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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Did you know that Sarah Palin hasn’t given a media interview in months?

It’s true. She doesn’t talk to reporters at all. Outside of her commentary stints on Fox News, she has no direct contact with any journalists in print, on radio or on TV. So how is it she constantly stays in the headlines? One word: Twitter.

Palin lets the world know what she thinks through Twitter feeds and then comments on them through other social networks, like her Facebook page. She is still mentioned as a potential presidential candidate and her name appears in the news almost every week.

Is there any better evidence that social networking is not a fad?

But don’t take my word or even Palin’s word for it. Just look at the stats:

Twitter

• Since April, Twitter has gained 40 million users and a 62 percent increase in mobile use of the platform. (Source: ClickZ)
• Now, there are more than 175 million registered Twitter users. It is unclear as to how many of these are regular, but the number of Tweets per day has rocketed to 95 million – an increase of 250 percent. (Econsultancy)

LinkedIn

• LinkedIn has grown by an impressive 100 percent from last year; it now has more than 100 million users across the globe. Interestingly, 56% of these users are from outside of the US. (Econsultancy)

Facebook

• Back in January 2010, the site had 350 million active users across the globe. It now has in excess of 640 million – half of which log in daily. Based on this figure, Facebook has seen a 40 percent increase in daily usage over the past 12 months. (Econsultancy)
• People are sharing more content on Facebook now too. On average, there are more than 7 billion pieces of content shared on the site weekly. This figure has risen from last year, when it was 3.5 billion. (Econsultancy)
• 75 percent of brand “Likes” on Facebook come from advertisements. (Mashable)
• More than 250 million people use Facebook Connect every month. (Facebook)

General

• The average American Internet user watches 30 minutes of video online per day (comScore) compared to 5 hours of television per day.
• Social networking site usage grew 88 percent among Internet users aged 55-64 between April 2009 and May 2010. (Pew Research)
• In 2009, social gamers bought $2.2 billion in virtual goods, predicted to increase to $6 billion by 2013. (NPD Group).
• 22 percent of Fortune 500 companies now have a public-facing blog that has at least one post in the past 12 months. (comScore)

From the stats, a few key trends are quite clear:

• Corporations are using social networking to extend their branding efforts.
• Real commerce is taking place through social networking sites.
• Social networks are no longer a trend. They are a fact of life for millions of Americans.

This all stands to figure as Americans are being forced to do more with less. They have to make ends meet with less money, get more work done in less time and take care of their families despite the growing demands of earning money through more than one job. Social networking allows Americans to get news, stay in touch with friends and promote their business interests.

I use social networking as a key way of reaching out to my potential clients as well as those in the marketing community who want to use my columns for their Web sites, invite me on their shows as a guest, and even hire me as an expert speaker – all of which drives my business. As a marketing communications professional, I would never dream of eliminating social networking from my outreach arsenal. Each day it grows more important and even helps to drive my revenue, so when I recommend social networking to my clients, it’s not because I am trying to follow all the media hype. I’m living it daily and I see how it helps my bottom line.

But here’s probably the most compelling reason for you to dive into the world of social networking. Based on the stats, your competitors are already using it.

Now, forgive me. I have to go place this piece on my Twitter feed.

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One of the key paradigms that is shifting in today’s PR world is the influence of bloggers.

Keeping in mind there are hundreds of thousands of bloggers on the Internet today, there are some who drive opinions far better than even celebrity endorsements. According to the 2011 Social Media Matters study by BlogHer.com, women who read blogs routinely trust implicitly the advice and recommendations they receive, especially if it is from a blogger they follow on a regular basis.

“We find this is true in every study conducted over the past four years and the effect never diminishes,” according to the study’s report to the media. “In this year’s Social Media study, 88 percent of the active blog readers in the U.S. general population trust the information they get from familiar blogs. Asked why they have this level of trust, nearly half (48 percent) say it’s because they had made purchases in the past based on blog recommendations and were satisfied with the results. More than 50 percent of the active blog readers in the general U.S. online population have made a purchase based on a blog recommendation. That number jumps to 80 percent in the BlogHer network community.

Moreover, familiar bloggers are preferred over celebrities, a finding that will certainly find some ad agencies cringing.

