The influential role of respected voices in building credibility

Risk-averse consumers now look to brands to provide credible validation and verification of the promises they make and assertions about product performance and benefits.

No surprise brand trust is at an all-time low among consumers, and also at an all-time high as a front-end requirement for any authentic relationship between consumers and the brands that matter to them. Trust is elusive, hard to win and has a short shelf life. It stands to reason why trust should be a critical fixture in the brand go-to-market strategy. Goes without saying, trust cannot be invoked or claimed, it must be earned through tangible actions.

Strategic deployment of respected and credible voices

Repeatedly Emergent has found significant benefits for client brands and their trust equity when we involve outside, respected, trusted third-party experts to help bring added credibility to messaging, media and content. Here are some remarkable examples of this in action.

Exposing the presence of fake Italian cheese

I was seated in a small conference room next to Neil Schuman’s office at Schuman Cheese corporate headquarters in Fairfield, NJ – there at Neil’s request to discuss a shocking revelation about the U.S. Italian cheese category. It’s important to note Schuman’s father invented the U.S. Italian cheese industry in the late 1940’s and since then this family-owned company has grown to be, by far, the dominant market share leader in the business.

Neil guided me through a thorough and vexing download on the presence of fake, mislabeled, fraudulent and adulterated Italian cheese in the category his company created. As category captain, Schuman believed his organization had a responsibility to shore up the integrity of the business, but was frustrated at every turn by intractable industry practices that worked to solidify the hold of adulterated cheese makers. For 10 years he had attempted to rid the category of these shameful practices but to no avail, so he turned to us for help.

I explained there would be no way to carve out the cancer of mislabeling practices without serious leverage that created risks for the companies, about 10 of them, which were doing it. I talked at length about the power of a media spotlight shined on this dark practice, as a path to creating substantial risks for those involved. If enough retail buyers were concerned by “outing” the fake products on shelves, then and only then, would buyers shut down the purveyors of cheap, adulterated versions of favored Italian stalwarts like the King of Cheeses, Parmesan.

This couldn’t be a trickle of attention. It meant a big investigative story on a global platform reaching a wide audience. To get there, a fact-based, well-researched case had to be presented in a highly credible way.

We launched an Italian cheese industry integrity tour in Wisconsin, the center of the nation’s cheese industry, to bring in the validation of the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board, the Wisconsin Cheesemakers Association, the state Dept. of Agriculture, food science experts and others to form a coalition of third-party voices who could lend their perspective on why the presence of adulterated products was bad for consumers and bad for the industry.

We broke the first fake cheese story in the Milwaukee Journal business section, and then moved it to industry verticals for their reinforcement of the Italian cheese category blight. That portfolio of intense and consistent coverage was repurposed to support a credible conversation with Bloomberg News about launching an investigation of fake cheese conditions and the impact on unknowing consumers.

Bloomberg agreed on the merits and conducted an independent study and test that corroborated the presence of fake products on grocery shelves. When their story broke, we moved it to Buzzfeed and from there syndication touched off a global media tsunami about the presence of mislabeled, adulterated cheese. The outcome was abrupt – with retailers turning away from those making cheap knockoffs. Critical to success of the media strategy was the trusted, respected voices of third-party expert sources who validated and substantiated the story premise.

Helping re-position a restaurant chain from smoothie shop to healthy lifestyle brand

Jamba Juice invented the fruit smoothie restaurant business at scale. Due to the emphasis on real fruit ingredients the chain enjoyed a form of healthy halo. However, truth be told some of the recipes were steeped in sugars and the nutritionals were hardly a hallmark of truly healthy beverages.

After providing an analysis of shifting consumer trends towards healthy living, we convened the leadership team to reimagine a different course for Jamba. Our mission to help the brand re-position itself as a healthy lifestyle choice, with a new slate of better-for-you products around a new story of nutritional contributions from fruit, veg and added protein ingredients. This was as much a cultural shift for the company internally as it was a refashioning of their brand position, menu board and brand voice.

We went to work identifying and recruiting a team of the most respected outside, third-party experts in the nutrition and dietitian community, to join the Jamba Healthy Living Council as both advisors to the organization on product reformulation, and also creating content and communication that positioned the brand as a coach and guide on healthy living best practices.

