Also in this report:

* Trimark uses PR to build its brand: Mutual fund company exemplifies integrated approach, employing public relations hand-in-hand with rest of marketing mix p.21

* Media training works best when custom-tailored p.22

* Does public relations need a PR campaign?: Professionals weigh in on one of the industry’s most frequently asked questions p.22

* Analysis isn’t just counting clippings: Many organizations recognizing value of media evaluation p.29

It wasn’t so long ago that public relations practitioner Julie Rusciolelli could put an information technology story out over the wire and, within hours, get calls from several major media outlets.

Today, that’s not necessarily the case. With more and more high-tech players out there – and more and more high-tech hype – pr professionals who specialize in information technology find that their job is rapidly growing harder.

‘It’s a challenge,’ concedes Rusciolelli, vice-president and director of the technology practice with Toronto-based Cohn & Wolfe. ‘There’s so much garbage out there now,’ she says of the hundreds of computer and Internet stories that cross an editor’s desk each week.

Cohn & Wolfe does still have certain technology clients capable of breaking through the clutter on the basis of their name alone. Intel, for example, enjoys a great deal of media equity. Unfortunately, thanks to a glitch with its Pentium chip back in 1994 – a flaw to which the company took its time owning up – it can be equity of the wrong kind.

‘The first thing [editors] remember is that they had problems with their chip,’ Rusciolelli says.

This year, Intel decided to take its mmx technology beyond computer trade magazines and into consumer channels. So, for the first time ever, Cohn & Wolfe was responsible for reaching readers of Chatelaine, Modern Woman and Canadian Living – magazines that, Rusciolelli says, were completely uninterested in computer technology two short years ago.

‘You’re marketing an ingredient to a not-so-savvy audience,’ she says. ‘You have to explain it to them like a four-year-old.’

The way to do that, Rusciolelli says, is to give the technology a ‘face.’

In the case of Intel, this wasn’t difficult, since the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company has invested heavily this year in ad campaigns (created by Euro RSCG Dahlin Smith White of Salt Lake City, Utah) featuring actor Jason Alexander from Seinfeld, and a team of ‘fun and funky’ mmx lab technicians. The advertising, Rusciolelli says, has gone a long way toward injecting the dry technology with a bit of personality.

Not every client, however, has an Intel-sized budget to spend. The majority, in fact, are more in the realm of Cohn & Wolfe client Mind the Store, which enjoys neither media equity nor much of a marketing budget, save what it has put aside for pr.

A Toronto-based firm, Mind the Store is opening up storefronts to sell retail point-of-sale software – not exactly the stuff of headlines, as Rusciolelli herself admits. (‘Sexy is ordering a pizza on the Web,’ she quips.)

How do you create interest in something that appears as techno-dull as this? Well, the use of analogies and metaphors is a good start. When, for example, Rusciolelli describes Mind the Store as a ‘Kinko’s for the Internet,’ she finds that editors will start to nibble.

One of the keys to cutting through the clutter, she adds, is not to be part of the problem. Rusciolelli works hard at cultivating press contacts, and never tries to push a story through if it’s clearly of little use to them. ‘I’m always up-front if I don’t think I have a hard story to sell.’

Christina Rodmell, senior consultant with Toronto-based Environics Communications (which earns 70% of its revenues from high-tech clients such as PointCast Canada, 3Com Canada and Toshiba Information Services Group), agrees that fostering solid relationships with journalists is key.

And, she adds, it doesn’t hurt to be brutally honest with a client once in a while. She will, for example, discourage a company from playing up every single thing that it does. ‘You have to make strategic decisions.’

Some clients aren’t a particularly tough sell to the media. PointCast, for one, benefited from the growing interest in ‘push technology’ – and from the fact that the product could be easily explained by comparing it to tv.

Others, like Environics client StorageTek Canada, are another matter entirely.

StorageTek is a Mississauga, Ont.-based company that sells storage and security solutions – a description that tells you little about them if you don’t happen to be a computer nerd.

In this case, Rodmell says, the key to explaining the company’s role as a provider of secure information storage is to link it to another hot topic – namely, network security. After all, what editor doesn’t get excited at the thought of a good ‘hacker’ story? Describing StorageTek as a company that sells encryption software makes it that much more tangible and accessible, she says. ‘What we often have to do is put it in layman’s terms.’

Of course, to be able to do that, pr practitioners have to be able to make sense of the jargon themselves – which can be no small challenge, as Johanna Hoffmann, principal of Toronto-based Johanna Hoffmann + Company has discovered.

Hoffmann was responsible for this past summer’s launch of My Canada, an ‘immersion reality experience’ that took place at the Canadian National Exhibition. And she ended up spending almost a week with engineers in the studio as they put together the interactive 3-D program. ‘Every time someone tossed jargon my way, I would ask what it was,’ she says.

After that, Hoffmann spent a lot of time on preparation of the press package, trying to write in ‘plain English.’ It was a strenuous mental exercise, she says; because the technology is so new, a suitable vocabulary doesn’t yet exist to describe and explain it.

‘I needed to find analogies,’ Hoffmann says. So she tried likening it to a 3-D Imax experience in which the viewer has control over where the story goes. ‘Even though my clients would cringe at these (somewhat inaccurate) descriptions, it was the only way I could give it meaning.’

Tailoring the information to different audiences is another major task, according to Michael Van Dusen, senior vice-president with Hill and Knowlton’s advanced technology practice.

Van Dusen, who works with clients such as Microsoft and Nortel, says that the readers of business publications are interested in the technological solution, but could care less how a company got there. An it audience, by contrast, wants to know more detail: What are the new technology’s features? Is it compatible with other systems? How easy is it to program?

It’s important, he says, to build a trusting relationship with the client, so that stories can be approached honestly. ‘We have to be able to say that we don’t think this is news, or that this is news but it’s not going to get you the front page.’

Van Dusen recalls one instance in which a high-tech client insisted upon holding a huge press conference to make an announcement, but failed to target the right audience. The result: Lots of money was spent, and few journalists showed up. The next time the client held a press conference, Hill and Knowlton took a targeted approach, organizing a teleconference with 11 selected high-tech journalists from across Canada ‘who understood the technology and the significance of the news.’

In a field as complex as information technology, every case presents a different set of challenges. ‘There is no cookie-cutter approach to solving a client’s needs,’ Van Dusen says.