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This information is key in the book marketplace, especially because 48 percent of all books sold in North America are sold online (44 percent through Amazon and 4 percent through BN.com). With consumer trust in familiar bloggers at such high levels, it’s a fair assumption that bloggers are influencing more of those sales than in the past. Circulations on key book review publications like Publisher’s Weekly and Kirkus Reviews – which drive opinions with book buyers for the major retailers – are becoming increasingly irrelevant, as more consumers choose to buy online instead of the brick-and-mortar stores serviced by those buyers. Before Amazon was a force in the book industry, those buyers had a lot more influence over what consumers bought by deciding to stock certain books at higher levels. Today, much of that influence has been transferred to Amazon and the reviews posted on that site. And, many of Amazon’s regular reviewers also have their own book blogs, doubling the influence those bloggers have over readers.

It’s a trend we’ve followed, and to which we’ve responded, by including more than 650 of those key bloggers in our media databases for our print campaign clients. It’s something every author and publisher should also consider when approaching any book PR campaign. In the past, bloggers weren’t recognized as thought leaders; they were sparsely read voices in the wilderness. But, today’s crop of book bloggers serve millions of readers who trust them and are opinion leaders in a marketplace that is more Web-based. In fact, Examiner.com hosts one of the most popular book blogs on the Internet with a recorded 7 million visitors per month. That’s 2 million more sets of eyeballs than sees the Sunday New York Times. That’s why we treat bloggers with the same importance that we treat any other print or online journalist from the mainstream.

Think back 10 years ago when a PR campaign yielded an online article. Many agencies wouldn’t even report it to the client thinking, “Oh, it’s only a Web hit.” Today, those Web hits place consumers one click away from making a purchase. So if you’re planning a PR campaign to promote a book – and you don’t include a heaping helping of book bloggers in your outreach – you’re missing a boat the size of a few of the larger states in the Union.

The Internet is changing the way we do just about everything, including selling books. Smart authors and publishers will change with those trends if they want to stay relevant to the only audience that matters – their readers.

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Unless you’re Oprah, a former president or a major celebrity, there is one question you will likely never be asked by the media when promoting a book.

“So why did you write your book?”

They won’t ask it, not because they don’t know you’re an author nor because they’re being rude. They won’t ask because the media doesn’t exist to help authors sell books. The media exists to create content that informs and entertains its audience, so that their audience stays tuned in. The more audience they have, the more advertising dollars they can charge for their print space and air time. Audiences are what make them money.

This is one of the most common disconnects we usually see with those who are new to the game of PR. Authors expect they can use the media as a venue to talk about their books, while the media is only interested in them for their expertise and the information or entertainment they can offer their audiences.

But, there is a wide gulf between using an interview to wax philosophic about why you wrote a book and giving an information-packed or fun-filled interview aimed at holding the interest of the audience. So here are a few things to remember when preparing for media interviews:

1. “What’s In It For Me?” – The success of your interview, whether your audience stays tuned into you or tunes out, will depend largely on whether or not you tell them how your information will help them. No one knows this formula better than producers, hosts, editors and journalists whose livelihoods depend on keeping their audiences tuned in. They’re slaves to the audience – they know if they can’t hold them, they’ll lose them. And, if the audience goes, so does the advertising revenue and possibly their job.

2. Make it Fast – Today, the media has far less time and space than it ever has in its history. Ratings and readership figures are transmitted electronically, tracking not only what media you are consuming, but how much, for how long and when. They have it down to the minute. That doesn’t mean that we are reading less or have shorter attention spans. It means there is a lot more competition for our attention than ever before.

   We have radio and TV shows, movies, the Internet as well as content for our smartphones and PDAs. Media is delivered to us on plasma screens in the checkout line at Wal-Mart, in the airport as we wait for our flights and even at the pump as we gas up our cars. As a result of the competition for our attention, the media gives us much more information, in a variety of ways, faster than ever before. For the media, it’s as much about how much content as it is about how fast they can give it to us. Most TV interviews are in the 3-5 minute range, and radio interviews are in the 5-10 minute range. In print, a 500-word article is about the medium length most people will find. In USA Today, only a handful of stories ever break the 500 word mark. They want to give you more, faster. So when an author is offered an interview with the media, they better be able to provide helpful information that will leave an impression and be able to do it quickly, because their air time is so limited.

