You Can Get Press For Anything If You Find The Story

Meet Mike Harris And The Goal

Well, my guest today is here to provide the guidance you need to ensure the success of your next campaign. And it'll look at static and execution. Here's the president and co-founder of Upro PR, which was recently acquired by Mober. His experience and expertise will give you a tactical view of what is working in PR today and where most campaigns fail. His expertise has helped launch major brands, including Planet Fitness and Delphi. And he will also outline some common mistakes. So joining me today from Orlando, Florida is Mike Harris, co-founder of Upworld PR. Mike, thank you for joining us today.

Thanks for having me. It's great to talk to you, and I'm excited to be here.

Well, my first question is what first caused you to focus on public relations campaign failures?

Well, you know, I don't know that uh look, I mean, we're focused on campaign success, but I I also I've seen I've seen campaigns fail, and I've seen I've seen launches fail. And, you know, I I've been doing this long enough to, I think, you know, have a pretty good a pretty good system for launches, for for launching a product, launching a campaign, and making sure that not only that you follow the right steps, because I think that gets lost sometimes. I think we sometimes start going through the motions and and thinking that, oh, well, I've had success before, so I can just I can just throw this thing together and and make it happen. And and I think there's there's a real need for for having a system and for making sure you do it right. And if you don't, you are gonna have a failure.

Mm-hmm. Well, let's say the things that you've noticed at either at the beginning of or somewhere in the process of putting building these things, what are the use what mistakes have you seen people make in the planning and the execution of a good campaign?

I think uh one of the like uh biggest things that that people may overlook is is pre-pitching press,

Pre Pitching Under Embargo

right? We're not gonna wait till the launch day to to start pitching, right? Or to send out the the release or to uh start going out and getting getting pressed because the day you launch, you want a flood of of hits. You want your client to feel like, wow, I just launched and here's this massive flood of media attention, right? And I think there's a there's a couple of big potholes that that people step in. So one, uh look, time's on your side. So if you can start with the client, we like to start like a month in advance, maybe a month and a half in advance, with building the foundation. And once we've built the foundation, we leave ourselves a few weeks to pre-pitch the launch under embargo. So you get the you get the media member to agree to the embargo and then and then you give them all the information and all the everything that you're doing ahead of time, and a lot of times even interviews ahead of time. So that when you when your embargo lifts and say today's today's Tuesday, that embargo lifts Tuesday at 9 a.m. They hit publish and you got a flood of of media attention. And and I think having that story, first of all, following the news cycle, right? Because God forbid a war starts the day you're supposed to launch, that that launch is canceled, right? That's an extreme example, but even if there's major news, it tends to push you down, right? Or or give them a pause. So so if if we have major news on the launch day, we change the launch day because you're gonna get buried in that news. And even if they do publish it, nobody's gonna see it. Because nobody nobody cares when a war just started that your new product just hit the market.

Well, tell us about some of your more most successful, perhaps the the biggest successes you've had, because you know, as I just mentioned, Planet Fitness, what did you have to do or get from them, or did you see that you thought needed to have to be exposed and so forth and so on, so that it would get the kind of uh global or national exposure you wanted it to?

Yeah, so when Planet Fitness started working with us, their problem was, you know, they would put out a press release and they would they would get some attention, but it was very generic stories that they were getting. And look, at the end of the day, there's there's so many new tools that we can use in PR, but at the end of the day, it's really about storytelling, right? And so I think that the problem had was that they weren't out mining stories, they were announcing, making announcements, right? So, oh, Planet Fitness partners with whoever to have new equipment or whatever. And that was the essentially the the crux of their campaign. And we sort of flipped the script on them and said, We want to talk to the general managers at your location. And we want to understand what what are the stories? Tell me about the people, tell me about the firefighter who was off duty working out when a guy uh passed out on the treadmill

Story Mining With Planet Fitness

and he provided CPR immediately and saved the guy's life. Like those are the stories that garner like major attention, right? Hero stories. Or maybe you you have a they have a program for summer where kids can use the gym for free because when they don't have the school to to get exercise and work out, a lot of times over the summer, kids just sit around on the couch and and veg out. And so and so rather than just announcing this summer program for them, we partner with the Orlando Magic sends a player out and we get local high school teams to come out and we do a media event. And when you've got the the you know major professional team in town who coming out to be a part of the story, it changes it from just a gym opening for the summer for kids to a newsworthy celebration, right? Right. And so I think for us, we're always telling our teams to think bigger. Like, don't just put out a press release, don't just don't just pitch the product. What can what kind of story can we tell around the product? And it's basic, but it's so fundamental.

