There is a PR agency in San Francisco called Hype House. Your first reaction is “old my god,” people who just come right out and say what they do is hype stuff to the media. But when you read what they are all about, they aren’t about Hype at all. They are just hyping themselves for attention.

I’ll admit first off that we might be called dinosaur PR, as in oh crap, we’ll soon be extinct while the youth of PR rule the world.

My wife, who works at the local library picked up a copy of Shankman’s book with the subtitle, “Outrageous PR Stunts That Work — and Why Your Company Needs Them.”

He sets the stage with this acknowledgment … “finally, mom and dad, thanks for …. wow, I don’t know where to start. It would Double the size of this book….” Is this guy seven years old is or this just hip-hype?

The first chapter tells you “who I am and why you should listen to me.” More hip-hype. He basically says he’s a PR genius. That he knows what works and that since the media in New York City listen to him because of a big PR stunt he pulled a few years ago you should, too. My take away message was that that NY media are a bunch of lapdogs who call Peter Shankman whenever they need anything. Reminds me of Sally Fields’ infamous Oscar acceptance speech, “You love me, you really love me.”

In the pages that follow, he demonstrates that he is understands the PR basics. He’s a journeyman, no doubt. The book is packed with good information. It just isn’t that fresh. I’m not criticizing him or his agency for their creative achievements. But in spite of all the exclamation points and hip hype, he lays down a million rules in the book — many of which seemed aimed at the beginning pr practitioner. Most actual PR people learned this stuff in college PR101.

So much of his advice is information we’ve all heard a gazillion times before. But I give him credit for wrapping it in non-stop hype and hyperbole, trying to make hot dogs and chips smell and taste like Chateaubriand. Afterall, how many books have I published (none) and who am i to judge? Well, 7 years as a newspaper reporter and 25 years in the business has given me at least a working knowledge.

Okay, Peter, if you read this, don’t take it personally. Just go to the zoo, chill out and be that “inner child” you say we should all be to achieve creative greatness. Better yet, read David Meerman Scott’s book “The New Rule of Marketing and PR” if you really want something different and fresh.

I don’t know, maybe we really are pr dinosaurs and extinction is near.

As a former crime reporter, I learned to write short, punchy leads. Anyone can. Despite having written more than 5,000 news stories and nearly as many press releases as a public relations (PR) professional, I still miss the mark on occasion. Through intensive rewriting — and often good editing by my business partner — we usually arrive at the near perfect release. Well, if not perfect, acceptable; maybe good.

I read an interesting statistic once that when a lead exceed’s 30 words, you lose 80% of your college-level readers. Ernest Hemingway’s books are filled with 10-12 word sentences, if you need proof that good writing needn’t be filled with tortured syntax and 80 word sentences. Short really is better.

Here is a sample of good and not-so-good leads. Both are actual leads, only the names have been changed to protect the innocent, so to speak.

The wordy, not-so-good lead:

Anywhere Community Hospital has added “healing environments” to three upgraded and remodeled surgical and medical procedure suites. It’s all part of a national trend to combine new technology and improved function with design and comfort, according to Jim Smith, Anywhere’s senior vice president of operations. By adding new lighting, flooring and painting, Anywhere has transformed its two operating rooms and the endoscopy suite into environments that are more soothing and comforting for patients.

Better:

Anywhere Community Hospital has tapped into a national healthcare improvement trend by transforming patient treatment areas into healing environments with special lighting, flooring and paint. “We’ve added soft lighting, carpet and warm colors to two operating rooms and an endoscopy suite to make them more soothing and comforting,” explained …. “Studies show such environments promote healing.”

Better because it’s most specific and gets to the point quicker. Even this could be improved. Before you write, you will want to ask your client what should be emphasized. Is it healing environments or national trend?

Perhaps even better:

Newly upgraded surgical and endoscopy suites at Anywhere Community Hospital will help you recover faster because of a healing environments created with new lights, flooring and paint, according to hospital CEO Joe Dokes. “We’ve tapped into a national trend showing soothing and comforting environments promote faster healing,” Dokes said.

Another alternative:

Anywhere Community Hospital surgery and endoscopy patients are recovering faster because of healing environments created with special flooring, paint and lighting, says CEO Joe Dokes.

Or:

Can paint, flooring and lights really help patients recover faster from surgery? Anywhere Community Hospital CEO Joe yes, after recently transforming two surgical suites and an endoscopy treatment room into healing environments with sound absorbing carpet, soft lighting and pastel walls.