3. Walk the Tightrope – The media knows the dance. You are offering your time and expertise to their audience in exchange for exposure of your book. But if during the interview you say things like, “In my book, I wrote…,” it will be a short interview. However, if your interview fills the host’s need for delivering an entertaining and informative interview, they will do the promotion for you by mentioning your book and even your Web site on the air.

   But, even more important than the media’s perception of being overly promotional when interviewed on the air, is the consumer’s perception. It is a universal truth that consumers don’t like being sold. They don’t like commercials (which is why they fast forward past them on their DVRs), or shopping for cars at a dealership. They don’t like banner ads, spam, or a landscape cluttered with billboards. So the clue here is – don’t sell! Instead, inform, entertain and, in doing so, you’ll build the audience’s trust. And, one thing is for sure – no one puts their money on the counter without there being some level of trust that they are getting something of value in exchange for whatever it is they are purchasing.

The bottom line is that in order to get value from your media exposure, you have to offer value to the media first. Otherwise, you will forever be on the outside, looking in, as your competitors get the air time and media exposure you want for yourself.

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One of the most common dilemmas I encounter with many clients is the preconceived notions of what it takes to make sales. The problem with these preconceived notions is that they often misdirect people into thinking there is empirical evidence that lays out the sales cycle in absolutes. But, that just doesn’t exist.

So, what IS real? Exposure is a real tangible element in a marketing and sales cycle, because without it, you can’t sell a thing. Just as a candle under a bucket yields no light, a product or service that no one knows about will yield no sales. People have to know about you to do business with you.

Whether you are selling a book, a product or a service – exposure is the first and primary goal of marketing. While exposure doesn’t guarantee sales, any hope of generating sales can only result from getting in front of your potential consumer. But, when your product receives that coveted exposure to the masses, the X-factors in play become whether or not consumers will like what they see. Your product will either be exactly what the consumer is looking for, or it won’t.

I was talking to my senior strategist and he reminded me of the launch of New Coke back in the 1980s. Coca-Cola decided that Pepsi’s gains in the marketplace meant that consumers wanted a sweeter-tasting soda pop than Coke’s patented formula delivered. So, they scrapped their mainline product altogether and introduced New Coke with a multi-million dollar ad campaign featuring prime time darling Bill Cosby.

Their new product launch tanked. Consumers wanted their old Coke back. The moral of the story is that everyone in America had been exposed to New Coke. But, it also appeared that no one in America wanted to buy it. That’s the flip side of exposure, because great marketing doesn’t make something a quality product, nor can it fool people into wanting something they wouldn’t ordinarily buy. Your product must be able to stand on its own once it receives the exposure.

In the absence of empirical data, let’s take a look at some anecdotal data – specifically, your own. Ask yourself some simple questions. When was the last time you made a purchase of anything after being exposed to it only once? When was the last time an advertisement or an article about a product or service made SUCH an impression on you that you immediately made arrangements to buy it? If you’re like most consumers and business decision-makers, the answer to that question is either never, or rarely. The first step was that you were made aware of it, and perhaps after several exposures to that item, you then became interested in it.

Interest is what comes as a result of exposure, but interest doesn’t necessarily get you reaching for your check book. Interest usually spurs you to get information. You research it online, you ask friends about it, you ask business associates to weigh in on it – you collect your OWN data. And if you still want more information, you may decide to contact the company and ask them about it. My point here is that there are hundreds of ways to act on interest that does not involve making a purchase, and each of those actions represents a series of decision points, at which you may still decide not to buy.

Short of climbing inside our heads, which some researchers are doing these days under the category of “behavioral research” to track how consumers make buying decisions, there is no ironclad way to track what happens with the consumer from the point of exposure to the point of sale. In the advertising world, you’ll find a wide range of references about the frequency of advertising required to CAUSE a sale. But, my problem with those theories is they don’t take into account what actions the buyer took during the “interest” phase of their buying process that really caused the decision to buy.

And that is my point, and it’s why I know the value of PR and it’s how I’ve been able to sustain and grow a thriving PR agency over the course of 20+ years, through recessions and economic downturns and absolute market upheaval. It’s because of this one truth: You can’t sell anything without exposure that creates interest in the minds of the consumer. And PR is the most cost-effective and successful way of achieving that exposure and interest.

So, while good marketing and PR may not make record-breaking sales a mortal lock, you will never even be in the game without it.

