Trump tax PR hit is as much about timing as his finances.

The interesting thing about the tax revelations about the Trump organization is that could well have been non-news if it wasn't for the timing; being released on the eve of the 1st Presidential campaign. Timing in public relations, indeed in all communications, is critical in order to ensure that the messages are being heard; or in some instances not being heard. Timing is a powerful weapon in the arsenal of the skilled communicator, and I share strategies on how to avoid the kind of distractions the Trump campaign will now have to deal with.

SPEAK|Pr is for business owners to unlock the value in their organization for free with effective communication and is hosted by international Pr agency owner and entrepreneur Jim James.

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Transcript

Jim James: 0:03

Timing is the key to an audience being receptive to the message that you're trying to share. And in light of the announcement of Donald Trump's tax affairs just a few weeks ahead of the third of November US election, it brings home to us all that the message sometimes is going to fall on deaf ears and sometimes on receptive ears. This is why timing matters, and so here's how you can optimise timing for when you want to get noticed. I'm sure I'm not alone in having heard the news of the Trump organisation taxes. They don't affect me personally, nor do they really affect most people, yet it is headline news, rightfully so because of the man that Donald Trump is, but also because of the timing, coming as they do on the eve of the first debate with Senator Biden. Ever since Donald Trump was a nominee, he has been asked to declare his taxes which he has avoided doing, and so there has always been suspense about his taxes for the duration of his term. It's bubbled in the background, not least of which because of the questions about if he owes money, who does he owe money to, and could he possibly be indebted to the people that he needs to negotiate with on behalf of America? All of this may have washed away and been buried underneath one or two of the other issues that are facing the world, the global warming, the North Korean missile issue, COVID, the China trade war, to name a few. There are enough major issues for people to have forgotten about one man's taxes for a while and yet, it's in the The phenomenon of timing makes a difference in our PR activity, ecause when we're delivering a essage, the receptivity of the udience is going to be etermined by where they are in heir state of mind. One of the iio's laws that I've mentioned efore, was that all ommunication is destined to spotlight again, because the timing is important. ail, simply because people are ot listening. They've got other hings going on, and that ilters their attention. But in he case of the eve of an lection in America, everybody s focusing on the credibility f the two candidates. What e've got then is an issue from ur own public relations erspectives, that we are often ending information without ecessarily thinking about the oment, the time and the state f mind of the person receiving t. I was having a conversation with a friend who's running a new mobile phone app, and he' in Singapore, but the app i in Shanghai. We were talking a out his challenges of reaching out to an audience that is an one that might want a desk spac in Shanghai, and I asked him a out when people would want to ave this information, when hey would want to be booking the desks, whether they be boo ing it in the morning on their way to work, booking it for work after having dropped the kids a school, after having gone to t e gym, etc., because he time tha people are going to receive t e message impacts a couple o things. One, it impacts what they're already doing and how occupied they are with their current issues, whether you're offering your service your message is helping them or hindering them. In the case of this Shanghai app, I talked with this entrepreneur about building an avatar, about looking at what kind of person, male or female, young, old, active, not active, parent, not parent, working in tech, not in tech, all these different characteristics which would define their purchasing decisions. This way, he can start to niche down and make and make the marketing campaigns relate to the individuals. The second part of that is to look at the day or the week or the month as well. We're all familiar with the big events like Christmas, Easter, Halloween, etc., but of course, if we're selling Christmas trees in the summer, there's not much pick up. By November or December, however, there's a lot of pressure to have a Christmas tree. All of a sudden, we're looking for the adverts about Christmas trees. The same is true about fitness apps, or office sharing apps, or food, or insurance. During this time of COVID, I've seen more adverts, for example, for people offering to help me with my will and my health insurance. It was never an issue before but now it is, because people are receptive. So, when we're thinking about the messaging that we'd like to share, there will be high points and low points in people's days, weeks, and months when they're more receptive than at other times. It's obvious really, when you think about it. Talking about camping equipment in December, is probably not going to get a lot of attention, while talking about it in March, April, or May, is going to get attention. In public relations, it is easy to forget about the timing of everything. We think we've just got one message and we should