For Animal Organizations

A+ Publicity:
A Conversation with Anita Kelso Edson,
Director of Media Relations, SPCA of Texas

Q. When you became Director of Media Relations, you changed the focus of your department. What happened?

A. When I joined the department in 2000, the SPCA was spending more than six figuresa year on paid advertising. While some of that went to promote galas and other fundraising events, a lot of it was, in my opinion, simply unnecessary. When management and the board of directors decided to reduce the number of large fundraisers, some of our advertising costs were automatically scaled back. And by then I was already using my news-ed background to generate more editorial coverage about SPCA animals, programs and people. Editorial coverage is often much more valuable and credible than paid advertising and since that’s where my strength lies, I decided to minimize our advertising expenses and maximize our editorial coverage. Since I joined the SPCA, our editorial coverage has increased by 200% and paid advertising has decreased by 80%. Now our advertising budget is minimal, although occasionally we'll set aside dollars for specific events or campaigns.

Q. It must be pretty hard to generate so much media….

A. Well, it takes time to find good stories, especially in the context of such a fast-pacedand hectic environment. We have a lot of great volunteers and staff, for example, but ittakes time to get to know them, to interview them, to find those individuals with unique
backgrounds that would make a great story. The main thing is, I have to be plugged in to all of the activities at the adoption centers, clinics and rescue and investigations departments to capture newsworthy opportunities. One recent example was a 10-year-old, heartworm positive, one-eyed pointer that we rescued from a puppy mill. Long story short, a wonderful family adopted him and it was a great story.

One of our employees was deployed to Iraq last year. When I learned he was helping carefor stray dogs in his unit, we started corresponding (by snail mail). This took time, obviously. But when he returned to the states and to the SPCA, the media was all over it. Another great story.We had a cat in our clinic with a broken jaw. One of our vets repaired the jaw and fostered him for five months while he recuperated. In the meantime, the same vet was fostering a litter of kittens and this cat—broken jaw and all—adopted one of the kittens as his own, as if he were its mother. We told the cat's story on TV and both the cat and the kitten were adopted together.

Right now, one of our rescue and investigations officers is working on a cruelty case, and there's a hearing this afternoon to determine whether or not we get custody of the animals. If we do, that will be another story. It's all about staying plugged in and having the help of staff to alert me to promising leads.

Q. Do most of your stories come from hard luck cases?

A. Actually, they come from three major areas: 1) Rescue and investigations; 2) Clinicservices and stories; 3) Social and therapeutic services. This has been a banner year for our rescue and investigations department. Since January, we’ve rescued nearly 2,000 animals from puppy mills and hoarders alone. On the clinic side, we’ve had a lot of specials including low-cost spay/neuter surgeries, mobile vaccination clinics and not to mention, the heart-warming cases like the cat with the broken jaw. On the social and therapeutic services side, the programs that help both people and animals are very attractive to the media. For example, our Pet-O-Meals program provides free pet food for homebound Meals-On-Wheels clients. In our P.R.E.P. program, Dallas County and the SPCA pair juvenile offenders with dogs that need training to make them more adoptable. We have a pet grief counseling program which has been featured in national publications, along with our Compassion Connection program where SPCA volunteers take their own trained service animals to assisted living facilities, retirement homes and the like. Most of these programs are also visual, which you always have to be thinking about for TV coverage. The challenge is always to think of a new angle, new ways of interesting the media in covering these programs.

Q. Does the way you work with the media contribute to your success?

A. I would like to think so! I used to be a reporter myself so I understand where many journalists are coming from. We go out of our way to accommodate the media. We are always accessible and respond to calls immediately. We're on 24-hour pagers and they know they can call at all hours if they need to. As a result, they’ll often call us first if they need a comment on an animal story because they know we'll pick up the phone or get right back to them. If they want to come here at 10 p.m. (or 4 a.m.) to do a live shot, we'll be here to open up for them. We also respect deadlines, and we’re totally honest. We've had our share of negative stories, but we don't try to cover up problems. We admit our mistakes and move on.

Another key is follow-up. Here's an example. We received a lot of media attention whenwe rescued 115 Chihuahuas from a hoarder last September. As a follow-up, I sent adoption photos to all of the reporters who covered the story, along with a note that said something like, "thanks to your coverage, we found homes for these dogs." Or, if it’s a clinic special, I'll do a thank you that says, "thanks to you, we vaccinated/spayed/neutered “x” number of dogs/cats." Reporters appreciate knowing they're helping to make adifference. I try to write a hand-written thank you (just like my Mom taught me) for almost every major story. It’s an important part of the process.

I also think it's important to familiarize oneself with the reporter’s beats and how they dotheir jobs. I read the newspapers every day and watch and listen to the radio and TV newscasts. When someone does a really good job on a story, even if it's not an SPCA- or animal-related story, I’ll drop them a line and tell them so. It’s important for them to know it’s not just about me and the SPCA.