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How a high-school dropout became a Hollywood success with Back Draft, Moll Flanders and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves

One of the things I love about my business is I get to meet the most interesting people who are luminaries in their industries. One person who fits that bill to a “T” is Pen Densham. You may not recognize his name, but I guarantee you’ve seen his work.

I talk about passion a lot with regard to PR and Pen is a guy whose entire life was based on his passion for movies. He quit school at age 15 and then spent his formative years doing everything he could to conjure himself a career in film and television. With no formal education and the odds against him (almost sounds like a movie plot in itself), he forged a career writing, producing, consulting on and directing some of the most-loved movies and television shows from the last 20-plus years. His string of projects included Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Backdraft, Moll Flanders, Rocky II, Blown Away, as well as the TNT movie Houdini and the successful reboots of the classic TV series The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits. He has worked with Oscar-winning talents like Ron Howard, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Costner and Jeff Bridges, and some of his projects have also won Academy Awards. And just for irony, the high school dropout now teaches courses at the University of Southern California’s film school.

He recently released his definitive guide to screenwriting, Riding the Alligator (www.pendensham.com), one of the most honest and inspiring books for writers that I’ve read in a long time. While Pen’s primary discipline is writing for the screen, his process is to filter it through an individual’s passion. That is such a match with my philosophy and I felt that much of his advice is applicable for all writers, regardless of whether they are book authors, screenwriters, speakers or business people in general.

I asked Pen if he’d consent to do a Q & A with me, with the idea that there isn’t a field, profession or discipline that doesn’t require some level of skill with the written word. I had hoped Pen could help shed a little light on the writing process in general, starting with the blank page and going from there. Well, not only did he say yes, but he also didn’t disappoint me with his message. Just read on below and I think you’ll see why I was so happy with what he had to say.

MF: Pen, let’s start with talking about the blank page, which is the scariest thing to many writers, myself included. What’s your advice on slaying that dragon?

Pen: One of the most vital things any creative person can do for starting their work is to commit a murder. The victim will pose as your best friend, but in reality, he’s your worst enemy when it comes to initiation anything artistic. It’s your own inner voice, the critic that we each seem to have, who so helpfully tells us that our work is probably a waste of time, that someone else has already done something better than this, that people will line up on the streets and point at your car as you drive by, laughing at you for even attempting to do something original.

This inner critic thoroughly deserves to be assassinated, because its opinions are patently wrong, destructively useless and seem to be part of every human being’s psychological equipment. It has many names. I call my personal one “The Golem” but it can also be called “Perfectionism” or “The Voice of Writers Block.” We don’t invite this character into our lives. He or she seems to have slipped in through some evil side door and taken up an obnoxiously self-confident residence in our brain, sitting in judgment of us.

In order to eliminate this parasite, one has a gigantically potent weapon…don’t try to make your work perfect. In fact, deny this character any power by choosing a mindset that says you are just writing a piece of crap. Yep. Crap. This decision frees your true soul from the clutches of Mr. Vanity (Golem), because there is no power to criticize crap, and the strange thing is, as you write without self-criticism, letting whatever comes out of your head fall onto the page, you are probably writing something of superb quality that, with a few tweaks and tucks in a rewrite, will surprise you with what you accomplish and thoroughly route it around our creator of procrastination, our internal critic.

MF: I can’t agree more about the effects of self-criticism and where it can take us and I love your solution!

Many authors feel insecure about writing, because they may not have been formally trained as one. You dropped out of high school at age 15 to move to Hollywood with an aim of getting into the movie business. How did you overcome your lack of education to become an award-winning screenwriter?

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Pen: When I was at school, I was always fed that the real writers—the Shakespeares, the Dickens, the Steinbecks—were beyond my ability. They were saints of literature and I was unlikely to ever accomplish any thing of consequence because I had terrible grammar, awful handwriting and, from my teachers’ perspective, a wildly uncontrollable desire to use my imagination rather than their formulas.

While my teachers thought they were doing their best for me, I felt they were clipping off parts of my personality, so I fled the education system at 15. Their feeling was it was my funeral and, to be honest, it was my father’s feeling too. He tried to force his untamable son into a job at an electric blanket factory, so at least I would have a future. Luckily the owner of that establishment saw through my feigned interest in thermal bedding and rejected me, probably saving several of his customers from electrocution.

