How Results-Based PR Pricing Wins Earned Media

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Well, thank you, Peter.
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I appreciate the invite.
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Well, let me just go to our list.
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Now, as an experienced pioneer for pay for performance compensation in public relations, how would you judge this compensation system?
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What value would you do it?
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Well, I think it works.
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It's very effective.
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It's very effective for small and startups and smaller firms that need to break into the media and to get media attention.
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And the reason it is, is because paper performance, in effect, is self-disciplining in terms of how it goes after the media and how it has to, in effect, listen to the media first.
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And I say that because if you're being paid only if you actually get coverage in the media, then you've got to make sure very you have to be very careful in terms of the pitches you make and the fact that they are what the where there is a great incidence of the media receiving that pitch.
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You don't have the luxury of being paid by the hour or on a retainer where you can make 50 pitches to somebody and hope something sticks.
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You've got to make sure that the pitch you make and the coverage that and what you're saying to the media gains interest very quickly and on a much uh much higher percentage than if you were paid by by the hour or retainer.
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So that's one of the first things.
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To make it work, also, you really have to have you have to have people that understand the media working for you.
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And you mentioned the remote workforce.
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Remote workforce and pay for performance in my case absolutely went hand in hand.
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Because when I first started this, I used to think to myself, and I did come out of person marshaller and a couple of other major firms, as well as on the corporate side.
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And what I just what I really found over the years was that PR firms get fired for a lot of reasons.
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But what they I mean, they get hired for a lot of reasons.
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They usually get fired for one, okay, more than any other.
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That's lack of coverage.
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Okay.
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Ultimately it comes down to are you getting me coverage?
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And so I've created this with the idea what is the greatest chance of getting coverage for our clients?
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And I thought, okay, the best thing you can do, the first thing you need to do is hire people directly out of the media to do the pitching.
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Because the people that are in the media, they understand what people in the media need and what they want and what they look for, and what are their pet peeves and all of that.
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Again, I stress as much as I did in the book you'll mention, it's the media stupid.
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I scrap perfectly, I mean, I scrap very much in terms of how media plays the role, both in in my case, remote working, but also in uh in paper performance.
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I say hiring people because the remote work team, I realized that if I wanted really good people that were coming out of the media, and they wanted to be PR people, they wanted to pitch and place, two things had to happen.
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One, I wanted to find people that were really qualified, which meant they were probably gonna be relatively expensive.
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Secondly, that probably they're gonna come out of metro areas to a great degree.
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And that meant they're probably having to commute.
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And commuting is good is not fun, as you know, whether it be in Washington, D.C.
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or whether it be in New York or whether it be in San Francisco.
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Right.
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So by offering them the opportunity, I said, I want I want your talent, your your contacts to a degree, and I'll explain that.
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But what I really wanted was your effort, your talent, and your skill and your experience.
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And in return, what I'll do is I'll allow you to work from home.
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I don't care whether you're in a you're in a high-rise building.
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I don't care whether you're in a you know, in a private office or anything else, and I want the ability to have you work from home so you can do it.
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Two things happen from that.
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One was the fact that by working from home and doing that, as I mentioned earlier, I had to I had to pay a little more, but I had people work on a very high commission basis because when you're working on pay for performance, you're in effect working on commission from your client.
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You have to deliver in order to be paid.
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Well, the same thing happened with the my people.
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What I said to them, the people that work for me, was I'll pay you a very high commission, okay, but in effect, you're not gonna either you're either gonna have a very low retainer or no retainer whatsoever.
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I'm buying you for your skill.
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So you've got to join me in that process of working on a commission basis.
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If you're willing to do that, if you're confident in your skill and your ability to do that, the pay will be commensurate with your ability to do that.
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That was very important, I think, in terms of uh getting people to do to work for me under that skill.
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So managing remote, what you have to do is, of course, my people tended to be more on the mature side.
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I wasn't hiring people right out of college.
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I was hiring people that were, in effect, experienced journalists by there were a few what I'd call experienced publicists, but most were experienced journalists.
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Right.
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So if they're going to join the dark, as as we used to say in the old days, the dark side of PR from being a journalist, that the compensation had to be good to do that.
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The freedom meant a lot.
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I I most of my people are people that really highly competitive, but enjoyed having that freedom of not having to go into an office, of not having uh somebody leaning over their shoulder as to what are you doing now, or in an hourly or retainer-based situation, have somebody above them saying, Are you billable today?