Well, you know, as I uh as I was listening to it, I was just thinking, you know, when you were talking about uh, you know, Planet Fitness, you know, you could even have uh celebrate the fact that you've got seniors coming in, you know, because uh seniors are also always encouraged to get you know exercise, so forth and so on. So maybe have a senior day at uh the Planet Fitness or something along those lines. Uh yeah, absolutely. You know, uh veterans.

And and and there's uh there's always a remarkable senior who's 90 years old or a hundred years old and has been working out every day and is still there at the gym. And there's always a remarkable story if you dig hard enough.

Well, not only digging, but you can also plan. Uh, you know, you see, you know, that there are veterans, or there's a veterans association nearby, you know, come up with a plan where the veterans can come in and and then have a big event around that, you know, to help draw media attention. Particularly if they might have had some sort of uh accident, but they're still, you know, maybe they've got a crutch or something, but they can go pull on pull on things from their wheelchairs or something along those lines. Let people see those kinds of things happening.

Yeah, absolutely. Human interest. I mean, it's there's nothing better than human interest.

What would you consider one of your biggest and best successes and suc successes in terms of uh promotion and and how did you go about putting it together?

So we had a client who uh, you know, I think a lot of times we'll look at a client and we'll go, just as PR people, that not our company, but just in general, you look at this client and you go, Oh my god, how am I gonna, how am I gonna get coverage for this? Right? I know the feeling. Yeah, like are you kidding me? So we had

Making Boring Products Newsworthy

a client a few years back, and they were making drywall. So drywall is the the stuff you you you that the it's your wall, basically, right? And you cover it with paint and you never think about it again. And to me, one drywall is about the same as any other drywall. Well, apparently this drywall was they were they were pitching it as environmentally like sound drywall, which I don't know if anybody cares about that, but we started doing some research and drywall is made of gypsum, and the the production of gypsum is what we what we sort of found out was gypsum is what makes up one percent of carbon emissions in the world, which is actually higher than than automobiles, right? So we started putting together like a a campaign of facts around like the production of drywall and why it's harmful and why it's bad, and why this company is gonna change the game and and is great. And I don't even know if we really believed that it was gonna work, but we but we gave it our best, and and the the CEO of this drywall company said, here's the goal. I want to be on the cover of Inc. magazine, and I want to have the president at the opening of our fetch. And we're like, Are you kidding me? Like, you're a drywall company, right? They put it on the wall, they put paint on it, and they never think about it again. How are we gonna do this? But we went after it, right? We went after it and tried to do it, and we long story short, we got him the cover of Inc. magazine. He's on the cover of Inc. magazine, sitting on a second drywall drywall and talking about how he's gonna change the industry, and we used all that data to support the the claims that they were making. And they opened they they opened a shuttered factory in Pennsylvania, and sure enough, Joe Biden was there at the opening, cutting the cutting the ribbon. So I I mean, somehow I I think there's look, there's there are campaigns that I think are brought to you, whether it's brought to you as a manager in the company or or you're on the team and you look at it and go, oh my god, how am I gonna do this? But I think I I've now learned that with creativity, there's not a bad client. It's just how how willing are you to dig down and find the story? Because everything's got a store.

Yeah.

We even had a jar lid company that I was like, there's no way. Like, there's no way you make jar lids. And they made them easier for older people to open. This I thought this client's on for three months, like we've really, like, we've really done ourselves a real service. They were on for nine years and and had real success. It's it's crazy. You can't decide which clients are going to be successful just by looking at them.

Well, you know, I was just thinking as I was listening to you some years ago when I was VP of communications at a small university down in uh Nashville, Tennessee. I learned that their uh physics department had just signed a contract with the Air Force Research Laboratory to do ABC and D. I forget what it was going to do. I had to go to the start work on starting. Exchanging pins and all that kind of stuff. Uh so yeah, yeah, you know, sometimes you just have to you're right. It it you can't panic when you hear about it the first time, but you gotta sit around and think and come up with some some creative ideas that make sense and you know can gain some traction with the media. It just it just takes a little time sometimes.

Yeah, yeah. And and and and I think sometimes I think the biggest the biggest problem, uh, you know, maybe if you're newer at PR, sometimes you just get in a rut. And I think, or you think your idea is just that good. And maybe it is, but it just doesn't work, right? And so you hit that first wall. You're driving a car and you hit a wall. And backing

Pivot Fast When A Pitch Fails

up the new player around that wall, they just keep going harder at that wall that's never gonna come down, and they just waste time pitching that same thing that didn't work because they believed it was such a great pitch. Sometimes what you think is a great pitch, and maybe it is, just doesn't work. And the sooner you pivot and rework the pitch, the sooner you're gonna get to coverage. Because you can always get coverage. I don't care what it is, you can always get coverage, but you gotta find the right pitch. And if you if you're stubborn and you think that your your pitch is so good and it's just they don't get it, they're never gonna get it.

