HOW TO DECIDE WHO GETS EXCLUSIVES
July 16th, 2010 | Published in See Jack Write
In my last post, I discussed exclusives. Bottom line, don’t promise what you can’t deliver. An exclusive means just that.
But the tricky question is who should get the exclusive. There are a several approaches to take in considering who should get the exclusive, and, in the end, you have to accept that some media members probably won’t be happy.
In no particular order, here are the approaches:
- Mercenary. This is pretty basic. You pick the biggest or the best media outlet – print, broadcast and online – and give it to them. When you want impact, you’ve got to be mercenary. That means you might end up wounding some other important media relations.
- Small leak. Sometimes, you just want a small bit of publicity for a client, which might be appropriate for a soft launch of a product or service. But you also want it a story that might build a bit. This would be a perfect place for a well-read blog. It might take a few days for the mainstream media to pick up the item. That could lead to maximum exposure for the hard launch.
- Trusted source. When you want to hand over an exclusive that’s sensitive, you need to pick out a media source who you think will be the most objective. This one seems obvious, but you need to be careful, too. Your job here isn’t to manipulate this person, but simply to provide truthful information that you want reported accurately.
- Relationship building. For low-impact, but interesting sorts of information, you will probably want to pick media sources that you’ve neglected in the past. You don’t want to burn bridges. So if you are in the habit of giving exclusives, you need to make sure that most of your media contacts get one every once in a while.
So I’ll finetune this with some Do’s and Don’ts.
DO use exclusives from time to time, and the media source should depend on your strategy.
DON’T play media favorites. You really do need to rotate exclusives, or you could end up burning a media source or journalist. And journalists talk to other journalists.
DO ultimately make the exclusive information available to other media and work with those media.
DON’T make excuses for why you gave a story to one media person or another. Ideally, you should be able to assure most journalists, bloggers and others that their turn will come.