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Are you are you putting in enough hours?
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To me, that's counter that's counterintuitive to making somebody be pr very productive.
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So all of those, all of those played a role into finding one very good people, very talented people, very competitive people, which you had to be if you were going to be working under a commission basis.
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You had you had to enjoy that competition.
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But the key thing is even when you work remotely.
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Oh, and by the way, the other key thing from my standpoint as a businessman running a PR firm is that by having people work remotely, I was able to reduce my overhead dramatically.
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Okay.
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And by reducing, I don't, I'm not paying for lots of high-rise office buildings.
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What I'm paying for is results.
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So what I said was it it reduced the in I mean it reduced the overhead dramatically.
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That helped in the ability to offer my clients a different kind of financial structure.
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What I told them, and what it was in fact true, was I was sharing in the financial risk.
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Because uh, you know, and that made a big difference in terms of how you can how you can manage it from a cost standpoint is to do it that way.
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But I I'd say that one of the really key things of working remotely is that you you still have to be in touch.
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I'm a I it sounds it's it sounds like I'm going against my own thoughts, but I'm a big believer on face-to-face meetings.
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I'm a big believer on on that at least some personal touch.
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Absolutely.
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And so one of the things I one of the things I always used to do with people, one, when we first started with the client, I would bring two or three of those people that were going to be working on that account, and we would go to what we called an orientation meeting.
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Right.
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So the first or launch meeting, whatever you want to call it.
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That was always done in person, which I had the client pay for.
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And the idea was I want to I want to touch, feel, see the product, I want to see the human beings, I want my people that were working for me to see and touch and feel what it is.
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Right.
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Then they can go back to their remote office and work.
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But now they have an under now they have a first-person understanding of what they're going to be working on.
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And I still and periodically we would have gatherings where I would bring the people in, where we would, you know, more camaraderie than anything, but to let everybody know they were part of a real team.
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They weren't just sitting out in Austin or Denver or New York by themselves or Westchester.
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They were they were part of an actual team.
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So that's all part of it's kind of an odd, it's it's not as easy, I guess, is what I'm saying.
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It's not as easy as just say hiring somebody and say you can work from home and I'll send you some assignments, and when you do them, you'll get paid.
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You're not going to get the same kind of productivity if they feel like they're a part of an entity.
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Even if they're freelancers, even if they're independent contractors, everybody wants to feel like they're a part of a team.
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And so I wanted to make sure that was the case.
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But and what did the client get?
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The client got a high level of success because one, the people out there were experienced, they knew how to pitch a story, they knew how to find the news hook in a story, which is very big.
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So we we spent a lot of time, and by the way, we would have at least once weekly, we would all get together on the phone and have a you know, these were before Zooms and so forth, but we would all get together on the phone, share our stories sometimes, and the people then became a network, not individuals.
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They were a network that could share their leads, their contacts, and help each other on individual clients and so forth.
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So it it it's much more simple, I guess it's much more complex than most people would look at and say, okay, pay for performance, okay, remote working.
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If it was, but it was also a different kind of it was a network of really good people working very hard and producing, most importantly, coverage for the client at a very high percentage rate.
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What I used to say is that you know, you we probably a pitch ratio to placement was probably uh 300.
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So meaning if you're hitting 300, you're hitting damn good.
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Okay.
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Let me add something.
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I'd say one right quick because what you've mentioned is you know, uh as a matter of fact, we actually did uh an episode a couple of months back where PR did a survey.
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So we get for the value, how do we get uh success of the people that we've had to do what we wanted to do?
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So pay performance seems like it should be undertaken in some format just universally.
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Well, of course, I thought that.
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I'm you know, I thought that from the very beginning that it ought to be.
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But I I think what we've tried to do, and what I still try and do, is that you in that initial launch meeting or orientation meeting that I mentioned, and all the way down, and even before we started any kind of pitch for a client, we got to know the client.
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It wasn't just give us something, if we get some coverage, we'll send you a bill.
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It was never that.
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What we did was we spent time with the client learning what they needed, what their marketing goals were, what their sales goals were, and what their overall goal was, the personalities, the product, etc.
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And then we determined a media target list that made sense for them.
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Now they usually would say, Well, I want to be in Forbes or I want to be in Fortune or whatever, I want to be in Wired and so on.