Since the age of 4, literally from when I was a little child riding on an alligator in my parents’ theatrical short films about people who kept strange pets, I knew I had to be in the creative arts… preferably film. This dream completely impassioned me. I lived to use cameras. I loved to read trashy stuff like adventure stories, science fiction and strangely had a giant fascination about human nature, along with a lust to take photographs.

Freed from the academic world’s choices, I blossomed as a reader, literally constructing my own way of thinking and learning that, even after leaving school at 15, there were outlets that would buy my photographs and articles. As I learned from the “school of hard knocks,” I kept discovering that my imagination could create things that, with some effort and adjustment, there was a market for. It took years for me to trust that I was an artist and to value what I had to say, but my passion never left me and the search for my creative destiny felt so sacred and so special that I frequently took on impossible odds, and won enough times to feed myself and my family.

MF: Great story Pen. I admire the insight you had at 15 to recognize how stifled you were by the school system and mostly I admire the “courage” you had to leave it!
Tell us, what do you consider to be the role of passion in writing?

Pen: What has amazed me, as I came to discover, was that working in Hollywood, the studios paid me lavish amounts to write screenplays that seldom seemed to get to the screen. And yet, when I stole time from that effort to write something for myself, some story that my gut instincts wanted me to write, these screenplays got made much more frequently. I created the story for Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves after three studios rejected the idea, because my soul wanted to tell that story in a new way, and my partner, John Watson, supported me by co-writing the screenplay. My movie about Moll Flanders, which Robin Wright and Morgan Freeman starred in, was a script that poured out of me in a fascinating torrent of words that I could barely write down fast enough to capture. My love for the unique character of Harry Houdini turned into another self-inspired screenplay that also got made.

These made me think that writing the stories that come naturally to you may well mean those stories are more powerful, that you will fight for them longer, and that others recognize their uniqueness and depth, and are attracted to them. I’ve come to call these “Life Scripts” because they are so much a part of me.

MF: What advice can you give aspiring authors who want to turn their stories into screenplays?

Pen: In Hollywood, I describe screenplays as the enemies of people’s weekends. Frequently decision-makers go home with five or even ten screenplays. The first thing they look at is the last page to check the number and see how much they are going to have to read. Shakespeare once said, “Brevity is the soul of wit.” Brevity is certainly the secret to screenplay writing. Screenplays are condensed passion.

Books and novels are the complete reverse, an opportunity to luxuriate in a warm bath of words, day after day, as one explores the complex, thematic storytelling that only books allow. To translate a novel into a screenplay, one must bear in mind that if you took out all the white space in a script and combined all the words together, there’s probably only 40-50 pages of text. Essentially, a movie running an hour and a half or two hours is a short story and seems to follow an almost invariable rule of beginning, middle and end.

So to translate a novel to the screen, one must find the essential bones that give the story strength and structure, and compact only what you need to keep the audience knowledgeable of your characters, the tone and the plot’s goals, and streamline it so that it fits the structure of a feature film. The great thing about working from a novel is one has already established the entire canvass and you are now picking out the strongest points of the composition, which is in many ways an easier task than imagining something brand new.

MF: You’ve sold a number of screenplays and concepts to studios over the years. Is there a formula to selling something you’ve written?

Pen: There is a terrible, but possibly highly accurate, perception that Hollywood executives have the attention span of a gnat. Not wanting to insult gnats, one might explain that both have much shorter life spans and deserve to live in this way. Actually, Hollywood buyers are this way because there is so much material being pushed at them, and original and different material is very hard for them to trust. Thus we frequently see sequels and remakes instead of new and original material, even though the marketing analysis people tell us that audiences desire fresh and different stories.

The tools to capture the attention of your film buyer are to explain your material to them in terms of successful previous hits, thus Jaws in outer space = Alien. North by Northwest meets James Bond = The Bourne Identity. The Haunting meets The Blair Witch Project = Paranormal Activity.

Every executive is looking for a hit. That is their goal in life. So by defining what you are selling in terms that have already succeeded, you give yourself a large advantage. When a movie is being sold, frequently it comes down to a poster or a selling line like “Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water” that must motivate tens of millions to go to the theater. It’s unfair, yet rational, that our art has to come down to a catch phrase; we are asking the studio to invest an enormous quantity of money and maybe we have to hold their hand a little to help them through the scary parts.

