message.

In Darlene’s case, her novel was a marriage of Dynasty and Macy’s, a story of power and intrigue at the highest echelons of the retail fashion industry. When we asked her what inspired her to write it, she revealed she had been a top executive at the Bullocks Wilshire department store chain. Furthermore, she was friends with other top executives at some very upscale department stores, and had enough knowledge about the inside of the business that she could tell a few good stories (with the names changed to protect the guilty and the innocent, of course).

And that’s when we knew we had it. We knew that promoting her simply as a new author of a racy novel that reeked of money and power wasn’t going to get us very far. There are more than 370,000 new books published every year, and casting her as one of those numbers just meant that she’d be regarded as another can of beans on the shelf.

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However, how many experts on the high-end retail industry are there in the media? Not many, because many top executives don’t want to offend anyone else in the business, even if it’s a competitor. They never know when they might have to ask them for a job. Not a problem for Darlene, however, who had made a commitment to being an author for the rest of her working days. While she would never overtly say anything to offend anyone – that’s just not her way – she did have the freedom to tell the truth about the retail business.

Soon, she was being booked on radio and television to talk about the retail industry and its struggles to get through the recession, which was just starting around that point in time. With tons of coverage in the print media, more than 120 radio interviews and several national TV interviews, Darlene is now the undisputed expert in the media on retail matters. In addition, she was able to expose her book to millions of readers, listeners and viewers. Coming full circle, we’re looking forward to her new campaign in the fall to promote her new book, Twisted Webs, the sequel to Webs of Power.

More than that, Darlene is branching out and becoming a commentator on the retail industry as a whole. Watch the Internet for her next interview, which is about how retail giant Wal-Mart is trying to fix a serious mistake which cost them many thousands of customers late last year. I’d tell you about it, but Darlene is really the expert on that!

There’s a lesson here that can be learned and applied by anyone with a consumer message, regardless of whether you are selling a book, a product or a service. The lesson is that if you’re interested in being in the news, or interviewed on radio and TV, there is a precise formula you must follow.

1. Follow the news and look for news items that are relevant to your topic and that you can comment on as an expert.
2. Develop your message around those news items that will provide valuable information to the public.
3. Identify the local or national media you feel is a good match. Read their column, watch their show on TV, or listen to their radio show. Before you approach them, know the format of their shows and types of topics that would interest them.
4. When contacting them, never, ever pitch your company, your product or service. Only pitch yourself as an expert with solutions to problems their audience is concerned about.
5. Understand who their audience is so you can engage the editor or host with your pitch and, make sure to give them all the information they need to make an immediate decision to interview you.

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Sometimes I feel bad for on-air TV personalities, because if you’re on television regularly for any length of time, you’re going to screw up. It’s inevitable. It’s the law of averages, and when you do, YouTube will be sure to archive it for future generations.

The Internet is stockpiled with videos of show hosts forgetting the camera was on, dropping four-letter words and losing it when heckled by onlookers off camera. The same is true with public relations, because we’re not immune to gaffs, and neither are our clients. One of my staff likes to tell the story of a New York politician who was caught not paying taxes in the middle of a re-election campaign, and so his PR rep wanted to shield him from too many questions. To combat that, he scheduled an outdoor press conference in the dead of the afternoon on the hottest day of the year, hoping the heat would shorten the length of the press conference and thin the crowd of reporters because they didn’t want to be outside. The press conference went off as planned in the sweltering afternoon sun, and 10 minutes into it, his candidate passed out from heat stroke.