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Yes, but maybe that's not the best place for you now that we've looked at it.
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And so we would talk to them and we would develop in conjunction with the client a target list with prices associated with various size placements within those that we might that we had to earn.
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Again, it's all earned media, not paid media.
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Right.
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We had to earn it by making a pitch that made sense, by gaining interest from the reporter, producer, editor, etc., and gaining eventually to get that placement.
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Sometimes it would happen in a week, sometimes it would happen in a year and a half.
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Okay.
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I mean, you can I mean, for example, I always use this as an example.
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CBS This Morning, CB a CBS Sunday morning, which is a real get along with like the Wall Street Journal.
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Okay.
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If you it took a year and a half to get a placement for one of our clients on CBS This Morning.
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I mean CBS Sunday morning.
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You had to work closely with the reporter, with the producer.
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I mean, you had to constantly receive new questions, you had to go back to the client and get those answers.
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It's a real process.
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I don't think most people on the outside, and most clients don't, understand that PR and public relations or media relations, probably being very precise, is a process.
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It's a hard, tough slog.
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And when you get it, it's great.
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But if you don't, it's terrible.
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But the idea of value also, Peter, has become a become a thing much more these days, I think.
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That what am I getting for that?
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You're charging me whatever, $10,000 for a placement in the Wall Street Journal.
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I got that.
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I get you got me a story.
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It's a good story.
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Great.
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My phone didn't ring very much.
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Right.
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So therefore, is it really worth that?
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What I used to say, and before we ever started, I said, that's gonna be much of it's gonna be up to you, Mr.
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Client.
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Okay.
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My people are gonna work their butts off to get you in there.
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They're gonna get you a platform to tell your story.
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That's what the media is.
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It's a platform to tell your story.
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If that story doesn't resonate, that's really not the PR firm's problem.
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Right.
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That's not their fault.
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I agree.
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And that's hard for a that's very hard for a client to understand, as you can imagine, you know.
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And I I had another saying, and forgive me, I don't mean to be crude, but we had another saying that was the media is a little bit like let me say uh a girls working in the in the night, okay.
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That once the once the service is delivered, it loses all value.
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It's one of the incredible things that somebody will do anything, pay anything to get themselves on the cover of Wired magazine, for example, or Forbes.
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You get that, and all of a sudden you've got a client that's saying, gee, that's not worth $15,000.
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You know?
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So it's something, again, it's paper performance is not it's not easy because you're dealing with a lot of client expectations, too.
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So it takes some hand holding, it takes some education, and it, you know, it can be difficult at times.
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But it also can be very satisfying.
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Well, let me let me let me add something for this.
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The the part of that is you know, when they get the story, I mean who is it uh going to be uh addressed to and what can the reader, if you will, get out of it if it's value to the reader.
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So is the audience for these data?
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How valuable is the valuable thing.
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So I think uh you know the kind of responsibility on both sides.
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You know, you'll get a story, but also the people who want a story to be published have to have something to offer to those people that they're reaching.
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Of course.
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And that's where much of that is the client.
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It's gonna be depending on the client, and much of it, and and part of it is gonna be you as a professional communicator or a professional media relations person uh to say what I'm gonna tell you is what's gonna resonate, what you need.
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It it's a wonderful mix of what the client of what the client needs to say and to whom, and the media that will receive it and run some kind of story, whether it be broadcast, print, online, etc.
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So it's a mix of that, and it's got to be a blend that will work.
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You can't, I have had clients that said, get me in the Wall Street Journal.
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I only want to be in the Wall Street Journal.
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I'd say, Well, I don't know if your story's worth being in the Wall Street.
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There we go.
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That's my point.
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Yeah.
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And so it's a matter of one educating and the client a lot.
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It's also, but you've got to, you've got, if you're a pro and you've been around this business, you know what's gonna be resonate with the Wall Street Journal.
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You know who their audience is primarily, and that's why part of that process in the very beginning is determining what are what kind of stories you're gonna tell.
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What are we and part of which we're gonna find later on, but the ones that initially you start with when you begin with a client, I mean, what are those stories and how are they gonna resonate?
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And what media is the best way to reach that audience that you're wanting to reach, Mr.
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Client?
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Absolutely.
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And it may not be, it may not be, I don't know, Wall Street Journal, it may be Cat Fancy Daily, you know.