Q. How important is it to establish personal relationships with people in the newsmedia?

A. Absolutely. Relationships and trust are a big part of this business. It’s often hard to pin people down for lunch, for example, but I like to make face-to-face contact periodically. And at least once or twice a year I make an effort to see people I can’t see on a regular basis because they’re too far away or our schedules don’t coordinate. I may even bring them a little trinket or souvenir—an SPCA baseball cap or something like that. And of course I never leave them without pitching a new story which gives me an excuse to contact them again!

Q. You issue more than 100 press releases per year. Some organizations might worry about flooding the media with too many releases. How do you decide when to send?

A. I always ask myself these questions: Is the story newsworthy? Who cares? Why does the public need to know? How will this information benefit the public? When we did the story about the Chihuahua rescue, I thought it was important to educate the public about the symptoms of hoarding to hopefully prevent that kind of cruelty in the future. Plus, a lot of people are interested in adopting little dogs. Shortly after the Chihuahua incident, we did a similar rescue. That time, I didn't send out another release. It was too close tothe last one, and I didn't want to pitch the exact same story again.

Q. Are you the primary spokesperson for your organization?

A. Reporters usually start with me. Some interviews require our President, or, if the story is tailored to a specific area--social services or rescue and investigations, for example--I’ll usually have the staff person in charge of that area do the interview. Furthermore, on an internal basis, if a staff person does an interview for television or one of our volunteers is featured, for example, we do our best to get a copy on tape and give it to them shortly afterwards. It's a way of telling that person how important they are to the organization, and getting the tape is a great way to follow up and show my (and our) appreciation.

Q. You are a two-person department. How do you do all that you do with only two people?

A. My associate and I work fast and smart, plus we have the help and support of several key outstanding volunteers and unpaid interns. One volunteer translates press releases into Spanish (more than 40 a year) and does the bulk of our media interviews in Spanish. Others help us photograph our adoptable animals so we can post them on our website. We photograph and post up to125 new animals per week because our website is one of the biggest traffic generators for our adoption program. We know this from all the people who come in with the pictures of animals they've downloaded. Volunteers take 40% of those pictures.

I treat the adoption pages on our website as our equivalent of a catalog, and it's really important that our "merchandise" look as good as possible. We take our dogs outside for photographs rather than showing them behind the bars of a cage or in unflattering light, and we show them without leashes and restraints. We couldn’t do this without volunteer support. And we nurture that support year-round by letting these special people know how important they are to us.

Q. You mentioned targeting the Spanish speaking community. Could you elaborateon that a little more?

A. Reaching these media outlets is a priority for the SPCA because so many of our Dallas clientele are Spanish speakers. In 2001, the SPCA’s media team secured, among other things, a two-minute weekly pet information segment called “Noti-Mascota” on KUVN-TV23 (Univision) during the Saturday evening news broadcast. Rather than showcasing a particular pet, the segment focuses on clinic specials and educating viewers about responsible pet ownership. Within six months of its debut, operating revenues and cash receipts at the SPCA's Martin Spay/Neuter clinic increased by 25%. La Estrella, a local daily newspaper published in Spanish, also publishes a 15-inch column each Saturday in its “Para Todos” family section. Thanks to Spanish speaking staff, we're also able to take advantage of breaking stories. For example, a few days ago I was paged by Telemundo (KXTX-TV39) after a pit bull had mauled a child. When the station wanted information on aggressive dogs, one of our staffers did the interview, and I supplied a variety of tip sheets in Spanish and English about dangerous dogs and related topics for the reporter.

Q. In your opinion, what are the key benefits from getting so much publicity?

A. Getting animals adopted is number one. Our website and most of our routine media segments are designed to help specific animals find homes. Next, the additional publicity we generate helps educate the public about such things as animal cruelty, spay/neuter and responsible pet ownership, and it can also help generate donations for animals in need.

Q. If you were advising other animal welfare groups on how to generate media, what would be on your "top ten" list?

A. 1. Anticipate the reporter's needs and questions and include the answers to those questions in your news releases. Do the reporter's research for them.

2. Write factually, not emotionally.

3. Always include the "5 W's" and the "H"--who, what, why, where, when & how.

4. Respect deadlines.

5. Ask yourself, "Who (besides me/us) cares/should care?" (or, "Why is this newsworthy?")

6. Be accessible.

7. Find a human--not just a humane--angle.

8. Make sure the grammar and spelling in your press materials is error-free as well as clear and concise (if you can't get it all on one page, your writing probably isn't "tight" enough).

9. Target the media that caters to your audience and tailor your pitch appropriately.

10. ALWAYS follow up!

About Anita Kelso Edson. Anita graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia with a degree in journalism and emphasis in photojournalism. She began her career in St.Louis as a photographer for a chain of suburban newspapers and worked as a section editor at the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. She later handled media relations for a home construction company, did promotions for a producer/distributor of animated television programs and worked for a PR agency in Los Angeles. In 1992, Anita moved to Dallas where she served as Publicity Director for a publishing company of non-fiction trade titles. She was an SPCA of Texas volunteer before joining its media relations team in 2000.