Press PR _goodgle.kr
media relations target: mass media + new media
Types of press PR
1) Ads
2) Press releases
- Crisis management: Cubepia/hacking,
- Research: Duo/visualizing with statistics
- Campaign: Whisen/Arbor Day (community service, sharing economy)
- Event
- Using celebrities: Career/a celebrity to go on a spring outing with office workers
- IR (listed companies)
3) Press conferences (reporter invites)
: KakaoPage
/ issue, good venue, good food (Windows 8/midnight club standing, canapés-> sometimes backfires), giveaways, prizes (clean press play)
4) PI (President Identity) CEO marketing
- Son Masayoshi (SoftBank), Ahn Cheol-soo, Facebook, Leeum,
- Pyo Chul-min (Somnote / told the startup story well / what's he up to lately? he's apparently doing X,
good at personal PR, great at phone responses)
5) Sponsorships
Newspapers
* Still very important — Reporters: actively draft and distribute press releases, do interviews
1. Straight news: fact-based, factual reporting
2. Feature pieces: provide reading material, topics, behind-the-scenes stories that spark interest (2-3 manuscript pages)
3. Analytical/explainer pieces: analysis and outlook, larger-format pieces
- Reporters inject their own opinions (leaves no room to insert your angle)
4. Caption materials: photo descriptions
Press release format
- Press guideline: for immediate release, (embargo)
Headline: trust and credibility over adjectives; clear, unembellished, as-is
Summary: 1-2 lines
Lead sentence: introduce the issuing company and product
Description: elevator-pitch style, 1 page of A4
Price, region, launch status, target
Website, app store URL
**** Mark the release as complete
Company info
Contact info: company email!!, contact/CEO mobile number, SNS, screenshots, icon!! (for KakaoTalk, icon over screenshots), SW, video, download URL
Attachments (photos, charts, graphics and other images!!!)
- Photos separate from photos, text separate from text (article editor is weak and inconvenient)
- 3-4 kinds of photos,
- Close-up photos on just the subject
- Seasonal photos (clothing)
- Bright, vivid photos
- No illustrations or Photoshop—JPG only
- For paid apps, provide a promotion code
Basics of writing a PR piece
1. 5W1H + (simple, speed, service)
- simple: make the purpose simple and clear; only the core, precisely expressed
- speed: short sentences, correct spelling, spacing, release timing!!, 1 page of A4, send before 9 AM or before 3 PM
- service: reason over emotion, numbers over description, objective over subjective (dress up subjective as objective), respond to follow-up coverage (kind, considerate, check email, answer the phone)
2. Narrative format
Lead-first (default: conclusion must appear in the first 2 lines)
Lead-last (only in special cases)
Combined (conclusion-description-conclusion again)
3. Requirements for a good press release
1) Give reporters 'something to work with'!! It has to catch the reporter's eye.
2) Requirements
- Timeliness: fresh—day before
- Proximity: nearby or areas of interest (prizes, campaigns, events)
- Interest: dog bites man VS man bites dog
- Impact: the price of jajangmyeon matters more than a foreign civil war (attach surveys, statistical indicators even if limited)
- Prominence: celebrity DUI, famous brand, notable figure
4. Examples of good press releases
Ex 1) Casio—1 in 2 Korean high schoolers owns an electronic dictionary
/ headline, summary (subtitle), lead, description, delivering objectivity, description sentence (objectivity of numbers), quote, closing sentence (conclusion restated)
/ distributed as a preemptive move against a Casio stock price drop
/ fact-based + 5W1H + S3
/ Refer to Newswire's press release format
Ex 2) 'FingerStock,' the AI stock-prediction mobile app that guides a volatile market
/ Some proximity, but weak on timeliness, interest, impact, prominence (timeliness is tough, but think about interest and prominence)
-> I tested it for three months of predictions and it hit well...
Ex 3) Cloud, easier and more convenient with open source
/ Very low timeliness, low proximity, low interest—all low
/ Impact can't be helped, but target timeliness—send it around when Amazon has an outage.
5. Conclusion
--> In the end, writing well matters, but more than that
you need to provide requirements, timing, and a reason.
Interviews
: passive PR method
Might be a fake reporter, but otherwise they pick up the story on that angle and write it
(you can also use it the other way around)
Interview types
- Phone (most common)—what was said casually ends up in an article
- In-person (notes, audio/video recording)
- Online (email, SNS, messaging)—abroad, email is taken very seriously
Why they do interviews
"Watch out—lots of accidents can happen!"
: to confirm important facts, get quotes—because writing only their own story risks turning into fiction; to produce feature articles (reporters actively hunt around)
Tips
- The protagonist of the interview is the 'reporter,' not you or your company.
- Keep your own talking short, and answer the reporter's 'questions' sincerely
- Save the conclusion you want emphasized for the end (they forget the earlier part)
- No article comes out exactly as the interview went (don't lose it over this)
(Reporters already have a clear purpose in mind!, rather than "I said nice things but it came out negative" -> just the fact that an article ran, that your name appeared, is what matters!, they get 100+ emails a day—sometimes auto-spammed)
- Keep at it with know-how
- Possibility = top-3 PR agencies—20-30 million won per month
(even then, only 1-2 of every 10 pitches works)
-> Don't get your hopes too high—just keep going. (Match the timing!)
Other tips
* Pick about 5 outlets
While reading their articles, find the reporters tied to related topics
(contact info isn't shared) -> collect their emails, and send only to about 10 of them. (They each have their own beat)
* Even if a reporter writes it up, the editor-in-chief decides whether it gets distributed.
Reporters may write 10 pieces, but only about half actually run.
* Almost no guarantee for an event D-day.
: One option is simply buying an ad with that outlet.
* Resolution: offline 2MP, don't send reporters files larger than 5MB -> blocked
* Send to top outlets first, rotating the headline (each paper has its own favored headline styles and patterns).
* Even if you distributed the release and the article ran, you can't put it on your own homepage.
* [Press release] main content
* Chosun Ilbo weekend edition—good training reference for explaining expert topics clearly
* "I enjoyed your article" is the highest compliment
* Keep feeding them information non-stop.
* "Time to trash them"—that's not the reporter, that's the desk giving the order.
* If you post on Newswire (pay and they'll post; LinkNow does this too), reporters come and see.
New Media (online)
Naver traffic: 80% (what if you could put news into Facebook?)
Instead of spending time writing press releases -> write the company blog
Before pulling together a reporter list -> Facebook (events/ads; 1M/month beats Naver's 5M),
Twitter activity (a retweet from a famous person matters more than follower count)
But: decision-makers still read a lot of newspapers.
Related books
: The Pros' PR Notebook / Plein
: Pre-Commerce / Acorn (consider PR before you build the product)
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