Haven B Media
Public Relations for food, environment and community
We are professional communicators who are serious about positive and environmental change
Media relations
Strategic communications:We work closely with you to develop clear, memorable positioning in context of the audience you want to reach. This makes you stand out from your competitive or collaborative field. Then, we develop messaging and a strategic plan to reach your audience with a story they’ll remember and connect with. Whether strategizing to launch your immediate campaign or strengthen your long-term communications goals, we build in strategy from the beginning.
Media outreach: Our network of food-system focused journalists is broad and deep. Reporters come to us for ear-to- the-ground tips and sources, and the relationships we’ve built are authentic and effective. Our media outreach approach can be either broad-based or individually targeted for each specific audience you wish to reach, but customized pitching is our preference. We create specific pitches per outlet type and per beat: national/regional/local; print, broadcast, new media (blogs and online media). Social media relationship building and intelligence gathering play a significant role in our outreach.
Media assets: Whether an online press kit or customized materials for a specific launch, we develop press materials for impact and efficiency. We generate media backgrounders, press releases, media advisories and op-eds as appropriate to the news cycle and your specific news. We can recommend what visuals to put in an image library, what to avoid and how to offer access.
Monitoring: We watch the daily news and social media feeds like hawks for breaking stories relevant to your strategy. Then, we alert you so you can respond to news, engage with effective commentary or simply stay on top of important trends.
News distribution: We work with all major news distribution services including Business Wire, Cision, MarketWired, PR Newswire, PR Underground and PR Web. We also have deep in-house lists and extensive personal contacts.
Communications audits: The best communications strategies start with solid understanding of the full context in which your story is told. We can analyze past and current coverage to determine how well your messages are being understood and received. We’ll do the same for your competitors and/or deliver a broad snapshot of how your issue fits into the wide world of important stories.
Social media
The newest and most important development in media since the internet! Social media is like word of mouth on steroids. This powerful online conversation is increasingly where reporters, editors and writers engage with audiences, influencers and each other 24/7. We can teach you how to dip your toes in the water, or engage full throttle with this powerful communications category that’s changed how our society communicates and connects.
Strategy & development:we build a social media presence on popular social sites that provide a platform for engagement with peer level influencers, current and new customers, the broad community or industry thought leaders. Because platforms can change quickly, we keep a close watch on trends without falling victim to the hot ap du-jour. We provide direction on producing digital content designed to promote your services, community involvement, and thought leadership to create an ongoing conversation online community around, and accurately represent your brand.
Social media monitoring: we can perform a one-time or regular analysis of current trends and conversations relevant to your brand to determine key conversations, trends and brand leaders currently happening among influencers as well as baseline topic volumes for you and your main competitors. We analyze influence ranking by search tools, as well as identify opportunities for engagement. Then we provide direction and/or hands-on updating of current social media profile to establish your presence in the social web among key social media platforms.
Spokesperson training :
Mastering the media interview
Do you want to deliver a brilliant interview every time you speak your piece, whether you have 5 minutes on the phone with NPR or 9 hours of filming a documentary in the wind and rain?
Have you ever been annoyed, frightened or upset by an interviewer who seems to know your topic better than you do, confronted you, and in the final piece misquoted you — or completely left you out of a story you worked hard for?
Do you want to control your message, but don’t feel like you can pull it off without sounding canned?
Wish you could learn to deliver an artful sound bite? Have you struggled to find your own authentic, powerful voice to overcome the drumbeat of opposition or drown out the din of the same old stuff from the choir?
Spokesperson training will teach you how to talk so reporters will listen, from the basics of messaging structure, to all the way through to finding your center and maintaining authority in the toughest of situations.
Haven Bourque has influenced and inspired spokespersons, CEOs, entrepreneurs and authors, business and non-profits both large and small to transform their words into compelling, effective stories. She’ll teach you to be comfortable, confident and controlled, so that when you talk, people will listen.
Whether you’re a natural performer who sparkles in front of the TV camera, a serious expert who is deeply offended by the very concept of a sound bite, or somewhere in between, Haven can help you strengthen your skills, conquer your weaknesses and bring out your best.
Haven will teach you to polish your messaging delivery, volley back with bulletproof answers to hardball questions, craft a ringing sound bite, glue your audience to their chairs with the intensity of your story, and keep a wildly diverse spectrum of writers — from investigative journalists to student reporters to savvy bloggers — coming back for more.
Well, this is different: How to do your own PR
We recognize that not everybody can — or wants to – spring for a PR agency. So we’re disrupting the usual PR model, by teaching you how to do what we do. For small businesses, organizations with limited resources, in-house communications teams wearing many hats that could use a boost, or farmers, ranchers, urban gardeners, chefs or individuals who want to learn to work with the media, we’ll teach you all the essentials. We’ve heard repeatedly that learning how to engage with the media is a gift that keeps on giving.
From the basics of building a media outreach strategy — what’s news, and what isn’t — creating a messaging hierarchy for overall organization; creating key messages for specific campaigns, identifying outlets/beat/writers and finding them, how to pitch individual writers, how to pitch broadcast for events, writing effective press releases, media advisories and op-eds. Why and how to develop a media list of key contacts, and what resources are available to do that. What distribution or wire services to use — or not — and how to use them if you do.
We’ll also cover techniques for doing successful interviews for TV, radio and print. Learn how to develop sound bites, tricks for answering difficult or off-topic questions, mistakes to avoid, and how to respond to inaccurate coverage.
Discover what makes a “good source” and how to become one, building lasting relationships with journalists. Yes, this is unusual. We do it because we want more media coverage of food system transformation, and we’re all in this together.
What we don't do;
but can refer you to trusted experts in our network
Branding
Advertising
Web development