The team also conducted workshops internally to help key headquarters staff fully understand and appreciate the value proposition for change and improvement through a move to embrace healthy living. The Council was also engaged to help the company navigate to a new channel, providing secondary school foodservice operators with a menu of better-for-you beverages. The drinks envisioned would be a tasty, kid-friendly vehicle for delivering mandated daily serving of fruits and vegetables in a form young people loved. It was a strategy to burnish brand reputation while helping develop the next generation of Jamba customers.

The Healthy Living Council members participated in online video creation, editorial media, social channel content and other platforms including conventions to spread the news of change and healthy product bona fides now taking root at Jamba – a remarkable transition for a company intent on creating a new future for itself based on higher purpose and deeper meaning.

Bringing transparency to the pet food industry

Pet food can be a mysterious journey for consumers with the constant drumbeat of imagery invoking steaks, beautiful salmon filets and whole chickens on product packaging. The marketing implies that a small brown nugget is in fact a stand-in for the same proteins people consume at the family dinner table. However, how pet food is actually made and the ingredients sourced have, for the most part, remained obscure behind the factory curtain.

Champion Petfoods, makers of the superpremium Orijin and ACANA brands, was unique by virtue of its long-standing commitment to source proteins from local farms and fisheries within driving distance of its kitchens. Champion in fact used fresh and frozen meat or fish in its formulations and claimed such on its packaging.

We felt this story was under-leveraged in an environment of growing consumer interest in transparency. We believed this could be leveraged in a proprietary way for Champion. Working with their marketing team, we created the Champion Transparency Council. The Council was designed as a consortium of outside respected voices in the Veterinary community along with real pet-owning brand fans who were also knowledgeable about pet nutrition.

The Council members were given full access to Champion’s U.S. manufacturing facility to see and witness every aspect of pet food creation from ingredient intake to package filling. Additionally, Council members toured the nearby farms and met with the farmers and ranchers who raised or fished the proteins used in Champion’s recipes. Indeed, they even went fishing to secure the catch that would later go into the pet food.

• We asked them to create content and report on what they had witnessed, without filter or interference from Champion. The goal: an honest, eyes-open transparent assessment from their observations. The candid reports on the company’s practices and operations provided personal validation of Champion’s claims in real-life, tangible terms.

We facilitated interviews across the spectrum of relevant pet media to give Council members a forum for sharing what they had seen and heard. They were featured speakers at Champion’s trade show activations. Social channel content based on their observations was produced and amplified. The Transparency Council became a dominant voice in pet business trade media extolling the commitment to full transparency in an industry with a decided lack of that form of candor and openness.

Proof, verification and validation of promises distinguished Champion among consumers and retailers as a truthful, mission-based company in a category where quality claims go mostly unsubstantiated.

The role of third-party experts in brand communication

You want consumers to trust you, to believe you, to accept the assertions you make. Yet the world at large works against this with near daily reports of obfuscation, half-truths, misstatements, recalls, and outright lying that demonstrate some businesses’ lack a moral high ground and customer-first ethos.

In this uncertain environment with entrenched skepticism, strategy demands a conscious drive to create trust. Trust is earned not claimed. The role of outside expert voices works on two levels:

• To observe and validate what you want people to know about how you do what you do.

• To provide guidance, coaching and education to consumers on their journey to betterment and self-improvement from those with the respected bona fides to offer credible, useful help.

This is equally powerful in the earned media arena as a quote-able source engine for top level press which, on larger stories, must check the veracity of story details and scope with knowledgeable experts.

Are you intrigued by how this approach might elevate and enhance your brand’s reputation and credibility? If so, use this link to ask questions. We’re happy to provide perspective on how this strategy can be successfully deployed to earn greater trust for your business.

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There’s method, expertise and relevance involved…

I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve heard a client express skepticism about the earned media channel of communication. Not because they don’t think it’s extremely powerful and effective – they do. Their tenuous belief has to do with a perception that seemingly random conditions lead to outcomes. That a great story secured is more of a happy accident and not, in reality, the outcome of a surgical, planned methodology.

Here we will debunk the media myth and explain the path to editorial glory. However, even though there are five steps and each one relevant to the successful outcome, the expertise involved to properly execute each one of these to maximum effect is also a byproduct of experience. Knowledge honed over years of working in the trenches to appreciate the nuance of what flies and dies in the reporting world. Let’s take a tour together on the path to editorial victory based on the fundamental understanding that great stories don’t fall like manna from heaven but are a result of a strategic process.

