Making PR work for you

Making PR work for you

Presented by

What is PR?

• The practice of managing the flow of information from your centres to the public

• Persuading the public to have a particular opinion about Everyone Active

• PR is an effective, low-cost marketing tactic. It can be used in your marketing plans to support all activity

Why use PR?

• To improve awareness of your centre / facilities • To build a positive perception of the centre• To showcase success / achievements to key

stakeholders• To encourage more people to visit the centre • To grow the Everyone Active brand • To save you money on advertising spend

What makes a good story?• New and timely• Exciting, bizarre or out of the ordinary!• Affects the local community• Topical / ‘hot trend’ • Is something being offered for free? • Is money being raised for charity?• Prominence - link with an NGB, local sports club, sporting hero

or celeb?• Human interest – has someone connected with the centre

achieved something extraordinary or exceptional? • Superlatives and milestones • Does it involve an award?• Is there an environmental angle?• Images!

News or Snooze

What makes a good PR story?

Some of these headlines make great PR stories and others are red herrings. Can you spot which are most likely to get column inches and which will send news editors to sleep?

Photos, photos, photos!

• A photo can turn a snooze story into a news story

• It can mean the difference between a few lines and a whole spread

• Who are the key participants?• Staged photos to camera are preferable to

action shots • Set up shots with branding

• High quality photos only!

• Get permissions, names and details

Case studies

• Have they lost weight? • Are they completing a charity challenge? • Have they completed / are completing an extraordinary

fitness feat?

THEN….• Do they want to share their story? (in the media)• Are they happy to be photographed?

News Articles

Can you identify the news hooks in these published articles about Everyone Active?

For what reasons did the newspapers consider them to be newsworthy?

Giving your event the best shot at getting some free publicity

• Make it open to all• Add a charity angle • Throw in a free activity• Ask someone ‘exciting’ to attend • Get an NGB or local sports body involved • Offers prizes / goody bags• Get local heroes / members with success stories involved• Appoint someone to take photos at the event • Give us the ‘after’ story quickly – with all the facts and photos

PR league tableCentre Pieces of Coverage

Harrow Leisure Centre 110

Everyone Active Acton Centre

34

Northolt Leisure Centre 20

Vale Farm Sports Centre

11

Southall Sports Centre 11

Bannister Sports Centre 8

Hatch End Swimming Pool

5

Perivale Athletics Track 0

Twyford Sports Centre 0

Elthorne Sports Centre 0

Sharing your stories • Complete a PR framework form

with as much detail as possible

• Give us plenty of notice

• Take photos

• Reminder email at start of (most) months

• Remember PR opportunities can be ‘before’ and ‘after’

• Stay in touch and be cool in a crisis

Stay in Touch

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

020 7300 7380