You know, and there's nothing wrong about asking other people, you know, what do you think about this? You know, in some cases they might be outside of the uh PR industry. And uh, you know, if uh what would it take to get you to come see XYZ or touch this or you know, want to be involved in? And uh, you know, if you ask them, most people will tell you what it is. Well, I don't like this. I think if you did A, B, C, and D, I would really come and see that. So, you know, sometimes you might have to reach beyond your circle to get the information that you believe is going to uh help generate uh uh much more attention.

Yeah, I love a focus group. And we have at our at our company, we have brainstorms every day because you're on a team of three or four people, but our agency it's about 60 people, and then if you go beyond the PR department and into all of our marketing, it's about 200 people. And so these people have undistorted view where you are in this every day. Sometimes you need you need, to your point, you need somebody who's not in this all day, every day, to give you an outside view. So we try to get that from inside our company, but outside of our team. So we'll come in, we'll have a brainstorm, and we'll go, look, here's the problem. We've got this plane, here's what they do, here's this, here's the issue. What do you guys think? And then all those like 60 people will throw their ideas, there's no bad ideas, and almost every time we come up with something really good out of that brainstorm.

Well, you know, I I agree with you. If you can take somebody who would perhaps be one of your users of this event or or service, you know, what would what what would they need to see or hear to get them to be very responsive or get really attracted to this thing?

Surveys Records And National Days

So, you know, sometimes you might just take a survey on the street or something along those lines, you know, just to reach people, as you said, who are not part of your circle.

Absolutely. And not only the people on the street, we have, I mean, a lot of a lot of companies will do this, but it's really like when you talk about like creating the news story, we have clients, we'll do our own survey. Now we don't perform it because then the data's not very uh reliable, but we'll use an outside source. I mean, even if you use something as simple as like SurveyMonkey, but like there's you can go out and take a survey, you tell them how many people you want to poll and what industry you want to pull them, and you pay for the survey, and you get this data back, and all of a sudden it's like, oh, well, the top five cities for X, Y, or Z are these five cities. Well, great. Now you can go to each of those five cities and go, hey, you are ranked number one top city for you know young people who who spend with a credit card, right? And then and then work your client into that into that pitch or mortgages or whatever it is, right? But you're one of the top cities. The local markets love that. They love when they're the top city for anything. Or or you know, a Guinness record. Can you find a Guinness record that you could perform with your client's product? Or is there a national day? There's a national day for everything. Whatever that national day is that fits your product, if you got a bagel client, National Bagel Day, right? Go have all your have your client in all their markets, we'll pitch a National Bagel Day and come on with recipes for six different ways you can make bagel sandwiches or pizzas or whatever. You gotta try everything.

You know, I had forgotten all about that. There isn't uh just about a national day for everything.

Everything.

Well now, have you ever had any sort of downward turn on any of your um campaigns?

What's that?

Downward turn. Something that maybe in the beginning, something that just did not go well. And so you had to back up or at the conclusion ever take a survey and find out, you know, what did we do wrong with this one so we so that we won't repeat that again.

Yeah, I mean, there's look, uh and I think every PR person out there knows that there's

Checks Versions And Legal Risk

a potential pothole around every corner, right? And I think I think what you learn over the years is that you really have to either make sure that everything has a check and a balance up the chain of command to the manager or director or vp or whoever is in charge, right? To make sure that something doesn't slip out, something doesn't go, the wrong version of a press release doesn't go out, the whatever, right? Or if you can feel really, really solid that the person you have doing that, do it working on your campaign can can handle that and and doesn't need to be checked great, but usually that's not the case. I mean, everyone makes mistakes, so the more checks, the better. But we've had, I mean, we've had instances where somebody just goes rogue, you know, and or they, you know, they they're supposed to have it checked by the the manager or the director or the VP and they skip a step and they send it right sometimes they'll send it now we haven't had this issue at our company, but but I've seen it before where they'll just send the press release right to the the wire service and put it out. Or a director, you know, gets really busy and goes, Oh, yeah, I I didn't have time to review it, but I just you know I send it to the wire. And what's crazy is the liability, and I think people forget this, you think like, oh, it's just PR, it's not that big. Deal. When you're launching a company, you're liable for everything they've spent on this company. Because if you screw it up, if you say the wrong thing about one of their partners, if you and and they feel like you've ruined their launch, you get sued for millions of dollars. Millions. And and it could be a really simple mistake. The key, I I have been at an agency where where something like that happened, where they put out the they put out a release. It had, it was from like three versions ago, and it had all been fixed through with the client back and forth, but they sent the wrong version, and the version went out on the wire, and the company got sued. And fortunately, they had an umbrella policy that covered like two million dollars. And I want to say that at the end of the day, they were able to save it, but but still, like there's so much liability there. And if I mean if if I can say anything to eliminate stress for like a junior person or or even the senior person, it's never forget to check and triple check the version of the release that you're putting out, to triple check the the contents of everything you're doing, because at the end of the day, you're liable.