I’ve cranked out good news releases in 15 minutes and have labored over a lead for an hour or more. The key to great leads: don’t be afraid to rewrite.

I just a attended a business leaders meeting in Beijing as part of a Chamber of Commerce trip to China. Actually, in our meeting were several Chamber groups from California. The trip was aimed at showing off China’s economic engine. Capitalism is on fire there. Everyone is selling something. And American’s are welcomed with open arms to receive both our money and good will.

For me, it was the trip of a lifetime — a chance to get a first hand look at the new China in action. I can’t tell you how much I learned. I came away with a very positive attitude about China and the people.

As for business meetings, designed to bring American and China business partners together to do business, they haven’t seemed to figure it out. Our delegation had submitted our requests ahead of time to meet with potential suppliers or business partners so they would be in the room when we arrived.

Instead, the organizers welcomed us and then said “enjoy your meeting” with no individual introductions.

There was no organization to it. Ultimately, I persuaded an interpreter to introduce our people at the microphone to determine if their were Chinese counterparts in the room. For the most part, there weren’t. Ultimately, however, the organizers met with members of our delegation and said they could facilitate contacts with suppliers, etc.

My headline suggests the Chinese don’t understand business. They certainly do. But based on our experience, not in the nitty gritty meet-and-greet fashion — the tried and true mixer — that is the staple of business interactions, at least locally, across the U.S.

Based on our short visit, this small problem will be remedied soon. The Chinese are moving at light speed as they increasingly dominate world markets in so many areas.

One insight: we should be teaching our kids mandarin at a young age — the same way they teach Chinese kids English — to put us on a solid business footing in the future. While everything in China seems to be in both Chinese and English and many people speak English, business interactions will be improved if Americans can speak and understand the language and culture.

Linking your CEO with an editor or reporter who covers your industry can be as simple as calling the media person and telling them your CEO would like to brief them on industry trends.

Okay, you’ve called and the reporter said yes. You can’t believe your good fortune. You feel like you’ve just hit a home run. Now what? Do your homework (actually you should do this BEFORE you call). In any case, these tips may help you prepare:

•Find out what the reporter has been writing and and what her/his interests are and assemble a briefing book for the CEO. You don’t want to CEO to be surprised about the reporter’s interests. Make sure you cite any potential areas of industry controversy or criticism that any good reporter is sure to bring up.

•Sit down with your CEO and discuss the upcoming briefing an the goals.

•Prepare background for the reporter: a page on the CEO and one on industry trends with more on a CD or reference to a website for details.

•Try to keep the briefing group small. Limit it to four: CEO, reporter, A PR Person and maybe another “content expert.” Even better: if your CEO is good with reporters, a one-on-one over lunch is OK. Having a PR person can be useful, too, recording reporter requests and helping the CEO with tough questions. But remember, reporters don’t want to hear from PR flacks, they want to talk with top management.

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.

A few years ago, Lewis & Summers organized a three-city media tour for Stanley Myers, president of SEMI, the global trade association for manufacturers of materials and equipment needed to manufacture computer chips.

Most media focus at the time was on SIA, the trade association for the chip designers, like Intel. When a reporter wanted a quote, more often than not, they called SIA president George Scalise, rather than Myers.

To add SEMI to the mix, we set up industry briefings for Myers in Boston, New York and Washington, D.C., including the technology team at USA Today.

Interviews at the Boston Globe, New York Times or USA Today don’t come easily. You need an important CEO, a CEO with something informative to say, and if at all possible, some good ideas for future industry stories.

Remember, the only way someone like Hiawatha Bray at the Globe, Steve Lohr at the New York Times or Geri Tucker at USA Today will meet with you is if they think they can gain insights for themselves and their readers or get leads on good stories.

These days, the talk 24/7 is marketing on the web. Yet, many businesses actually have storefronts — places you can go, meet people in person and buy their products and services.

Sign of the Times
How often have you seen a business with a cracked, broken or faded sign? Or signs with missing letters? I don’t know about you, but to me it’s a signal you’re likely to get the same shabby treatment as their business. Poor signs and poor business practices don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand, but often do.

I recently had a transmission repair at a local shop. They had a freshly painted sign, even though they have been in business many years. The floors in the service bays were clean enough to eat off. The mechanics used their tools, then cleaned and replaced them in their tool chests. The office was neat and clean. Service was outstanding, delivering my repair on budget and ahead of the promised date of completion.

