Pitch, pitch, pitch, pitch. That’s all I seem to do some days. I’m certain that many of my colleagues in PR will empathize with me. Not everyone loves to pitch stories, but it suits me just fine, thanks.

What I’m also positive of is the barriers to securing great coverage for our clients can be extremely daunting. Because even if your pitches are always spot-on, we all have days where even the best press release doesn’t get the type of coverage we hoped for. It’s always disappointing but that is the ebb and flow of PR.

Many in PR will agree that it’s standard procedure to issue press releases on Tuesdays through Thursdays. But while this strategy works sometimes, it also creates a glut of news and reporters are feeling the pain. This is a significant problem when agencies and corporate PR departments are jamming thousands of releases into a three day period.

I was recently confronted with this very scenario when pitching a release that was – you guessed it – issued on a Tuesday. In the course of my press outreach, I got into a conversation with one of my favorite technology contacts about how many releases he is receiving Tuesday through Friday.

Why not, he suggested, try something different and release announcements on Mondays or Fridays instead??

My first thought was, okay Monday makes perfect sense.

But announce news on a Friday?? What value would that bring to my client?

But after giving it some thought, I realized that I was initially thinking with my 2005 brain, before the advent of tools like Twitter and Paper.li.

Before these social tools were invented, a press release’s life was very limited. It would sit in an editor’s email in box for maybe a month or two before the article was written and published in the printed version of the magazine perhaps three or four months after that.

Today, once a story is out it goes viral on Twitter and on other sites, reaching more people than we could ever have imagined just five or six years ago.

This reminds me of an old story I first heard when I was selling TV spots in the 1990’s. It’s the “pan’s only this big” theory. The abridged version: Why do you keep doing the same thing, especially if it it’s not working?

In other words, maybe it’s time to try something new. Go wild and crazy. Issue a release on a Friday. Maybe not your client’s most important piece of news they’ve ever announced. But take a chance with a less sensitive piece of news and see what happens. You never know — you might end up finding many of your press and blogger contacts don’t have any big news to cover that day. And your client’s announce might just be exactly what they were looking for!!

Have you done something unconventional lately with your press release that’s garnered significant coverage? Please share your thoughts here!

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In late January RIM replaced its co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis with COO Thorsten Heins. As a now-former Blackberry user (I just switched to the HTC Rezound) this news certainly got my attention.

I expected to hear Heins address all the concerns of Blackberry users like frequent “white screen of death” issues, latency and even my chief concern (since I am becoming kind of a nut about this stuff), Blackberry models having some of the highest radiation in the industry.

Instead, the headlines were that Heins believes no major changes were necessary, or as Bloomberg Businessweek put it, RIM is “Staying is the Course”.

Bloomberg’s Peter Burrows and Hugo Miller’s article essentially skewered Heins for this – and used a Blackberry buried in a grave to depict where they really thought RIM is headed. This is about the worst image a PR person wants to see, yet it was no great shock because Heins didn’t say the right things in his interviews. This is a shame because it was his golden opportunity to do so. A new CEO’s first public outing is the chance for him/her to state goals, address challenges, explain the way forward and, ideally, re-shape people’s perceptions.

Had I been on the public relations team counseling Heins I would have told him to accentuate the positive while acknowledging challenges. I’d have counseled him to state the big ones, which would give him a chance to explain the steps the company is taking to tackle problems. Everyone knows RIM has serious issues. It is ridiculous to try to hide them. The trick is to re-frame the discussion while addressing how problems are going to be fixed.

The old adage “honesty is the best policy” may sound a bit old fashioned, but when you are talking about a company like RIM, and the state it’s in, they would have been better served by being open and honest. Unfortunately it is too late for Heins’ public introduction.

Perhaps moving forward RIM will learn from its mistakes and carve out a better public relations outcome. To change perceptions they must publicly acknowledge the obvious – significant products are necessary not only to stave off Apple, but also to stay relevant in the mobile marketplace.

Maybe they’d even win back former customers like me.

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Unlike (too) many of my posts, this will be mostly about PR – the PR nightmare resulting from the presidential candidates’ lack of transparency and foresight, and near-terminal indecision, with special attention to Mitt Romney’s PR fumbles.

The quick lesson: if you’re in a public role, either as a business leader or a politician, plan for the worst. PR people can help you: we’re natural-born catastrophizers. We see downside everywhere; it’s part of the job description. First we think of something positive about a client’s products, services and value proposition and then we turn around and attack those assumptions from all angles. It’s the only way to prepare for the tough questions inevitable from the press and, at some point, consumers.

Apparently Mitt Romney thought he was immune from catastrophe. Either that or his PR counsel didn’t worry enough about worst-case scenarios, especially with regard to timing of disclosure of details of his taxes, financial status and the disposition of his investments. Perhaps he was holding the story for the fall when the Democrats would certainly raise a challenge, and his PR counsel went along with it (which seems inexplicable). Whatever. The strategy failed. His own side attacked, making things much easier for the incumbent and making the GOP look like a pack of clowns.

As a mostly-private person I am on Romney’s side. I wouldn’t disclose that information. But he chose a public life, and with the choice comes a diminution of personal rights, especially the right to privacy. (That’s a whole separate subject with Google’s Monday announcement.)

It doesn’t matter that Gingrich soaked Freddie Mac for millions as an ‘historian’ or that John Kerry hides behind Teresa Heinz Kerry and tried to fool people and dodge taxes by berthing his (New Zealand built, for shame) boat in Newport, R.I. It doesn’t matter that the Kennedys built their fortune rum-running, or the Bushes through banking and oil. It doesn’t matter that Bill Clinton is cleaning up, post House impeachment and general running around, giving speeches. What matters is Romney was caught flat-footed, and it’s critical for a politician to be on the front foot, anticipating everything.

PR, properly strategized and executed, keeps you on the front foot. It helps you prepare for questions you don’t want to answer. It makes you consider a position from many points of view. No one is immune from catastrophe. Plan accordingly.

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