1. Have you tried an Online Press Meet?
By Vikram Kharvi
Prasanna Kotian, an Account Manager from a reputed PR agency based in Mumbai, services a
technology company in the business of data storage solutions having its headquarters in US. One
Monday morning, Prasanna gets a call from the company corp. comm head that their global CTO is
visiting Mumbai and hence should arrange media briefing with the key technology journalists.
Naturally for Prasanna it was an opportunity to get some media visibility for the client and was eager
to know if there was any specific announcement the CTO was supposed to make. But there was no
specific news or update, it was just that since the CTO was visiting India for business purpose then
might as well he meets some journalists and get his mug-shot printed in some leading newspapers
enabling the India team earn some brownie points.
Prasanna was sensing trouble as given the recent downsizing in the media there were few journalists
covering certain beats and were very selective in agreeing for any interactions and above all, why
would they be interested in meeting without any news or any specific announcements? The client
was insisting that come-what may, atleast 5-6 key journalists should attend. It’s the agency’s
problem how they arrange the meeting as the global CTO doesn’t visit India frequently.
The pressure was now on to call in favours, use relationships, requests or even pleading. Failing
confirmation from the agency, stinkers were pouring in from the client. On the day of the meet, as
expected and despite all the efforts, very few journalists turn up and the resultant coverage the next
day was also negligible. Client expressed his disappointment by shooting emails to agency heads
threating to stop the relationship. Prasanna could clearly see his appraisal rating going for a toss!!!
Sound familiar? Probably because it’s a problem, that’s been around for a long time. But it’s getting
bigger. Shrinking editorial teams means journalists don’t have the time to attend content-free press
conferences. The patented response that PR pros receive is “send me an email; will see what can be
done…”
Many PR consultants will recognise this kind of a challenge (probably some corporate
communications professionals as well). But what could be the solution? How do we deal with this?
Should we tell the client the fact that journalists will not come without any specific new
announcement or think of an alternate going slightly beyond our regular PR tools?
How about organizing an online interactive briefing using an efficient webinar solutions provider?
And how about inviting bloggers along with the journalists to participate in the online briefing? This
is not only easily possible but is also an opportunity to interact with journalists and bloggers
breaking all travel hurdles. Most of the processes involved pre-event will be similar to that of
organizing a press conference. You need to identify whom to invite, send out invitations with details
of time and requirements to be able to log-into the online briefing. You can even hire anexperienced
facilitator to guide the spokespeople to smoothly conduct the briefing. Journalists and bloggers can
log-in at specified time and interact with the spokespeople either through live chats or audio.
Spokespeople can make live presentations or can have a simple Q&A with the participants. More
information documents like press note etc and also be shared and uploaded during and after the
briefing.

2. Result: a very interactive and fruitful session for both sides delivering tangible results and time
saving. There are many webinar service providers, who facilitate this and can be efficiently managed
without much hassle. In the past I have worked on a similar press briefing using the services of a
company called 24Frames Digital.
You can even explore Google Hangout to do a similar briefing with a social twist. You can add in
more social media engagement tools to the briefing such as live tweeting, taking questions over
twitter and the entire video of the press briefing can later be uploaded on your Youtube Channel for
someone who couldn’t attend for whatever reasons.
I am sure, not all corporate communications guys will immediatelyagree to such approach but if you
are confident about unhindered execution then convince and persuade them to experiment. Once
done, it will open up new doors for broader thinking and appetite for trying out new technologies.
If any of you have already experimented with an online press meet then please share your
experience and learning. It will be very helpful to all other forum members. Please feel to write to
me with your comments at pr.vikram@gmail.com or simply drop a line on Twitter @vikramkharvi.