send it out. Now, the statistics of my SPEAK|pr podcast and of social media are telling me that I have certain days and times when people are more open to listening. My Wednesday and Thursday listening numbers are much higher than my Saturday and Sunday listening numbers. The social media peaks around eight or nine o'clock in the morning for LinkedIn, when people are first logging on and checking it and in the evening when they're logging off and going home. If we're working on sending out messaging globally, then we need to be geotargeting the message so that we're sending it out in the morning in Asia which would be midnight here in the UK, but would just be late afternoon, say, in New York or morning in San Francisco. When we're thinking about the timing of what we're sending out, we have quite a few considerations. I was driving around with my daughters, and the radio we were listening to was sponsored by the Green Flag Breakdown Service here, and so I thought it was a great example of targeted advertising. They call it the School Run Drive Time with Green Flag. I haven't heard that at any other time of the day, but I hear it now first thing in the morning between seven and nine in the morning. If we're thinking about the timing of people's schedule, we also need to think about the timing of the individual in terms of the conversation. We've all gone to our children and asked them to do their homework when they're busy watching Netflix, or asked someone to hurry up and get dressed when they are having their breakfast. In other words, socially, especially as parents, we're allowed to interrupt, although it's not welcome. I think we all know that. We can be clumsy but quite skilled at asking for things. If you've had to ask for a raise or you've had to ask to borrow a car, then you've had to think about the person being receptive, and that should be just the same in terms of the messaging. There's that old note that you should never fire somebody on a Friday, because it's not fair to give them all weekend to ruminate but to give them their notice on a Monday. They'll be busy during the week, and they'll appreciate that. The same applies in terms of getting our messages out. Journalists are getting in excess of 100 pitches a week in their inbox, and they may need to run 20-30 stories, so there'll be times when they're just focused on the work that they've already decided to do. And so, we have to be considerate about what we're asking someone else to listen to when we're ready to tell them, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're ready to listen. So, how can we tee that up? Obviously, if we're with people, we see their body language. If we're not with them, then we need to look at some of the metrics, look and see what is currently being read, seen, or shared by people at the certain times of day or Once we've teed up the message and the timing, we then need to night. think about the delivery of the message. I was working with a client who's been preparing a video presentation to go to a virtual tradeshow in America, and it was a nearly 20-minute long presentation with the re lly interesting bits at about he 15th or 16th minute. When'm doing media training with lients and presentation raining, I always ask them to ake the best parts and put them irst. That could feel ounterintuitive, because we're sed to building up to the punc line, and we're used to tryin to give a story or a sense f what we're going to tell them, partly because we're watchi g their body language to s e if they're going to be recept ve to what we're saying an whether we've got their atten ion or not. But with journali ts, the media, and people on s cial media, we don't always have that luxury. In fact, we do't have that luxury now. Peopl want you to get to the point, a d the point needs to come fi st. It's at that first 30 or 60 seconds, no more, that we ha e to capture people's attention which is really why determin ng if our audience is receptive o what we're sharing when we want to share it is key. If we're sharing messages whi h are not about to be well rec ived, then we're going to ge shunned and possibly even flame on social media. The issue about Trump's taxes are just the same as they were four years ago when he was running for president. Actually, nothing has changed about his tax situation, either, it seems, but what has changed is the receptivity of the audience to his tax affairs. The secret is then to harness that, to look for times when the audience, be that your internal audience, your partners, or your external audience, are particularly sensitive to the message that you want to give. That could be a particular time of the year, a time of the month, a time of the day, when there's a trigger event, a particular need that they have. A bit of psychology, a bit of analysis, and a bit of identification of the avatar will go great together, because if we don't identify the avatar closely enough, we will be communicating in general with people who are living with specific interest moments. The golden rule of communication is always to seek to understand, then to be understood, and then to find a middle way. When it comes to timing, if we want to ask people to take on board a message that we believe is important to us, we have to make sure that it's refined and ready for them to understand it, but we also have to make sure that they're in the frame of mind to want to listen. That is going to be the way that we move people from levels of ignorance, through to awareness, through to engagement, and ultimately to evangelism.