CEO Experts - Part 2: Getting Her or His Name Out There
Over the life of our agency — as PR consultants and media relations specialists — Lewis & Summers’ methods have evolved with the rapidly changing media.
At one time, to establish a CEO as an expert, you put together a press kit with photos, backgrounders, speeches and credentials and mailed them.
Now, we help CEO’s establish blogs and make their materials available on company websites and have PDFs available for emailing. Another outlet is PRNewswire’s Profnet expert database, which is accessible to the news media.
Some things haven’t changed: to get national media attention, you need a dynamic CEO who is a big personality, recognized expert in their field, or has invented some society changing service or gadget.
First Things First
You need to do your homework first. Find out who are the editors and reporters covering your industry and target them individually. Try to match their interests to your CEO’s area of expertise. Making your CEO a future source can be the start of a relationship that will eventually help build the CEO’s credibility.
Don’t expert too much: the reporter might call on your CEO a half dozen times for “not for attribution” or backgorund analysis and the CEO never appears in print. It’s part of the game. Be patient.