Wanna hear something bizarre? Most PR execs hate promoting themselves in media. (Especially when we represent multiple clients.) Most would NEVER write for a publication like PJ Media, even though our audience is huge and it’s a wonderful platform. And forget about pitching yourself for major TV interviews!
I know that sounds counterintuitive because, obviously, we’re trained in media relations and are experts at monetizing publicity. So what gives?
The problem is our clients.
If you’re paying me $XX each month, you do NOT want to see me on TV promoting myself. You want to see YOURSELF on TV. That’s what you’re paying me for! If I’m on TV getting famous while you’re at home cutting checks, it makes you angry.
So maybe that’s why my recent “prophecy” columns, where I nailed 6 out of 7 predictions about the Harris-Walz campaign (85.7% hit rate!), struck a nerve and went viral (making me look smarter than I actually am): My vantage point differs from the other political writers, mostly because I’ve spent the last 20+ years studying the media and learning how to manipulate it. So it’s a vantage point that’s seldom heard, especially in conservative circles.
But if you work in PR, that’s your job.
A client might covet a headline that goes, “Joe Blow is the greatest American who’s ever lived! He is sexy, handsome, and women love him!” But no worthwhile publication would publish something like that. It wouldn’t work — even if you pitched it nonstop for years at a time. Nobody would cover it. And if you fail to generate coverage, your client will walk.
PR is a results-driven business.
So you experiment. Each time you disseminate a release, you might hit as many as a thousand or so media members, and it’s not uncommon for large agencies to disseminate multiple releases throughout a day. After doing this over and over again for a few decades, you develop a pretty good feel for the media’s behavioral patterns.
And you quickly learn, if you wanna generate top-tier coverage for your client, you gotta put aside your ego and not make it about either of you. Instead, you make it all about the journalist.
The truth is, most clients don’t do exceptionally newsworthy things 24/7, and each outlet has plenty of stories they’re gonna cover anyway — with or without you.
Pro Tip: The easiest path to maximize media coverage is to take the “with.”
So you hijack headlines. You figure out what the media already wants to talk about, and then you pitch a story that shoehorns your client into the dialogue.
I’ll give you a personal example: Let’s say you’re a world-famous, media-savvy creationist. Maybe you’ve built an impressive, large-scale recreation of Noah’s Ark, and your financial model benefits from tourism, public interest, people buying merch (I kinda like their kangaroo for $26.99.), etc.
What would be smart PR?
Well, you’d optimize your online press room and set up a few Google Alerts. Then, whenever a news outlet did a story pertaining to Noah’s Ark, you’d respond within a week and make yourself part of the discussion. (Hi Ken!)
Hopefully, your involvement will give the story extra legs and keep the dialogue going. When popular sites like PJ Media take the bait and embed your hyperlink (Iike I just did. I think you owe me a kangaroo, Ken.) it boosts your SEO. That’s how PR pros game the system!
Let me tell you something else: The Democrats are a LOT better at it than Republicans.
The gap is huge. The GOP sucks at PR.
And the reason why they’re so much better is proximity: Ideologically, culturally, and vocationally, the media is significantly closer to the Democrats. There’s more overlap — there are more opportunities to find common ground. It’s only natural they’d cross-pollinate.
But lately, it’s gone beyond that.
The two have gotten so close — it’s so incestual, so gross, and so intertwined — that they’re virtually the same. Really, what’s the difference between a journalist at, say, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, or The New York Times… and a Kamala Harris campaign staffer? Where does one end and the other begin?
But if you’re a Republican strategist, you can use this to your advantage!
From Kamala’s anointment through the end of September, the media/Democrats were positioning stories consistent with a winning campaign. From manufactured “joy” to Tim Walz being the world’s greatest (assistant) football coach, their tone and tactics were undeniable. These were the kinds of stories PR experts pitch when the sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and everything is perfect.
I don’t know if they were winning. All I can tell you is that they truly, wholeheartedly believed they were winning.
My life was disrupted in October by hurricanes Helene and Milton, so I can’t tell you the exact moment it happened. But somewhere in the first half of October, vastly different storylines began appearing. The positioning completely flipped. The contrast was glaring.
Losing Democratic candidates follow one set of PR patterns; winning Democrats follow another. And because the Democratic Party is an organization, it follows a template.
Structurally, that’s really the biggest difference between the two parties: I can’t predict Trump. I’ve tried… and I’m bad at it. My PR background is useless; he does whatever the hell he wants to do.
But the Democrats are different.
The benefit of the Deep State is its structure. It’s a cohesive organization. MAGA runs on Trump, but the Democratic Party can replace Obama with Biden, or Biden with Harris, or Harris with Walz, and not miss a beat. The organization matters more than the individual.
And organizations run on templates.
The Democrats are following a loser’s trajectory right now, and each day it’s getting progressively worse. They’re doing what losing campaigns do: They start blaming the voters. They begin making desperate media appearances. They pledge taxpayer pork to boost sagging demos. They express buyer’s remorse. Their anger intensifies.
Then, when all that fails, they leak negative stories and turn on each other.
This is why I’m still not budging from the one prediction that hasn’t come true yet: Tim Walz WILL be cosplaying kooky outfits (like a tutu!) before this is over: Offbeat, unusual cameos are a Democratic media tactic to reboot the narrative, reintroduce themselves to a demo, and try to come across as fun and relatable. Been that way ever since Bill Clinton dressed like a Blues Brother and played the sax on Arsenio.
This is their PR playbook!
See, it’s easy to get predictions right when the other side follows a premade template and telegraphs all their actions in the media. (And apparently, you get a lot of clicks out of it, too.) But really, it’s just PR pattern recognition.
Who could’ve predicted prophecy would be so popular...?
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