Selling PR to R&D


By Betsy Raymond Stevenson, posted June 28, 2010

Who else has had to convince a skeptical PhD or MD that, without a compelling personal story, media outreach won’t be effective? If you have ever felt that your first task in a presentation was to demonstrate that you don’t wear mouse ears at work, this post is for you.

To be fair, Research and Development management is right to be cautious about how they reach out to reporters. The list of what they cannot talk about is long. And, when they can talk, they must keep in mind the regulations around pre-approval promotion.  PR firms that know their way through the ever increasing restrictions around product promotion and new product launches, are often unfamiliar with pipeline communication regulations.

In media interview training, I advise researchers to find analogies for their work to make it easier to understand. I use the same approach to explain the importance of storytelling to researchers. This is almost always a tough sell. To be effective a researcher must base his or her opinion on data.  Not on emotion or wishful thinking.  Storytelling can look  frivolous, at best, at worst like pandering.

Here is the analogy I use to explain the role of storytelling to researchers.  If it looks helpful to you, feel free to use it and please share here how you would improve or expand on it.

Authentic, compelling personal stories may not be as hard to discover as a new therapy, but they take research.

Read on …
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