Publicity Boundaries?

A client recently asked me to create a short set of ‘Do’s and Don’ts’ for her new ambassador team in terms of publicity activities. This isn’t really a set of Do’s and Don’ts, more a set of questions its worth asking yourself before you send your team of ambassadors out to spread the word. You can also find a lot of Do’s and Dont’s for ambassador programmes in general, in the free Guide to Working with Arts Ambassadors.

The list covers some common issues but remember, in reality a good, creative ambassador team will come to you and make you consider lots of things you hadn’t thought of before (which is great), so don’t think of this as the definitive list. ALSO…remember that you can’t really control what people say about your brand anyway so relax and enjoy the adventure!

Creating Guidelines

Think about the areas shown below and then create a set of guidelines. Detail which actions must be cleared with you first (eg. putting your logo on a piece of print they have created). Then discuss these areas with your ambassador – they may suggest things you want to add or eliminate from their action plan. A discussion may draw you to reconsider some things, for example, you may set a guide of “check with us before you contact the Press’ but then realise an email sent to a local community newsletter is not the same as sending one to The Independent newspaper. Below are some key subjects that you may want to consider discussing with your ambassadors:

• Their Plan of Action

What are they proposing to do? Asking your ambassadors to create an action plan serves several purposes:

- The team can share ideas with each other

- You can spot any potential problems or opportunities

- You can set benchmarks for activity levels

- You can support your ambassadors properly and acknowledge them when they’ve done the work. I did this with one team of ambassadors who were initially reluctant to share their word of mouth ideas with each other. “We know what we are doing” , they protested. However, once they shared their top tips they found that they all had very different approaches and could learn a lot from each other. 

• Care of Your Brand

Get clear: what are the things you do and don’t want your ambassador to say about your brand? You can’t really be too prescriptive about this – you want your word of mouth to be natural and in their own words but there may be some things that would be counter-productive.

• Press, Publicity, PR

Do you want your Ambassador to do the following? – Send out their own press releases? To Community newsletters? What about to The Guardian?

- Create their own flyers? With your logo on them?

- Conduct radio interviews on your behalf? With Community radio? What about mainstream radio stations?

- Do presentations on your behalf? At the Local business breakfast? Women’s Institute?

- Send out mass emails?

• Meeting Targets

Let ambassadors know that its better to find out why potential attenders say no to an offer than to push them to attend an event to meet ambassador programme targets. Train them in what they could offer instead if people say no. How about asking them to join the mailing list?

• Record-Keeping

Think about what kind of information you want your ambassadors to bring back to you, eg, let ambassadors know its useful for them to ask contacts to join a database/mailing-list. Yes its obvious to you, but unless you ask it may not happen.

• Times of Contact

Ambassador teams can be very enthusiastic and request a lot of your time and attention. When do you as a manager want to be contacted? Are there set times of the week you are happier to have a call outside of any set meetings?