Granted you can’t buy legitimate editorial coverage, so the entire proposition isn’t transactional (for the most part) – at least it isn’t for the blue-chip media properties where journalism and reporting rules hold sway. But that’s the beauty of it. Editorial media is a reporting environment, based on storytelling that emanates from inspection, examination, evaluation and consideration; thus, why it is far more valuable, effective and powerful than an ad.

The essential truths

It’s helpful to understand what separates the editorial wheat from the chaff.

• A ’story’ that’s not really a story won’t get told – truth to anyone looking at the reporting medium with clarity. The fundamental story idea you start with is the lynchpin to outcomes. How the story concept is constructed has a lot to do with editorial interest, relevance and value. Great reporters can see a great story unfold.

• Story concepts built on self-promotion looks like advertising and thus why editors and reporters suggest contacting the ad department. When the story isn’t really there to benefit the media viewers/readers, reporters sense that immediately.

• When you speak in editorial terms, with material that respects the editorial paradigm of inspection, examination and reporting, you can earn a conversation with editorial gatekeepers. This is where seasoned experience pays off most often.

Press releases are invitations to stories, not stories in themselves. The facts are most releases are devoid of a story, contain too much self-promotional, non-essential attribution and aren’t interesting. Media material is needed and valued when it’s done right. If it walks and talks like a story worth telling then you have something.

Five key ingredients to better non-paid media outcome

1. Frame the larger story

Where you start is connected to where you will inevitably finish. The story concept is key. If you are planning a new product launch for example, the story isn’t the product launch. Rather it is placed within a larger context about trends, reports, studies and cultural shifts where a larger problem is being solved by the product – residing within a broader context.

• Is there new technology involved that falls out of a growing trend in consumer behavior and need?

• Is there a societal benefit or consequence that brings value to how people live, prosper, grow or succeed in some way?

• Is a higher purpose connected to the company that is being served by this launch, are you bringing a new idea or solution to sustainability and climate impacts for example?

• Is there a relationship between your product and a health and wellness outcome that benefits peoples’ lives or helps them overcome a barrier to personal growth?

Bottom line – find the larger story and outline how these parts fit together to create a better whole. Supporting studies and quantitative research can be powerful tools here if you can prove the condition is important and meaningful to consumers’ lives.

2. Do your homework

What do we know about the reporting world? For one, editors and reporters need trusted quote-able sources to do their jobs. The executive in charge of marketing or brand cannot be the only source cited in a story worth telling. What subject matter experts can be enlisted to help placed credible context around the problem you are solving?

Are there real people, not paid endorsers, who’ve had experiences with the product and found value in the outcomes of using it that reinforce the larger context of problem-to-solution?

Can you identify studies and reports from independent sources that lay the factual foundation for a cultural or societal shift you are addressing? Please note if it’s a study you paid for then its value cred is diminished right out of the gate (not entirely but take note).

When you are able to supply the reporter with respected third-party sources and experts that corroborate and verify what you are saying, you’ve accomplished two important things: one, you are able to help shape the story outcomes; and two, you are helping the reporter who is always under time constraints to do their job more successfully. Win and win.

3. Pick your targets wisely

The days of press release spray-and-pray are over. This technique is an old-school hedge-your-bet move by some publicists who attempt to win on a quantity game, assuming that some percentage of media receiving material will somehow run the story. Those days are gone.

The path to wider coverage begins with bellwether, respected media properties that tend to be influential to other channels (national print to TV). Moving the story along a planned continuum is a smarter play. Hope is never a strategy.

Where you take the story has a lot to do with where the reporter has been before. What media are likely to be interested in this story within its larger context? You can determine that in part by understanding the audience they serve and what will be inherently valuable to them in serving their readers/viewers.

Which reporters are likely to resonate to your concept/idea? If you do the heavy lifting to understand what they’ve published previously you may find a pattern of interest where you can draw lines of relevance from previous work.

4. Magic of vertical build

The industry trades that cover your category are a great place to start to frame the story elements and while doing so create evidence the angle has merit, reporting legs and is worthy of being told. Trade placements are not considered competitive to larger media properties, rather it serves as helpful background and elevates confidence in the story bona fides.

A stepped strategy that begins in trade channels is a strong game plan as you move up the editorial food chain to media with a larger, broader audience.

5. Editorial syntax in everything you do

If it looks like a story and walks like a story then it’s a story. When you create supporting material to take your idea out into the reporting world, it needs to respect editorial sensibility. If you truly understand how reporters would treat the subject and prepare your backgrounding materials in a way that screams you understand the rules and how they do their job, you earn respect right at the front door if inquiry.

