The power move that saved a great placement

In normal times, Jessica Krakoski would’ve been super bummed, but given the tough situation she wasn’t surprised.

The veteran PR pro had secured an appearance by her client on the venerable biz radio show Marketplace. Star host David Brancaccio had even already recorded the interview!

But a few weeks had gone by, and the segment still hadn’t aired. Jessica followed up gently, and the booking producer responded:

David was unexpectedly sick last week, and now most of our coverage has been focused on Ukraine.

As the message sunk in, Jessica didn’t feel frustration or self-pity. An entire nation was under attack . . . any annoyance a PR person might feel about a skipped segment pales in the face of that crisis.

Instead, Jessica felt proactive. She knew there was no way to push the producer to air the recorded interview – it would have been horribly tone deaf. So she immediately pivoted to a new angle. Her response:

Thanks, [producer]. If you’re totally focused on Ukraine right now, [Client] can come back/re-record to discuss how companies are responding. He thinks this is a crucible moment for purpose-driven management, and directly connected with the ideas in his book. He’s been thinking about this a lot the last few days – here are some of his thoughts.

Then she listed several bullet points and examples that SHE had come up with and then synced up with her client.

It worked. Her client got re-interviewed based on the new angle, and the story aired.

In fact, it worked so well that Jessica used the same pitch to land him an appearance on Bloomberg Quicktake.

When the news cycle gives you lemons, you can’t always make lemonade as quickly and as well as Jessica did. But it’s worth a shot to try.

Next time one of your prize placements gets yanked or bumped, model her example of resilience and see if you can resurrect it. Take it from Jessica – it feels even more exhilarating the second time.

Jessica shared this anecdote with my Inner Circle a few weeks ago, along with other pitches she used to land Today, Insider, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Reuters, Fast Company, and others – and not just once, but several times in the last 18 months.

Register for our Wait List so you can have the opportunity to watch that entire training session when we next open up enrollment.

P.S. I’m trying to use ChatGPT-4 for all my first drafts. But my concept for this article was too advanced and too narrowly focused on PR insiders for me to feel confident in using it here. To use the terms I explained in this post about the benefits of generative AI, this article is NOT “commodity content.”

So instead, I wrote the first draft, fed it into ChatGPT, and asked it to suggest five edits to tighten it up. I liked three of the five and incorporated those. Then I asked it for five potential subject lines.

Here’s what it spit out, verbatim:

• “The PR Pivot: How to Turn a Setback into Success”
• “Discover the Power Move That Saved a Major PR Campaign”
• “Turning Lemons into Lemonade: A PR Success Story”
• “PR Pro Jessica Krakoski's Secret to Winning in a Crisis”
• “Bumped Segment? Learn How to Bounce Back Stronger”

As you know, I went with #2, but omitted the first word because I think that makes it feel a little clickbaity. #3 is too trite to use without the context, but I finessed it into the subheading you might have seen before you opened the article.

Then I asked it for 10 tweets. I must have used a better prompt because those were much better than the subject lines. You can check out @michaelsmartpr over the next week if you’d like to see which three I chose. 😊

Thanks ChatGPT!