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Press Kit Elements That Work
   
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Considering how fundamental they are to the publicists trade,its always amazed me how lousy almost all press kits truly are.Your typical press kit is a bloated folder filled with puffery,hype, irrelevant information and worse. The vast majority ofthese monstrosities do little besides kill trees and clognewsroom trash baskets.Whether you are just starting to learn golf, or you have been golfing for many years and you're just looking to refine your game, .....
The good news is that creating a press kit that actually worksreally isnt that hard. Let's look at the elements of a winningpress kit, and help you avoid some common pitfalls.
The Psychology of a Press Kit
There are two fundamental rules to creating a good press kit:
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1. The press kit exists to make the journalists life easier, notfor you to present sales messages and hype. Good publicists arejournalist-centric -- that is, they think from the perspective ofthe recipient, not the sender. They take the time to learn whatjournalists need and then they give it to them in as simple,straightforward and user-friendly a manner as possible.Remember, publicity is not about you -- its about givingjournalists what they need to create a strong story.
2. Everything in the press kit goes to support your clincher.Everything else gets yanked out. (A refresher: a "clincher" ismy term for the one or two line distillation of your publicitymessage. Its the publicists version of the Universal SellingProposition that marketers use to boil a products marketingmessage down to its essence.) You lay out your clincher in thepitch letter that gets clipped to the cover of the press kit, andthe press kit serves to flesh out and support your clincher.Thats it. If your clincher is that youve brought a radical newway of thinking to your market segment, then a backgrounder aboutyour "old fashioned commitment to excellence" not only doesntsupport your clincher, it may actually contradict it.
The Elements of a Press Kit
The Cover: In my twenty years as a publicist, I have neverencountered a single journalist who told me the cover a press kithad the slightest impact on their decision whether to run astory. Yet, businesses still spend thousands on glossy, fourcolor folder covers. Dont bother. A simple colored folder withyour business name imprinted upon it will work just fine.
Some businesses choose to get stickers printed up with their logoand place them on blank folders, which is fine too, as long asthe stickers are neatly applied. Either way, dont obsess overit -- its whats inside that counts.
Letterhead: The first page of each press kit element should beon your letterhead. Some folks prefer to get special "News from(name of company)" letterhead printed, although, again, I doubtit really matters.
The Lead Release: If your press kit is going out in support ofan announcement, an event, a trend story or for another specificpurpose, the release that lays out the news should be the firstthing a journalist sees upon opening the folder. This "leadrelease" should be positioned at the front of the right side ofthe folder.
Backgrounder: This is the element of your kit that provides,well, the background information to support your pitch. Itswritten in the fashion of a standard news feature (i.e. in thirdperson, objective tone). This is typically the longest elementin a press kit, often going 2 or 3 pages. As youre craftingthis, keep something important in mind: if a journalist isreading your backgrounder, chances are hes already interested inyour pitch. If he wasnt, he wouldnt bother with it. Youvehooked him and the backgrounder can reel him in. To do so, youmust answer the two questions he has: "Is the claim made in thepitch legitimate?" and "Is there enough material here for me todo a story?"
Your pitch letter (based on your clincher) made a claim of somesort about you, your company or your product. Youre thefastest, the most advanced, the hottest-selling, the most civic-minded, etc. Now you have to back up your claim. Yourbackgrounder is where this happens. Provide proof, by givingconcrete examples, third party observations, study results, etc.to support your pitch. If youre claiming that theres a trendtaking place, heres where you provide the statistics to back itup. If youve claimed that youve won more awards that anyoneelse in town, heres where you describe them. Dont stray fromyour purpose -- to reel in the journalist by convincing him thatyour claim is legit.
The backgrounder also must demonstrate that enough materialexists to support the claim - and that it will be easy for thejournalist to access this information. Journalists dont havetime to do extended investigation on every piece. Provides leadsto websites, trade journals, experts and other resources to backup your claim and help the journalist complete the story, youllhave a big edge.
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To write a backgrounder, do some role playing. Youre areporter. Your editor has handed you a pitch letter and said"write this up". In this case, of course, the pitch letter isyour own. While youre writing it, try to forget that the pieceis, essentially, about you. Pretend youre an objectivereporter. Track down resources, dig up stats, interviewexperts. Try to see if you can create a credible piece thatproves the pitchs claim to be valid and interesting to thereader. If you can, youve got a great backgrounder. If youcant, it may be time to come up with a new pitch!You hear this mantra in every sport keep your eye on the ball!
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Bio: Only include bios of people who are relevant to the pitch.A bio of your sales manager in a press kit designed to support aclaim of technological superiority is pointless. A bio of yourhead of R&D is valid. Keep bios short (three paragraphs at themost) and include only information relevant to the pitch. Thefact your head of R&D spent twenty years at NASA is relevant,that she loves golf and has two cats isnt. The point of a bio:to show the legitimacy of those quoted in your release or beingoffered for interview, and to help the reporter craft a shortdescription of the person when writing the piece.
Fact Sheet: The fact sheet should distill the entire press kitinto an "at a glance" document. Keep it short, use bullet pointsand bold headings. For example, I might start with the headingThe Story: and include a bullet point repeating the pitch. Thenext heading might be Why Its Important: followed by somebullet points putting the pitch into a broader industry-wide (orperhaps even worldwide) context. Finally, I might use theheading Why (name of my company) is at the Heart of this VitalStory: and run some bullet points taken from the backgroundergiving support to my claim. Put this fact sheet at the front ofthe left side of the folder, just across from the lead release.This sort of fact sheet is amazingly powerful and almost nevercrafted in the fashion I just laid out. Ive sold countlessstories because of this style of fact sheet and you can too.
Other Stuff: Filling out the kit with a company brochure and aphoto or two is reasonable, but dont get carried away. Keep yourkit simple, stick to your clincher and think like a journalist,not a marketer, and youll have crafted a first class press kit!