Last week I attended a gathering of wealth managers and gave a brief presentation with suggestions on building personal brands. The point that resonated most was “thinking in threes.” This is an idea we apply regularly in our message-triangle approach to preparing for media interviews. It’s also helpful whenever you need to keep in mind key ideas you want [...]
Recently a client was quoted in a prominent trade publication for financial advisors, in an article focused squarely on a narrow topic perfectly aligned with the firm’s strategic objectives. The topic is controversial among advisors. On the whole, the journalist approached the topic with a great degree of skepticism, whereas our client had a strongly positive view. Still, it [...]
Positive media coverage has long been considered a powerful tool for the top of the marketing funnel. Bylined articles, profile stories, quotes or mentions in a respected publication can build brand awareness and position a company as a source of trusted information and insight. That’s even more true in today’s digital communications landscape, where the audience for any one article can expand exponentially via social media to far beyond the publication’s direct subscribers. What’s more, since “publication” is no longer limited to a single point in time, savvy companies can strategically use media coverage to add value and drive growth at every stage of [...]
There’s an old chestnut, often attributed to Mark Twain, “Never pick a fight with a man who buys ink by the barrel.” Like most quotes ascribed to the mustachioed Nineteenth Century author, this one is likely apocryphal. Besides, the saying should probably be updated to “Never argue with anyone who gets more than a million unique monthly page views.” But no matter who said [...]
As vulnerability and transparency became a theme and “casual" became the new corporate, the historic implications of 2020 and COVID-19 will resound for generations. In a socially distanced year, we grew closer to our computers, and social media expanded engagement with our now distant communities. Greater screen time increased the desire to explore new economic realms and had an unprecedented effect on trading and markets, with many Main [...]
Theodore Roosevelt Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book, Leadership in Turbulent Times, draws leadership lessons from her presidential subjects. Best known for the bestseller Team of Rivals focused on Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet and her Pulitzer-prize winning No Ordinary Time about Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt during the war years, Kearns Goodwin has spent her life studying these and other [...]
The media training that The Lowe Group provides organizations takes different forms, ranging from short presentations to a firm’s entire professional staff, to intensive, one-on-one sessions for senior executives that include mock broadcast and print interviews. But regardless of the format, we always start from the same place—understanding where the journalist on the other side of the table (or [...]
When a CEO departs unexpectedly, it’s probably breaking news, and a crisis-communications effort is needed. When a CEO departs in a planned succession, the news may still be big, but here there’s much more opportunity to help shape the story. In both cases, the news itself creates an opportunity (or necessity) to say something important about the company. For [...]
In my nearly 10 years at Institutional Investor, we were on the receiving end of literally thousands of news releases, so I like to think I have a pretty good idea what catches editors’ eyes when sorting through their inbox. Following are a few takeaways from my days as an ink-stained wretch that I try and keep in mind [...]
Recently when exploring a reporting platform, I raised an eyebrow at a $25 million ad-equivalent value assigned to two weeks’ worth of media mentions about a small firm. Probably few people take such numbers particularly seriously—especially when an ad-equivalent figure is more than a company’s entire annual revenue—but what about some of the other metrics made possible by the [...]
