The Philadelphia Bar Association to Host Legal Media Panel on February 23, 2009

Posted by Katie Noonan

The Philadelphia Bar Association will host a media panel, “Meet the Legal Media: How to Be a Great Resource” on Monday, February 23 in the Philadelphia Bar Association’s 11th Floor Conference Center on 1101 Market Street. The program will begin at 12PM.

The media panel will feature Jeff Blumenthal of the Philadelphia Business Journal, Mike Dunn of KYW Newsradio 1060, Lu Ann Cahn, Investigative Reporter at NBC, and Hank Grezlak of The Legal Intelligencer.

Lunch will be available to those who have made reservations and paid in advance via check or credit card. Individuals interested in attending can reserve their seat on the Philadelphia Bar Association Web site’s Calendar of Events. The cost of attendance and lunch is $8.00. Checks should be made payable to the Philadelphia Bar Association. Please direct all questions to Dawn Petit at 215-238-6367, or via email dpetit@philabar.org.

Click here to register online.

$25,000 Production Grant Available to Nonprofits

Furia Rubel's client, Allied Pixel has proudly announced a new program to benefit Philadelphia-area nonprofit organizations. Partners in Progress is a $25,000 grant for the production of a video, website or interactive application. Nonprofits in the greater Philadelphia region are eligible to apply.

One grant will be awarded per year.

If you know of a nonprofit that could benefit, please encourage them to apply. The application process is open now through March 31st, 2009. Visit them online to learn more.

Getting Back to Basics When Writing PR Plans

Posted by Katie Noonan

A very good post from Jim Ylisela of Ragan Communication’s blog “Face to Face,” has reminded PR practitioners to get back to the basics and ask these four simple questions when creating their PR plans.

1. What are you trying to do?
2. Who are you trying to reach?
3. What is the best medium to deliver your message?
4. What is the point of your message?

A public relations plan is a strategy for delivering your message to the right people, through the right mediums, in a way that will resonate. But Ylisela argues, and I agree, that today’s messages are too convoluted and overly complicated.

What do you want to accomplish through your PR plan? Ylisela says that you should be able to sum up your communications goal in one or two sentences. In other words, keep it simple and know what you’re trying to accomplish. This doesn’t have to include some lofty or overly complicated language. It can be as simple as: “Use social media more effectively to reach target audiences and increase their knowledge of our product.”

Knowing your target audience(s) is crucial. It can include both internal (within your organization) and external audiences (consumers, shareholders, etc). Once you determine your various audiences, it is important to tailor your message to individual groups. You should craft messages based on who needs or wants to know what, keeping in mind that everyone doesn’t need or want to know everything.

What is the best vehicle for delivering your message? It seems simple enough, but I suspect that some companies may be missing the mark. For example, the 18-24 set most commonly gets their news through referrals from their network i.e. someone posts a link on Facebook or tweets on Twitter and their friends pick up on it. So, if you’re targeting 18-24 year-olds, it may be a better use of your time and energy to target social media outlets rather than print publications, to which many people in that age group do not subscribe.

Why does anyone care? If you can’t determine why anyone will be interested in your news you can bet that it probably won’t reach your target audience. In fact, it will probably end up in the newsroom trashcan. Your reputation is everything. Don’t just release stories for the sake of doing so. Determine if it’s really newsworthy. If not, there are plenty of other ways to get your name out there in a positive manner, either through creating social media profiles, blogging, sponsoring events or networking.

These basic questions are the foundation for every public relations plan we write at Furia Rubel. According to Confucius, “life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” Substitute "PR" for “life” and that’s ThePRLawyer’s philosophy.

Chancellor of Philadelphia Bar Association, Sayde Ladov, Condems Two PA Judges Alleged Corruption

Chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association, Sayde Ladov, Esq. of Offit/Kurman, has expressed outrage over recent news that two judges in Luzerne County, PA participated in a $2.6 million scheme to defraud taxpayers by taking kickbacks.

Read more about the scandal here.

It is reassuring to see that the Chancellor is committed to maintaining a high level of legal ethics in the state of Pennsylvania.