Media plans, and leaving the house with your baby

Having a media plan is a lot like preparing to leave the house with your baby. What starts out as a simple journey can quickly turn to tears, tantrums, poop in your face and you suddenly looking ten years older.

Picture this? It’s a regular day. Baby is dressed and fed. You’ve wiped the toast from his face and you’ve left a wet face cloth to soak on a blob of fallen Weetbix cemented to the floor.

You grab his nappy bag, his drinks bottle, a snack, hat, sunscreen and coat and off you go, without a care in the world. You’ve also forgotten a second outfit.
Meh, what are the chances? You decide not to turn back. The world is yours and baby’s to explore.

An hour later, as you roll to the final km of your 5-km strolling route, having given baby his snack and drink, you smell a faint but familiar scent.

No biggie – you think. You do the lift and sniff and oh crap! No really! Crap, everywhere underneath the baby. He’s gone and pooped through his pants.

Problem! A full kilometre from a changing area and you’ve not brought a change of clothes.

You wish you had planned better.

Hindsight

Two hours later, baby is bathed and napping. The poop pants are soaking in a bucket. The lining of your stroller drying under the sun. You’re sipping tea but, who are you kidding, you’ve just had two hours of screaming and all the tea in the world won’t erase the panic, fear and downright madness of it all from your memory. Still, at no point do you regret leaving the house that morning.

Don’t wing it with your media relations. The fact is, your business needs a constantly fresh conversation with customers and stakeholders – it needs a public profile. You need to take your business out of the house every now and then.

How many of the companies that you do business with have had media exposure? The more you see them in stories, the more trustworthy they are perceived to be. After all, if the journalists and editors deem the company fit for comment on industry issues, they must know what they’re talking about, right?

So, you’ve agreed, leaving the house with your business is a good idea.

But for goodness sake, be prepared!

Know where you’re going and why – have objectives.

Know your limits – have you done a media SWOT analysis?

What are your exposure strengths and weaknesses, and media opportunity strengths and threats?

Have a road map – don’t get lost.

And please, be prepared in case your business craps itself in public!

Get in touch with Christine for a free consultation to find out your business can blossom with a media plan.