How to promote... promotion

​Okay, that’s a confusing title, isn’t it? “How to promote promotion.” What on earth are we talking about? And how will this, to be blunt, help you make more money? 
 
Trust us. We’ve got the answers. 
 
This one comes from a recent story with a client of ours. It’s a “teachable moment.” So we thought we’d share it with you. 
 
Spilled ink
 
That client of ours had had a turn of good luck. A big company—one of the nation’s largest banks—chose to feature them in an article they published. 
 
Sounds great, right? 
 
Of course it is. 
 
This bank is a household name. Their brand is worth billions. They have a powerful media presence. So just to have them say anything about our client, let alone feature them in an article, is pretty great. 
 
Why, then, are we writing about this? What’s “teachable”? 
 
Our client, understandably, wanted everyone on earth to know that Huge Bank wrote an article about them. Sure, Huge Bank did publish this article (online). But would it reach our client’s niche audience? Our client wanted to push out a press release, telling their clients and prospects about the Huge Bank article. 
 
This still seems really straightforward, doesn’t it? 
 
Well here’s where it starts to go off the rails. Our client brought in a writer to pen the release, and gave him the Huge Bank article as input. 
 
That might seem logical, but it was a mistake. Because here’s what happened: 
 
That writer scoured the Big Bank article, pulled what he thought were the most important points, and drafted a press release around them. 
 
And that release, well, sucked. 
 
Teachable moment. 
 
Mind you, we’re not blaming the writer here. He simply followed his directions, which were insufficient. And here’s why: 
 
The article from Huge Bank was all about how our client leaned on Huge Bank for a business line of credit, and how Huge Bank was able to meet their needs. Totally straightforward. Sure, it made mention of what our client does and who they serve, but the big focus—no surprise—was on Huge Bank. It was about how Huge Bank has all kinds of creative lending solutions. And how Huge Bank works extra hard to help its clients. It was a puff piece—no surprise—about Huge Bank. 
 
So guess what this press-release writer’s release read like? You guessed it: It read like a promotion for Huge Bank, and not our client.
 
Ooops. 
 
We needed to swoop in and rewrite the release from scratch. That’s because there was a time crunch; ordinarily, we’d simply re-direct the original writer. 
 
Our new release—which the client loved and immediately approved for publication—was all about our client. In a word, Duh. It talked all about how great our client is, and the kinds of problems they solve for their clients, and that nowadays, they’re so well-known and respected, that they’ve even been featured in a new article by... wait for it... Huge Bank. 
 
How much, then, of Huge Bank’s article informed our press release? Hardly any of it. We just wanted to promote the fact that Huge Bank was talking us up. Indeed, our press release was worth more than Huge Bank’s article. Naturally, we included a link to Huge Bank’s article in the release itself, but we couldn’t have cared less if the readers actually clicked it. 
 
Tracking it down
 
As we noted above, our client was delighted—indeed, pleasantly surprised—by the quality of the new press release we drafted on such short notice. But this gets to the bigger question, the one you’ve likely been wondering about all this time: 
 
Why did this mistake happen in the first place?
 
Why, indeed, is this teachable? Why were we forced to “swoop in” (our own words) to fix this? Why was the original release subpar? (As we mentioned above, we don’t blame the original writer.) Most importantly, how can this be fixed—and avoided—in the future? 
 
Oh, you’re smart. You figured out most of this already. By which we mean, “Our client mis-directed the writer.” Which is absolutely true. What we didn’t tell you, however, was that our client had reached out to this writer without telling us, and only informed us after the original press release was written, i.e., a quick “Hey, could you review this before it gets published?” 
 
Had we known, from the get-go, that our client was only going to give that writer the Huge Bank article as input, we would have instantly intervened and given him proper direction. That didn’t happen, and so this situation quickly became a fire which required dousing. 
 
The go-forward solution? We had to gently admonish our client: “Don’t do that again.” We can certainly appreciate their enthusiasm and excitement at getting some “ink” from Huge Bank, but if we hadn’t intervened, and if they had actually published that original release, it would’ve been a Huge Mistake. 
 
Need help “promoting the promotion,” or any other marketing-related challenge? Contact us. We’d be happy to help. 

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