Well, I certainly agree with you. That uh, you know, maybe there's there's a circle of people who do it, but then there's a final person that it has to go through and get it that particular person's stance of approval before it goes out the door. So uh, you know, that should be inculcated into everybody's brain that you know that's to make sure we do A B C and D before because we don't want the wheels to come off of this thing once it's uh out the door.

Yeah. It just takes one, just takes one little mess up. That doesn't even seem like a big deal for it to all go off the rails.

Absolutely. So tell me, what would you consider your big biggest success in any of the promotions that you made and and what made it such a success? Wow, we've done a lot of promotions, a lot of companies.

I you know, I don't know if the giant splash is always the biggest success, right? Like we've had a number of clients, I feel like the big TV win tends

Success Means Client Growth Over Time

to be like the today show, right? You got them on a big national morning show. And we've had a a lot of that, but to me, I think the biggest success is like we have uh I'll give you for an example. We have a client called Kenyon Grill. They make amazing grills, and they're electric, but they they cook like like just like a charcoal grill or a or a propane grill. I mean, and and probably better. I mean the food comes, it's amazing. And we started working with them when we started our company in 2011. And they are still on, they've grown like crazy, they they built, you know. I I think the biggest wins are how much longevity can you have on a client and can you help them build a company from zero to to really successful, right? Like we have a we have a client they're called that we started working with when they like launched. It's called Hyper Ice. And they make those massage guns, you know, that um that are really popular at the gym. And and they make other products now as well. And they started with us, they were a Kickstarter campaign, literally had no money. Like they they were like, Look, we're we're in the middle of this Kickstarter campaign, it's not doing well. We need you to come in and help us. And for us, I I think for most PR people, Kickstarter campaigns are the worst. Media doesn't like them, the product isn't on the market yet, maybe it will never come to market. It's a very hard thing to do. And we like tripled or quadrupled their their Kickstarter goal, and they had money now to create this product. And so the CEO came back to us, he's like, Look, you guys did a great job. We don't really have money to sign you guys, but we'd love for you to stay on, work with us, and grow with us. And we did. We were small too, and I mean we built uh and they built an amazing product, and we built a really great PR campaign, and they hit a billion dollars. Oh my goodness. And yeah, they became a billion-dollar company, and they're they're super successful now, and so yeah, I mean, I think that's something to really be proud of. Just seeing the growth, like you're you forget, I think, as a PR person, that while it may just be a press release to you, or it may just be another client to you, to them, it's someone's dream. And you either are gonna make their dream fail, or you're gonna make their dream come true. And I think if you can help somebody take their dream and make it a huge success, I I don't think there's a better feeling.

Well, I certainly agree with you on that. And I think I've had a few of those myself. And you know, the the there's nothing like it being on the front end of making seeing somebody that that that just succeeded and you had a hand in it. Nothing better than that. Well, Mike, let me ask you if you've got any sort of closing remarks for our audience.

Well, I don't know. I mean, look, I feel like I've been doing this a while now, and and I just uh you know, I think, you know, remember, remember why you got into it because if you don't love it, then it's a long, hard slog to get through a life of PR. But if but if you do love it, it's I mean,

Closing Advice And Why PR Matters

helping like like we just talked about, helping someone achieve their dream, I just think that that is it's an amazing feeling. And it, you know, you you can help people in a lot of ways, but but I think I think in PR, you you have a real opportunity to, you know, help people and change lives. And and I I think sometimes in the day-to-day we forget that, right? It just feels like, oh, we're doing another press release, doing another, uh, going through the motions. But your emotions are their dreams. And so treat it, treat it like that, and I think you you get a a much bigger feeling and a much bigger reward out of out of the day-to-day.

Good. Well, Mike, let me say uh thank you so very, very much for uh being on the podcast today. And you know, you provided a lot of valuable information to our listeners, and I'm sure they're going to uh to appreciate it. And to our listeners, I hope that uh you do uh take uh Mike's advice.