MF: Pen, as you know, your book was such an inspiration to me as a writer and I can’t recommend it highly enough. But this interview inspired me again and I can’t thank you enough for taking the time to share your insights, counsel and advice with our readers!

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It’s always easy to figure out when to hire the plumber. When there’s no water coming out of the faucet, or your basement looks like the kiddie pool at Busch Gardens, it’s time to hit the yellow pages. Same thing with your car – if it doesn’t start in the morning, it’s time to call a mechanic.

Your public relations campaign, however, is a bit more art than science, so it’s a bit more difficult to tell when it needs the eye of a pro. Here are a few tips that can help you determine when your own efforts have run their course.

• Sporadic Response from the Media: When you send out repeated press releases or pitches, and no one responds, that’s an obvious clue. However, some campaigns start with a smattering of response – a few nibbles in the first week or two, but a month later everything goes silent. When this occurs, it’s definitely time to regroup.Another red flag for any campaign is when you get a few media inquiries, but most wind up passing on your story after your follow up to their response. It could mean many things, but one reason might be there was a disconnect with your pitch and the information in your release or Web site. If you get more than one or two of these interrupted cycles, take a closer look at the information the media is viewing about you – but review it from their point of view so you can identify whether there is something that might be chasing them away. It’s rare for any media contact to take the time to respond to a pitch or release but then pass on the story afterward. They don’t have a lot of time, so they normally won’t waste any of it pursuing a story they aren’t reasonably sure will fit their needs.
• Requests from Advertising Salespeople: A pitch that’s overtly commercial will likely be turned down by most editors and producers. However, those pitches will sometimes be flagged and sent to the advertising department as potential customers. So, if you’re getting a lot of response from ad managers who ask if you’re interested in buying advertising time on their show or space in their publication, that’s likely a result of your pitch being too sales oriented. The news media isn’t interested in helping you sell a thing. They are, however, interested in informing, educating and entertaining their audiences enough that they’ll keep watching, listening or reading. They get offended when people try to take advantage of their pages or airtime in an effort to garner potential customers. So, if you’re getting sparse response from the media, but lots of unsolicited phone calls from ad salespeople, chances are it’s time to get with a pro to adjust your message.
• Conversion Rate: Let’s say that your campaign has netted you a decent response, and you’ve gotten solid exposure from your media efforts. But, while you’re bringing many new potential customers to your site, only a tiny percent of those customers are actually making a “buy” decision.Sometimes it’s due to the design and functionality of your site, but in most cases, the bigger problem is your copy. It’s not delivering your message, or worse, the tone is off-putting to your customer base. The copy must connect, engage, educate and motivate the people who find you as a result of your PR campaign. Your Web site is an important point of sale so if it isn’t “telling your story” well enough to encourage that buy decision, then it’s time to change it. Unfortunately, the biggest mistake I see people make with their Web sites is that they hire a Webmaster to fix the problem. This is not a technology problem – it’s a marketing problem – so you need a marketing communications or PR pro to help solve it.

It’s not always easy to tell when a campaign has gone awry. But, if you can tell when the PR engine isn’t engaging, you’ll know exactly when it’s time to call in a pro to jump start your PR machine.

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I have never really been a card-carrying feminist, nor has my gender been a barrier to my success in the public relations industry. But I’ve not been blind to the fact that a lot has changed in the last few decades, and I think Gloria Steinem was spot-on when she wrote years ago that we’d never solve the feminization of power until we solve the masculinity of wealth.

Well, I’d say we’re just about there, because women are controlling the use of more money than at any point in U.S. history.

I was fascinated by these statistics:

• Senior women age 50 and older control net worth of $19 trillion and own more than three-fourths of the nation’s financial wealth. – MassMutual Financial Group, 2007
• Over the next decade, women will control two-thirds of consumer wealth in the United States and be the beneficiaries of the largest transference of wealth in our country’s history. Estimates range from $12 to $40 trillion. Many Boomer women will experience a double inheritance windfall, from both parents and husband. The Boomer woman is a consumer that luxury brands want to resonate with. – Claire Behar, Senior Partner and Director, New Business Development, Fleishman-Hillard New York

Marti Barletta, author of Marketing to Women, documented the following trends regarding women in the consumer marketplace:

• Women influence 95% of all purchases and control 80% of all household spending.
• Buying the “small stuff” has always been in the woman’s domain. Part of her domestic duties as wife and mother have been to keep the family healthy, warm, and well-nourished. From the family meal to the family doctor, from shirts for her husband to shoes for her kids, chances are those choices have always been hers. What many marketers haven’t caught onto yet, though, is that women’s spending power now extends far beyond shoelaces and shirts.
• In the past, the big-ticket items like cars, insurance policies, and major appliances were historically bought by – and therefore marketed to – men. Things have changed! Nowadays, women need their own cars, their own computers, their own cell phones, and their own investment accounts – among many other new big-ticket items – and so manufacturers are facing a whole new market.