So, when you’re thinking of doing TV interviews, here are some basic, and not so basic dos and don’ts to help you through the rough patches:

1. Don’t look at the monitor – If you’ve never done TV before, the first thing you’ll notice in a guest segment is that when you sit down at the set, there are tons of distractions – monitors showing all the camera angles, cameramen rolling the cameras to different positions, and producers who like to move around the set. Forget them. Look at the person interviewing you, as if you were just having a cup of coffee with them at the local Starbucks.
2. Don’t Let a Stumble Stop the Interview – Most interviews are either live, or what they call “live to tape,” meaning they are taped segments, but they are not edited. That means whatever happens during the segment, mistakes and all, is what they run. So, if you stumble over your words or cough or accidentally spit out the gum in your mouth (that you should have spit out before the interview), you just have to keep going. No matter what, in most cases you’ll have one take, and whatever happens, well, happens. Don’t stop and say “Cut, can we do this again please?” because that is what will air.
3. Don’t Do Your “Elevator Pitch” – When being interviewed, you should answer the host’s questions directly, and not go into your stock company pitch right off the bat. That will only annoy the host, and make them ask the question again (which will make you look foolish). If you are concerned, try to talk to the producer in advance about what questions you’ll be asked. If the producer is vague, or doesn’t give you the exact questions, then simply be ready for whatever they throw at you.
4. Don’t Move in a Distracting Way – A news segment is not “Dancing with the Stars,” so don’t move too much when you’re being interviewed. If you naturally gesture when you talk, then gesture, but don’t go overboard. Sweeping hand gestures are distracting. If you’re standing during the interview, try to stand still. Place your feet at shoulder width to maintain balance, and don’t bounce around. Bobbing, weaving, pacing or any other kind of nervous movement will be distracting. Moreover, if you are sitting, don’t do the nervous knee bounce that many people are used to doing under the table in the board room. There is no table, and the camera will pick it up. Remember, being stationary and relaxed will help you exude confidence on camera.

The main “don’t,” however, is don’t try to perform. Just be yourself, represent your company professionally and allow the expert in you to rise to the surface. That’s the reason they booked you, and that’s who they want to put on TV.

If you’ve landed a TV interview, congratulations, you’ve secured a few precious minutes on a platform which can be tremendously valuable to the promotion of your company and products. How else can you reach your target market as a captive audience who will see your product, hear you tell them about its benefits, and listen to their favorite TV personality apparently endorse it?

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Take it from me – you will receive few opportunities as valuable to your marketing as a TV appearance, so it’s so important to be a success. If you ace your TV interview, not only are you more likely to be invited back, but when other TV producers Google you, finding that clip of your informative and entertaining guest spot will leave them chomping at the bit to book you on their shows!

Here is a delightful sketch by the wonderful Martin Short, where he very humorously demonstrates how to be a really terrible guest on a TV interview – enjoy!

Why Getting On the Show Is More Important Than Ever

Commercials used to be the time to get up and stretch the ol’ legs, get a snack or let the dog out. Today, they are the signal to hit the fast forward button on the remote.

The advent of Digital Video Recorders (DVRs), often referred to by one of the leading brand names, TIVO, has finally given the viewer a break from the background noise of television advertising. Instead of being screamed at by local car dealers, pitched on the ShamWow or told repeatedly to not squeeze the Charmin, many consumers who subscribe to cable TV these days just zoom past the commercials without ever giving them a second look.

Jim Barton and Mike Ramsay, the creators of TIVO, don’t even view their creation as a consumer product. They call it a “public service.”

The consumer backlash against advertising has been building for years, and it is in all sectors. Even as advertisers shift their budgets from traditional to online media consumers are feeling empowered and fleeing advertising at every turn.

But don’t take my word for it.

A study published late last year by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) makes it very clear that advertising industry insiders are running for the hills. The writing is on the wall when the ANA itself reveals that, “More than 80 percent of advertising executives believe that DVRs will have a serious negative impact on the effectiveness of TV advertising…changes in DVR penetration and DVR usage will result in changes in commercial viewership and changes in the cost of TV advertising. These changes, in turn, will affect the effectiveness of TV advertising, requiring a continuous revision of the tailored strategic response to maintain advertising spending efficiency.”

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With consumers finally in the driver’s seat as regards their exposure to TV ads, savvy marketers are looking at the alternatives to expensive TV spots, especially when the penetration of paid TV advertising continues to be eroded by the growth of the DVR.