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And you've got to be able to educate them.
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But all I'm I'll go all the way back to what I was saying before.
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Pay for performance is a means, and it's a very good means for PR in my mind.
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Okay.
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It's had a bad rap, and and including, and forgive me, I know you're a In good standing with PRSA, PRSA over the years has had a real hard time understanding paper performance and accepting it.
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They've called us, I mean, ambulance chasers.
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They constantly, you know, it's not paying the media to run a story.
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It's having the client pay you to get the story, get the media to take your story.
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And it's it's had a bad rap.
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I've had I've debated PRSA over the years, uh, not lately, but in my early days I had to debate them a lot, even in forums or PR seminars.
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Well, you know, let me jump in for a second because the other thing of that is that if you just want to get into Wall Street Journal and tell your story, buy an ad.
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You know, because if you're not going to reach the people that uh you you think you're going to reach just by getting the just because you have something in the Wall Street Journal does not mean the audience is going to all of a sudden, you know, storm your doorways or phones to uh to get whatever it is you have.
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It doesn't work like that.
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You you need to find out uh people have something that they want to transform on.
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Absolutely.
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No, it's I absolutely agree with you.
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And you know what I used to tell clients that if you want if you want to have if you want to have a perfect story in a perfect placement, in a perfect publication, and perfectly timed by an advertisement.
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Okay, but if you want to have a story that has far more credibility because it's a third-party endorsement of you, meaning the media is writing about you.
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You're not telling the story, the media is telling the story.
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That gives you dramatic, much more credibility.
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It also, in today's world, which we call content creation, okay, it creates credible content.
00:24:33.360 --> 00:25:10.080
So that if you have a company, and I always advise companies, now particularly in the world of the internet, that you want to have a story that has a long tail to it and so forth, then uh the best way to do it is through media relations, earn media, because you take a story out of, for example, the Wall Street Journal or Cat Fancy Daily, I don't care what it is, and you put it in front of your audience through your social media platforms, it'll have more credibility because it's them saying things about you, not you saying things about yourself.
00:25:10.080 --> 00:25:18.080
And so I again it goes back to all of this kind of goes back to the media.
00:25:18.080 --> 00:25:30.640
And I used to say it's probably blasphemous, but a client can come to you, and I don't mean this literally, but a client comes to you and says, Boy, I've got the greatest story that's never been told.
00:25:30.640 --> 00:25:31.200
Okay.
00:25:31.200 --> 00:25:36.240
And and what you have to say is, I don't care.
00:25:36.240 --> 00:25:41.680
What I care about is will that will that story resonate with the media?
00:25:41.680 --> 00:25:44.000
Then I'm gonna get you what you want.
00:25:44.000 --> 00:25:56.240
But we've got to take your facts, your figures, your sales proposition, and we've got to massage it and turn it into something that the media is looking for.
00:25:56.400 --> 00:25:56.640
Right.
00:25:56.880 --> 00:25:59.600
And they'll be and it will resonate with them.
00:25:59.600 --> 00:26:07.200
That's where a professional PR person, or for some media relation person, that's where they earn their money.
00:26:07.520 --> 00:26:17.360
You know, let me let me add to that because um one of the things that uh I did when I was encouraged to start a PR firm was to get some people who really know what they're doing.
00:26:17.360 --> 00:26:22.560
And some of the people that I hired, oh, I know what a buddy of mine said, get the best person you can find.
00:26:22.560 --> 00:26:27.200
Uh even if they know more than you do, I mean you're the best person you can find.
00:26:27.200 --> 00:26:34.480
So I had some top five people working for me who had reporters, both TV reporters.
00:26:34.480 --> 00:26:39.440
And that really, really helps because I can write what people tell me to write for the question.
00:26:39.440 --> 00:26:42.800
The reports can ask the questions that need to be answered.
00:26:42.800 --> 00:26:47.360
You know, what is it that you try to tell?
00:26:47.360 --> 00:26:48.560
What do you want people tell?
00:26:48.560 --> 00:26:50.640
And they can write it for the screen.
00:26:50.640 --> 00:27:03.759
So that really was that information that I got started with was uh a premium, I guess is the best way to put it, because now we're just not cracking out something that you know we think uh that sounds good.
00:27:03.759 --> 00:27:12.080
It's coming from a reporter who's getting it from our clients and you know, tell them exactly what it is we want them to know, or they want the public to know.