So much of what editors and reporters see each day is self-promotional and never served in the context of a bigger story concept. They are required to wade through, identify and separate what is useful from what is not. Most won’t do it and thus why the pitch never materializes as a published piece.

If you want a reporter to respect you, listen to you, then serve the story up in a frame that bristles with editorial savvy and states, obviously, that you know them, their world, their audience and how they will likely treat the story themselves.

Too often story material is created to please the internal approvers because it sounds like an ad and tells the key messages directly, and without any editorial context around it. Looks good on paper, but in reality the release may fall flat on its face once in the hands of those who report rather than promote.

It’s tougher than it looks

All of this work is a bit like a symphony of well-crafted components that serve to anchor a story in the greater good and embed success in the effort rather than impede it. The paint-by-numbers approach of release generation to spray-and-pray distribution is truly a walk down the pathway of a loose dice roll to any tangible media outcome.

Better in the end to be strategic about how this great work is conducted and be patient with a process that has more moving parts. Inevitably it will position you for greater earned media success in the long run.

The relationship-building nuances of becoming a trusted source for real news with reporters are inexorably linked to achieving media objectives. Seasoned experience is required because you must have been at bat a more than few times, learned the differences between good and bad, before you understand what to do and what to avoid.

Simply said, reporters know if you know the drill.

If you think you need a fresh approach to non-paid, earned media outcomes use this link to initiate an informal conversation. We promise an interesting, useful dialogue.

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to the Emerging Trends Report.

Path to game-changing glory for your brand

You may have witnessed first-hand the remarkable power of earned media, otherwise known as publicity, to quickly change the trajectory of a company’s business. When a story about a brand or business catches fire in earned channels, it can become a cultural phenomenon, moving the needle in ways that paid outreach could never hope to accomplish.

Ask any CEO or CMO and there will be a lingering interest in securing a major media piece in a blue-chip publication, digital news channel or TV news property. A top story in the Wall Street Journal. Cover of TIME magazine. TODAY show interview. Feature at Fast Company or Wired. Bloomberg news in-depth report. A Buzzfeed distribution build.

This level of respected media attention most often is not a happy accident. It is the outcome of a considered strategy conducted with skill, diligence and persistence. After many years of participating in earned media outcomes at this level, we have distilled the primary ingredients for success into six facets of media orchestration. Done in concert, this eco-system offers the roadmap to successful results.

The caveat: it is the integration of these pieces that helps achieve the objective. Taken apart and separated, the hill to climb gets much steeper and the outcomes less certain – and could result with your brand being relegated to a mention in a story placed by a brand that made the effort to build the piece properly.

Non-transactional media attention (not paid for like advertising) can’t be ordered up from central casting or invoked as a magical mandate for the PR team. The approach must remain ever respectful of the environment it sits in – an arena where reporting, newsworthiness, editorial relevance and objectivity hold sway. There are rules to understand and follow.

Six Red Carpet Moves to the Editorial Media Spotlight

1. Casting the larger story and bigger picture context where the brand has relevance

Unless you’re running a trillion-dollar juggernaut company where every move you make is likely to be in the headlines, the fundamental starting point for earned media is driven by strength of the story concept. What larger issue is your brand/category/industry connected to, such as an identifiable link to cultural shift or a sea change in public sentiment? Is there an over-arching trend getting traction or an emerging social issue where the brand has a role? In other words, your internal story isn’t the only part of the story – rather it’s how your internal story connects with a larger issue, trend or cultural moment. Here are some examples:

• Food choice linked to impacts on climate threat.
• Pandemic influence on the role of health and wellness.
• Decline of brand trust and rise of transparency.
• Global food scarcity connected to new technology solutions.
• Human need for control, safety and security amidst unseen and lethal dangers.
• Connection of pet ownership to elevating human health and wellness.
• Presence of food fraud/mislabeling in the midst of consumer demand for honesty and authenticity.
• Emergence of new food making technologies in an era of back-to-the farm preferences.
• Impact of COVID 19 conditions/isolation on mental health and lifestyle behaviors.
• Sea change of preference for higher quality, fresh food on legacy processed food making.
• The wallop of sustainability demands on supply chains and agriculture practices.

The key is targeting a larger scope issue where the brand has a role and a voice. This creates context for a bigger story that offers greater depth than a simple product announcement.