So it’s clear that women are gaining ground in controlling consumer purchases, and savvy marketers are taking note. For instance, have you seen any Home Depot commercials lately? Ten years ago, it was all lumber, power tools and men moving large things. Today’s current campaign features a married couple looking for light bulbs who ultimately wind up getting advice from a Home Depot salesman on how to redecorate their patio. A little less testosterone, for sure.

Something else struck me, and although it’s minor, it’s very telling. About 15 years ago, most cars came with a courtesy mirror only on the passenger side, never on the driver’s side. The assumption was that the men drove, while the women sat in the passenger seat, freshening up their makeup. Today, most cars come with courtesy mirrors on both sides, standard. Since I can’t recall the last time I didn’t do my makeup in the car, that little mirror on the visor beats the heck out of juggling a compact mirror and mascara tube in one hand, and the mascara wand in the other. Clearly carmakers finally caught on that women drive as many car purchases as men, if not more.

At the end of the day, whether you market cars, power tools or anything in between, if you ignore women as you craft your message and go to market, you’re likely losing sales and steam. Some women are steering the boat independently, some are decision makers in navigating it, and regardless we need to be aware of their influence.

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Whenever times get tough for businesses, CEOs talk about “tightening their belts” as a way to signify cutting back on essentials in order to ride out the rough patch. And cutting back is a correct strategy. It’s definitely not the time to dole out generous bonuses, arrange extravagant company trips or find new company perks to buy into! Instead, it’s the time to review every expense and ensure that only those affecting your bottom line are kept in tact. It’s also the time to evaluate personnel or positions that may no longer be as necessary in slower sales times.

But all too often, the first place that gets cut instead is the company’s marketing budget. And that’s a HUGE mistake because marketing is the very activity that drives in more potential customers.

Marketing is the very food that fuels your sales efforts. So when marketing budgets are cut, you can almost immediately see the dwindling spiral of leads and sales. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand the connection.

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If anything, marketing should be strengthened during down times – and it’s incumbent upon the CEO to find any way possible to figure out how this can be done. Here are a few tips that can help with your marketing efforts in rough times.

• Increase “outflow.” Whether you market through direct mail, email blasts, advertising or publicity – now, more than ever, is the time to push information out about the value and benefits of your products to potential customers. It’s also the time to get as creative as possible with “out-of-the-box” ideas on how you can more cost-effectively spread the word!The universal truth about sales is that you won’t get new customers if your information and promotional material doesn’t exist in a wide variety of places outside the doors of your business.
• Review your marketing tactics. Now is the time to analyze which marketing tactics are working the best – and just as important – which marketing tactics are your least successful. If, for example, you experienced a sudden uptick in inbound calls a week after a new direct mail piece was mailed, then by all means expand the reach of that mailer. The reverse is true as well. If your promotion is producing zilch, drop it and instead find and resurrect one that worked well for you in the past!If you got a big bump after the local paper wrote a story about you, reach out to your local radio and TV talk shows about having you as a guest so you can build on the buzz!
• Examine your pricing. Customers in both the consumer and B2B marketplace typically make buying decisions based on a combination of price, quality and value. There may not be much you can do to improve the quality of your product or service, but you can certainly increase value by offering specials on your pricing. Let’s face it – if your company is looking to cut costs, other companies are doing the same, so give them a reason to choose you. Look hard at your pricing and determine how much margin you have to play with in offering introductory specials. Then, promote like crazy to let everyone in your database know of your special offer!

There are a variety of ways you can win in a down market, but the primary principle to remember is to increase your outflow! You may not know whether your current marketing is working as well as you hoped, but it is far better to discover it is succeeding by expanding it and creating more business, than it is to cut it and watch the bottom drop out of your sales.

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