27 Mar Are you prepared to be controversial

I wrote a piece for The Daily Mail this week, and the editor asked me to be controversial. Why? Because they wanted to generate clicks and shares online, which is something you should consider when pitching to the media.

The more controversial your story is, the better – but you don’t have to abandon your morals or spin your story into a scandal. It’s about fine-tuning your story hook headline so that you feel comfortable with it.

I was discussing this over coffee with a fellow journalist this week. She also does PR and was moaning about how few brands really understand the difference between a good story for media and marketing puff. The two are very different.

This week, I wrote up a case study for a health brand about a man with bladder problems so bad that he wet himself on a flight to New York. My headline was – ‘When I wet myself on a flight to New York, I knew I had to resolve my bladder problems.”

He didn’t like the headline and asked me to change it to: “On a flight to New York, the most embarrassing thing happened.”

That’s not going to work. The embarrassing thing could be anything from joining the Mile High Club to singing loudly with your headphones on. A headline that requires any guesswork is a no-no.

Firstly, I understand why he felt a bit squeamish about my headline. No man in his late fifties wants the world to know that he wet himself. On the other hand, he’s agreed to talk to the press about his bladder problems, so that’s going to have to come up, and any journalist would take the same approach that I did.

I urged him to reconsider whether he wanted to talk to the media, because I cannot control headlines. He decided to withdraw his story, and I think it was the right decision.