And that brings us to the point I really want to get across.

Today it is more important than ever to actually be IN the show, rather than have your message relegated to a few seconds in between the show’s segments, lost in the fast-forward blur.

So what does “in the show” mean? It means you or your company’s CEO or spokesperson booked as an expert guest on talk shows, or interviewed as an expert commentator on the news story du jour. It means you are part of the entertainment, not just another commercial spot—boring at best, most often annoying.

Being a part of the entertainment, instead of the interruption, delivers tremendous value in several other important ways. The most important of these is that people trust the news far more than paid ads. The tacit endorsement of a TV talk show host or news reporter carries much more weight with consumers—a favorable interview is seen as an implicit endorsement for your products, services or book.

A great example of this value is now known as “The Oprah Effect.” Ten years ago, Oprah chose Spanx shapewear as one of her “Favorite Things,” and sales boomed for the Atlanta-based clothing company that manufactures the line. Countless authors, companies, and even other television personalities (anyone heard of Dr. Phil?), owe their good fortune to Oprah’s endorsement.

Now granted, there is really only one Oprah, but interviews on other television talk shows can have a similar effect on the market’s perception of your products or book—even if it is not quite as drastic as an Oprah endorsement.

Is it time for you to look at how the increased media coverage of a good PR campaign could give your product or service a competitive edge? Next time you sit down to watch your favorite TV news or talk show, think about how the guests and expert commentators on the show appeared. If you watched the same “expert” pitching his product in a TV spot, would you have been as convinced of its value?

More to the point…would you actually have watched the TV commercial? I personally don’t think I could actually sit through another 30 seconds of the brunette selling Progressive Insurance…hurry, where’s the remote?

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With over three decades of experience in marketing and PR, in the last few years I have been awed and excited by the new opportunities afforded by the Internet. The explosion of Internet applications, such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, to name a few, has shifted and expanded the world of marketing and PR, and it will never be the same.

But, don’t expect the traditional media—newspapers, radio and TV—to disappear any time soon.  Those who predict the death of traditional media could not be more wrong! In truth, the only really successful marketing campaigns must now embrace ALL media avenues, both offline (traditional) and online.

Irish playwright Eugene O’Neil once wrote, “There is no present or future, only the past happening over and over again—now.” That is what is happening with radio and, in fact, with all other traditional media now being thrown into the dead pool because of the rise of the Internet.  In fact, the death of radio has been predicted on numerous occasions with the advent of 8-track cartridges, MTV, satellite broadcasting and the Internet…experts have claimed each would make radio obsolete or irrelevant.

We once used radio for everything. Then came television, and it was predicted by “well-informed people” that not only would radio die, but so would the movies!

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But radio and movies are still here. Instead of dying, radio evolved and found a new niche. It would never again be the center of our living rooms, where families would gather to be entertained and informed, but it would survive as a music medium.  Today, radio is as strong as ever— and even with a huge growth in the talk radio landscape!

And let’s talk about print. When the Seattle Post-Intelligencer scrapped its print edition in favor of an online-only version, people began predicting the same death of the print medium. But, in fact, the traditional print medium is thriving. Just as radio reinvented itself after the dawn of television, so has print in the age of the Internet. The print medium’s primary strength—beat reporters—still exists and their articles are printed in traditional publications AND are also posted on the Internet!

And I suppose that’s my point. As marketing gurus talk up the importance of social media marketing, search engine optimization, strong Web sites, blogging and other Internet-centered activities, we can’t omit traditional media from our marketing and PR strategy.  People still listen to radio. People still watch TV. People still read print publications (both offline AND online). They are STILL the media, and they are NOT on life support.

Traditional media should still be the backbone of your efforts, but MUST be combined with online marketing and PR for maximum exposure. If you don’t cover all the bases, you will have missed the terrific cross-marketing opportunities enjoyed by savvy marketers who’ve embraced the synergy of a campaign that combines offline and online strategies!

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