00:27:12.560 --> 00:27:24.640
Well, you know, I I had people that I had hired that came out of, for example, the New York Times, and they weren't necessarily good people to play stories.
00:27:24.640 --> 00:27:34.080
They had the they had that credibility, but what you also have to have, what you determine, is they also have to know how to pitch a story.
00:27:34.080 --> 00:27:41.200
Now, most media people know how to pitch a story because they've had to pitch it themselves internally.
00:27:41.200 --> 00:27:45.840
Okay, a reporter's got to pitch it to a senior reporter.
00:27:45.840 --> 00:27:48.640
Oh, a senior reporter's got to pitch it to his editor.
00:27:48.640 --> 00:27:55.840
The editor often has to go to a senior executive editor before that story ever sees fruition.
00:27:55.840 --> 00:27:58.720
A good big story is what I'm talking about.
00:27:58.720 --> 00:28:05.280
So in most cases, in most cases, that ex-journalist knows how to do that.
00:28:05.440 --> 00:28:05.840
Right.
00:28:06.160 --> 00:28:07.759
Some don't, unfortunately.
00:28:07.759 --> 00:28:14.640
So you gotta be careful when you hire people that are that say, hey, I spent 10 years at the Wall Street Journal.
00:28:14.640 --> 00:28:17.200
Well, can you pitch a story?
00:28:17.200 --> 00:28:21.280
And it that's that's part of it.
00:28:21.280 --> 00:28:25.360
Most can because they have experience doing it, you know.
00:28:25.360 --> 00:28:34.240
I I have another thing that I often say, one of the to me, the fallacies of of client thinking, all right.
00:28:34.240 --> 00:28:41.200
And it's also a little blasphemous in the business because a lot of PR firms fix this as their expertise.
00:28:41.200 --> 00:28:46.080
And that's we have great relationships with the media.
00:28:46.080 --> 00:28:49.440
And I used to say, Why?
00:28:49.440 --> 00:28:50.880
What does that do?
00:28:50.880 --> 00:28:55.920
The media cares about is not whether you're you've got a brother-in-law there.
00:28:55.920 --> 00:29:07.200
Even your brother-in-law, if he's if a brother-in-law is working at the New York Times, just because he's your brother-in-law and you're pitching him, does not mean a story's gonna run.
00:29:07.440 --> 00:29:08.240
Absolutely.
00:29:08.560 --> 00:29:12.960
It has it has to do with is the story a good story?
00:29:13.200 --> 00:29:13.520
Absolutely.
00:29:13.920 --> 00:29:15.200
Does it resonate?
00:29:15.200 --> 00:29:21.120
And now even more so because the media's been so narrowly uh eliminated.
00:29:21.120 --> 00:29:26.240
My God, you've got to be even more careful in pitching a story because guess what?
00:29:26.240 --> 00:29:30.720
That reporter, that producer is running a little scared now.
00:29:30.720 --> 00:29:38.720
They're running a little scared for their job, so they can't take a chance that a story's gonna be a dud.
00:29:38.720 --> 00:29:39.520
Okay?
00:29:39.520 --> 00:29:49.360
So it becomes even more important these days that whatever pitch you make to the media is gonna resonate, really interest them.
00:29:49.360 --> 00:29:54.640
And what I used to say, and I still do, is make them a hero with their boss.
00:29:54.880 --> 00:29:55.280
There we go.
00:29:55.280 --> 00:29:55.840
There we go.
00:29:56.080 --> 00:29:57.759
Make that reporter a hero.
00:29:57.759 --> 00:30:08.880
And if you can if you can do all, and that has so much more to do with when they're whether I've you know, I've placed 50 stories in the Wall Street Journals, therefore I'm a good PR person.
00:30:08.880 --> 00:30:13.680
You're only and no, I know this is terrible, you're only as good as your next story.
00:30:13.680 --> 00:30:17.360
You're only as good as the next one you pitch.
00:30:17.360 --> 00:30:28.560
And and that takes skill, that takes experience, it takes humility at times, because you're not the hot shot you think you are.
00:30:28.560 --> 00:30:31.120
You gotta work for a story on the media.
00:30:31.120 --> 00:30:33.520
I I don't think it's changed.
00:30:33.520 --> 00:30:38.400
And I used to a lot of people say, well, you know, that's kind of the old days of PR.
