The Law of Purposeful PR

Where's the Beef or Plant-Based Meat Substitute?

  Thomas J. Madden, Chairman and CEO, Transmedia Group

To be successful in PR, messages need to be deliciously to the point, satisfyingly substantive and most of all, PURPOSEFUL!  

I tell this to my staff all the time at TransMedia Group.   

Most get the point that without proselytizing, cloaking intent, trying to razzle dazzle or sugar coat, PR messages must be imbued with clear and obvious purpose.  Intent! 

Send opaque, poorly crafted, non-newsworthy or self-centered messages to media and you’ll come off like a proud preacher without goals or conviction . . . a soused singer performing wearing a facemask . . . a clumsy marionettist who’s all thumbs.

Motives need to be boldly transparent.  Open.  What do you want the recipient of your message to do?  Buy something?  Go somewhere?  See something?  Say it!  

Want to make someone feel good about a happening?   Tell them precisely why they should feel that way.  Why they should support a candidate, approve a platform, donate to a charity, embrace an ideology?   

And don’t take your time.  Do it right off.  Don’t beat around that proverbial bush.  News releases, media pitches, emails, tweets, posts, almost all forms of PR communications must be PURPOSEFUL right out of the gate.    

That purpose needs to pop, be stated clearly right off the bat.  Recipients of your message should see your purpose right away.    

What do you want them to do?   Buy something?   Invest?  Know more about an event?  Feel good about what’s just happened?

Time is precious.  Your purpose needs to leap out from the very beginning as the recipients of your message want to know what your espousing, selling, explaining, exhorting, clarifying.   And their time and tolerance is short.

Tell them right in the headline or first couple sentences.

Who has time to figure out what you’re driving at?   Or wait for a train load of words.

Certainly not reporters who receive tons of messages from PR people trying to be clever, witty, likeable.  

But’s where the beef?   In this case, where’s the meat, the substance or essence of your message?  Or these days, where’s the plant-based meat substitute?   

Don’t lead with a soft bun.  Lead with hard protein facts. 

That first bite of your message better be objective clear.  Sure, tasty helps.  No one wants to dip into something when the first bite is sour, silly, or abstruse.  

So, it better be beefily obvious . . . deliciously to the point!   A bullseye!