2. PR media team knowledge matters greatly – of consumer, product, company and category details, methods and behaviors

Earned media is a bespoke business driven by one-on-one contact with media gatekeepers. The question you are answering in each interaction with a decider: are you showing up as a credible source for well-researched story material?

To do this with skill the PR media team must know everything about the company’s products, processes, standards, beliefs, behaviors, strengths. Have they done the homework such that literally any question can be fielded fully and knowledgeably?

The team must know the details of the category where the business competes, what other brands are doing, their approach to product solutions and different consumer cohorts served by different brands.

In short, the PR media team needs to know as much about the business as the CMO or CEO. This requires a trusted relationship where the PR media experts are fully in the know of what’s going on behind the corporate curtain.

3. Editorial syntax deployed in all materials created for media consumption

All various backgrounding materials, fact sheets and releases built for reporter outreach and pitching purposes should be created with an editorial voice. They should be devoid of shameless self-promotion, unsubstantiated claims, flowery quotes, unverified marketing assertions, hyperbole and corporate speak. Everything should be cast in the context of how a reporter would likely approach the story.

If it walks and talks like an editorial story, then it’s a story. Anything else is deemed promotion and won’t survive the vetting process – and instead is likely viewed as more appropriate for a paid ad placement.

Credibility of the PR media team as a reliable source is at stake here. Proper construction of the materials signals understanding of what reporters, producers are doing and how a story should (will) be constructed.

4. Importance of third-party quote-able sources

There’s no such thing as a story where the brand is the only quoted source. When the story is built around a larger context of an issue or trend, it is vital that credible subject matter experts are enlisted to add validation, dimension and texture to the story premise.

If the PR team doesn’t make the effort to assemble expert sources, the reporter or editor will do it separately – which could take the story off track or add factors that capsize the desired messaging outcome. The ability to provide the relevant sources provides an opportunity to help influence the shape of the narrative, and to verify key essential pieces of the story arc.

If the story you’re building centers on the impact of food choice on climate change, having experts on climate impact and agriculture is fundamental to the story premise. This again signals to the media deciders that the PR team has done their homework. The expert verification of story elements provides greater confidence to editors that the details of the piece will hold up under scrutiny.

5. Deploying vertical media build

Big, bold feature media story placements with blue chip media properties don’t just fall like manna from heaven. There is a ladder to climb as the story moves up higher in the media food chain. When the story is placed first in vertical media settings relevant to the business category where the company competes, it creates a credible environment and testing ground where the story elements are played out.

Coverage in vertical media provides the larger, national media outlets confidence that the story is:

• Important and coverage-worthy
• Has impact on the business/industry overall
• Creates a structure example of how the story flows
• Demonstrates the authority, knowledge and value of quoted sources

National media do not consider industry verticals to be competitive so the fact you can provide links to these placements serves as supporting, credible evidence of the storyline, not a weakening of the value of the news they break.

Of note, arranging exclusives can at times be advantageous on the path to wider recognition. Some media like Bloomberg News are bellwethers for others and a major story breaking there will feed into other outlets creating a viral effect.

6. Experience of the players involved

If you have enough time in the saddle working with reporters and editors you come to appreciate the dynamics of how they do what they do. This pays benefits in direct conversations with deciders, the sequence of events once a reporter expresses interest, and the details of how materials are worded and constructed.

There is simply no substitute for hands on experience in this endeavor. The more seasoned the PR media team is, the better this goes. Until you have experienced “no” a few times you just don’t acquire a sensitivity for the mechanics and rules of how earned media works.

This isn’t just about who you know. Relationships can be beneficial, but the real acid test is the quality of the story the PR Team crafts and presents, and how well it is supported with credible source material (studies, reports) and reliable expert sources. Reporters know who the fluff pitchers are. They are more likely to devote their time and attention to brands represented by PR media teams demonstrating a commitment to journalistic standards and newsworthy reporting.

This isn’t easy but it will be rewarding

It takes patience and hard work to execute successfully in the earned media world. Done correctly and with skill, the risk of failure is vastly reduced because the story has obvious merit and the work to serve it up properly has been done.

• If you’re patient to let these various layers play out, you’ll witness how the coverage expands to a point where it can eventually virally catch fire.

If you’re looking for support and guidance in an earned media setting, use this link to start an informal conversation with us.

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to the Emerging Trends Report.