00:30:38.400 --> 00:30:44.800
Now there's things like AI and social media and all of this, and influencers and all of this.
00:30:44.800 --> 00:30:46.080
You know what?
00:30:46.080 --> 00:31:05.120
Yes, and all of it's valuable, but there's still nothing over the years, and I've been in the business for over 50 years, there's still nothing like getting a story that getting on the front page of the New York Times or getting on the cover of Forbes.
00:31:05.120 --> 00:31:16.080
That old traditional media where there's a magazine slapped on a coffee table somewhere, is still incredibly valuable and still incredibly prestigious.
00:31:16.080 --> 00:31:22.160
The difference is the difference is what how you use that story now.
00:31:22.160 --> 00:31:29.360
It's not just framed in a wooden frame and put on a wall in the president's office or a conference room.
00:31:29.360 --> 00:31:43.040
It's how you use it now, and now you use it through social media and through other things to really get cover, I mean to really get it extended so that it has legs for maybe six months or a year.
00:31:43.040 --> 00:31:46.080
That's what's can be that's what's different.
00:31:46.080 --> 00:31:52.320
So, but the idea that traditional media still isn't valuable, no, no, no, no.
00:31:52.320 --> 00:31:53.920
It's still very viable.
00:31:54.400 --> 00:31:54.880
Agreed.
00:31:54.880 --> 00:32:01.280
Say, Zick, uh do you have provided our uh our listeners with some very, very uh good advice, solid stuff.
00:32:01.280 --> 00:32:04.000
Any closing remarks that you'd like to make?
00:32:04.400 --> 00:32:05.600
Well, not really.
00:32:05.600 --> 00:32:07.920
Maybe it's the media stupid.
00:32:07.920 --> 00:32:11.440
But I but I think that's come true.
00:32:11.440 --> 00:32:16.160
I I you know, I I just love um, you know, I it sounds corny.
00:32:16.160 --> 00:32:19.680
I mean I've been in it for 50 years, okay?
00:32:19.680 --> 00:32:29.520
And I love the profession, but I I also don't like all of the BS that goes with the profession.
00:32:29.520 --> 00:32:37.040
I also don't like the way PR has is represented in the media and in the entertainment media.
00:32:37.040 --> 00:32:39.120
You know, we're we're always the bad guy.
00:32:39.120 --> 00:32:40.160
Have you ever noticed that?
00:32:40.160 --> 00:32:44.160
The PR guy is always either the buffoon or the bad guy.
00:32:44.160 --> 00:32:49.440
And we do a viable service, and the other thing is be paid for it.
00:32:49.440 --> 00:32:52.080
And that's where pay for results come in.
00:32:52.080 --> 00:33:04.640
So even if it's partial pay for performance, the idea of adding an incentive, the idea I've I've had people work for me under retainers, I've had people work for me in the hourly.
00:33:04.640 --> 00:33:13.280
Always, invariably, if there is an incentive attached to the pay, at least part of the pay, you see better results.
00:33:13.280 --> 00:33:15.600
It's just a matter of human nature.
00:33:15.920 --> 00:33:16.320
Good.
00:33:16.320 --> 00:33:21.440
Well, Dick, let me say thank you so very, very much for uh coming onto our podcast today.
00:33:21.440 --> 00:33:28.960
You know, your experience with pay for performance and experience in terms of you know how to better sell stories and get stories out there.
00:33:28.960 --> 00:33:34.080
I'm sure our listeners will have a serious appreciation for that and thank you for that as well.
00:33:34.080 --> 00:33:36.960
And I want to say thank you thank you again.
00:33:37.600 --> 00:33:38.720
And I thank you.
00:33:38.720 --> 00:33:41.280
And you know, and you've been kind to let me know.
00:33:41.280 --> 00:33:48.720
I mean, give me a a platform, so to speak, and where people can reach me and if they are still interested in doing things.
00:33:48.720 --> 00:33:51.120
And for for that, I thank you, Peter.
00:33:51.440 --> 00:33:51.680
Okay.
00:33:51.680 --> 00:33:54.160
Well, my guess today has been Dick Grove.
00:33:54.160 --> 00:33:58.080
I'm sure that you enjoyed the welcome information he's provided to you.
00:33:58.080 --> 00:34:02.560
And uh please go to the podcast.
00:34:02.560 --> 00:34:06.240
Uh, of course.