Getting your PR placed

Whoever handles the PR for law firm Sonnenberg Hoffmann Galombik deserves a score-card showing of 10. In a day and age of heavily-competed and very limited media space, getting your client consistent and valuable exposure ain’t easy. This law practice has featured in PR terms with a frequency that’s flagged my attention.

Media competitiveness has led to more publications, lower advertisement to editorial ratios and therefore a nightmare for the PR folk trying to get free placement of articles or features. Sometimes the fact that one is a frequent advertiser in a publication provides a wee bit of leverage. But ‘low-interest’ categories (and I would categorise law firms as one of those) would face an uphill battle to get exposure unless the ‘angle’ was of particular reader interest.

I learned an early and valuable lesson years ago from a woman with an amazing ability to get her pieces placed. She’d phone the journalist concerned, tell ‘em briefly what she was thinking of doing and then add: ‘What angle would make this story most useful or interesting for your readers?’ That’s darned clever because the journo knows (or jolly well should!) the reader profile better than anyone else outside of the publication.

Two smart things here: One, she’d make contact with the journo who would therefore be expecting the article or item. Two, she’d almost guarantee placement because of the readership-targeted angle if there was space and no other headline-grabbing event occurred simultaneously.

If you’re a low interest category and you’re up against large opposition with fully fledged PR and marketing departments, your life can be a misery. But getting the PR machine on a roll and maintaining the momentum may lead to your company (regardless of size) becoming the accessible ‘voice’ or spokesperson for that particular professional or industry sector. Most radio stations have a studio list of ‘topic experts’ and if something surfaces in a show, they call the resident guru. Getting to such a hallowed state is very desirable and also a valuable corporate advantage.

OK, so why the applause for Sonnenberg Hoffman Galombik? I’m sure Peter Bruce, esteemed editor of Business Day, won’t mind me borrowing his pic and article of 16^th March to illustrate the PR exposure that this law firm got. Even though the Law Society decided in 2003 to encourage attorneys to render pro bono (no charge) services, they can’t compel anyone to do so. So when attorneys in a practice don’t just fulfil the recommended 24 hours per year of pro bono service, but go the added mile of opening a pro bono practice in an area like Mitchells Plain in the Western Cape, that’s real news!

If you want your community to choose you, make use of your service or offering, you have to be seen to give something back. This is an absolutely brilliant way of doing so. This kind of exercise is ideal for getting a schpiel in every Caxton newsie around

South Africa

. And the readership of those ‘local rags’ as someone inaccurately and disparagingly called them, is in depth and quite amazing. This demonstrates that we do things and read things that are in our interest.

When advising a young man who was having difficulty in his business, I asked, ‘What do you do each day to better market your services on the next day?’ The short answer is that he didn’t. So for each of us, the question at night should be: ‘What am I doing to market or promote my service or product tomorrow?’ That in-advance, proactive thinking, although incredibly simple, creates a discipline that leads to good exposure. You can be sure someone at Sonnenberg Hoffman Galombik thinks like that.

And now guys at SHG, on to my legal problem….. ;-)