Dump Faded Flowers
If you’re a small business looking for ways to improve business and your reputation, clean up your place of business, freshen your signs, replace faded plastic flowers in the window and get rid of broken window blinds. Wash the windows. Keep the outside paint looking fresh and new.

It will pay off with more customers and increased profits.

This week, Gary and I are helping manage the press room at Semicon West, the global trade show in San Francisco for the world’s chip equipment industry.

A few years ago, we surveyed Semicon reporters about press kits. The majority urged: “don’t load us down with all that paper. One editor he usually fills up a suitcase on wheels full of press kits, then lugs them back to his hotel room where he tosses 98%.

So, what do you do?

Says Laura Peters, Semiconductor International: provide the information electronically via email or on a memory stick.

Okay: put the information on a CD or thumb drive and hand it to them at the show or mail it ahead of time with an embargo date.

Our advice: save yourself and your company the wasted paper and the expense of printing color sale sheets, photos and press releases.

We noticed a big drop in the number of press kits delivered to the press room this year. Down by two thirds over the past three years. And, of the kits we looked at, about third are filled with sales sheets and no news. Reporters want news, not sales collateral.

Having worked both the corporate and agency sides of the public relations aisle, I’ve seen a tendency for agencies to use a sledge hammer when a screw driver would work just fine. They view new business as a revenue booster rather than a communications challenge. Do PR consultants these days ever ask themselves if the best solution for the client is also the least expensive? Is more always better? Does the organization have the staff necessary to carry out the plan? Is is possible that the client may actually be doing some things right?

Gary Summers and I have held senior communications positions at Kaiser Permanente, one of the nation’s largest HMO’s with a very sophisticated healthcare public relations program. Kaiser, like most providers these days, focuses on prevention. Using Kaiser as a yard stick of good medicine, last year we evaluated the internal and external communications program at rural Mendocino Coast District Hospital in Fort Bragg, Calif. (You’re thinking: Kaiser as a yard stick, you must be talking big money. But read on).

Many of Coast Hospital’s communications activities were on track and appropriate for a small community hospital. The Update newsletter, however, needed a makeover.

Mailed only two or three times a year to 15,000 people in the local community, whole issues of Update were devoted to volunteer activities and plant maintenance or the “clean, well run” cafeteria. A few health classes appeared on page 8. Otherwise, prevention advise was largely absent.

We revamped it: cut the size from tabloid to 8 1/2 by 11 (easier to handle and cheaper to mail); moved from two-color to four (we live in a four-color world); created a new look and feel (new logo, type and layout), and based content on pr goals set by the organization with emphasis on prevention and quality of care. We also suggested printing it six times a year. Ultimately, quarterly was the most the organization could afford.

All these changes resulted in a more attractive, focused publication better serving the community at literally the same cost. Reducing the content and simplifying the design also allowed the internal public relations manager to eliminate outside writers and coordinators (us). That’s okay. It means we did our job successfully.

Lessons: less is more. Be guided by a pr plan. Revamp communications according to resources available (including money and staff).

Our client Sport Chrysler Jeep Dodge is a small, but successful car dealership in Fort Bragg, California, a city of 6,000 on the Mendocino Coast. A few months back, the owners, three local families, asked Lewis & Summers to look at their promotion activities and suggest new ways to boost sales and service business.

We knew nothing about the auto industry, but quickly learned the basics from co-owner Mike Slaughter, a man with 30 years car sales experience.

We learned during our first meeting that the sale of used cars is an important part of dealership revenues. For years, Mike has been finding used cars — Toyotas, Hondas, Nissans, Fords, etc. — across the country and delivering them to coast residents, but it still was a little known service locally. When you drive by the dealership, you see Chrysler and think they only sell and service Chrysler products. Not so.

Getting Online
Sport Chrysler at the same time was creating its first website. It occurred to us that Mike and his team are “hounds” out tracking down cars for people. We suggested he “brand” the service by getting the domain MikesAutoHound.Com and trademarking the service.

Within a month, Slaughter established a Mike’s AutoHound logo and website and was advertising the service: “When you’re looking for your dream car — new or used, any make, any model — why leave the Coast? We can find and bring it to you!” Ads have also appeared on Cox cable TV, the local movie theatre, in newspaper advertorial and on postcard mailers.

Results
Calls have poured in and the AutoHound staff is busier than ever with Mike’s national network expanding rapidly.

Lesson: fresh eyes can lead to fresh ideas.

What PR pros already know: branding a little known product or service can be a powerful marketing tool. A cute logo can’t hurt.