How to Succeed at PR without Really Trying, Part 2

POCA is having a great media week. And no, I’m not counting all the live news coverage of the WCA Lents fire.

1) Last Friday, Portland Monthly Magazine put up this blog post. I don’t know how many hits it got, but it hung around in the “Popular Content” top posts for the better part of a week.

2) Then on Thursday, the Sacramento Bee (circulation 280,000) posted this article (with video!) on their website. They followed it up with putting it on the front page of the Sunday Business section, above the fold — their top business story for the week.

And here’s the thing — it’s not just about the media exposure this time, it’s about the tone and content of the articles. Both of them were about the model itself. And apparently, some ideas that used to be WAY too challenging for mainstream media are suddenly no problem at all.

Not too long ago, somebody who meant well was trying to explain to me why community acupuncture was so hard for the public to understand. They said patiently, “Unfortunately, what you are is the fringe of the fringe.”  Contrast that sentiment with this sentence from the Sacramento Bee article: “Once a luxury reserved for those who could afford private sessions, acupuncture is quickly becoming an Everyman’s pain reliever as community acupuncture clinics make the practice more affordable.”

I seriously would not have thought those words would be written anywhere other than in my dreams. Goodbye, fringe!

What the two articles got 100%, no confusion, is that the big idea behind the model is mutualism. That used to be really hard for people to grasp. But check out the closing sentences of each article:

1) “It’s a solidarity model,” says Rohleder, “Not a charity model.”

2) “It’s truly a sustainable business model,” Thorniley said… “When people can afford to keep coming in, it works for patients and it works for us.”

It used to be that the basics of the sliding scale were a hard sell, let alone the idea of the cooperative. And lots of writers felt compelled to dig up contrasting views, so they would get a quote from somebody who wasn’t comfortable with the idea of group treatment or a quote from an acupuncturist who felt that back points are really important, and how could you possibly have a good treatment without them. None of that this week. These writers used the extra space to talk about the contributions of the Black Panthers and the Young Lords, and to list the contact information for other POCA clinics near Sacramento.

In general, the two articles had no difficulty with showing POCA doing its thing, with zero argument about whether or not that thing was worth doing. They showed POCA doing its thing in context of both time — using a model originally developed by “black and Puerto Rican community leaders” — and place.   The Portland Monthly Magazine post was willing to look beyond Portland and WCA to the need for POCA and POCA clinics.  The Sacramento Bee article framed the opening of SAP in the context of a wave of POCA clinics opening around the region. Folks, that never used to happen when other people wrote about us — it only happened when we wrote about ourselves. Something has changed.

There’s a sense that this thing is going somewhere. POCA’s changed the conversation. I don’t know how we did it, but we did.

I confess I choked on my tea when I read one of the headers for the Bee article: “Group settings make Chinese pin treatment more affordable than previous model.” Previous model? Way to put the status quo in the rearview mirror, Sacramento Bee. I’m not sure any of us would have gone that far.  And just to make sure there wasn’t any doubt about that part, check out the quote from researcher Maria Chao: “As acupuncturists begin to see the economic benefits of offering low-cost group treatments to people of all social backgrounds, she expects the model will change. ‘The movement is just beginning,’ Chao said.”

Author: Lisa Rohleder, L.Ac.