Altering a product is expensive and time-consuming, eating away at precious resources and profits. It also damages strength of its brand name, confusing consumer and widening rift.

The PR Rainmaker understands that there are two ways of doing business. You can compete or you can create.

Most companies compete for same set of customers. In a growing market, this works just fine. The number of available customers is going up and up, so there’s plenty for anyone who is willing to get out there and fight for them.

But what happens when a market refuses to grow? Or worse, what happens when a market actually begins to shrink. Suddenly, you are fighting for fewer and fewer customers. Your pricing power vanishes. So do your profits.

Instead, companies should seek to change customer by creating new behaviors. The best method for this is public relations.

No one understood this better than Edward L. Bernays, father of modern PR. Indeed, according to Bernays, it is this principle of changing public instead of product that separates PR from advertising and marketing.

Whenever hired to sell a product to consumer, Bernays always chose to sell a new behavior instead.

He began by quickly analyzing public behavior that prevented his client from thriving. He then determined how public would need to think and to act in order to benefit his client.

Finally, Bernays would select strategy and tactics that would alter public opinion and consumer behavior to fit his needs.

His methods were indirect, complex and at times inscrutable. They employed front organizations, public demonstrations, letter-writing campaigns, expert testimony and other alliances. But more often than not, they worked:

 Assigned to sell books for Simon & Schuster, Bernays enlisted experts to call for great literature in everyday home, plus he convinced architects to include built-in bookshelves in their home designs.

They are:

1. Finding a Story – The reporter’s job is to uncover stories, preferably ones that competition is missing. Most reporters must meet an unwritten quota of stories within a given period.

At a daily newspaper, reporter may be required to turn in one 800-word story, plus a handful of briefs, every day. At a business journal, quota may be three 800-word stories per week, plus an industry column, plus a brief. At a television station, quota may be five news segments per week, plus a weekend feature.

The formula changes from outlet to outlet, from medium to medium. But be assured, every reporter has to meet certain expectations to keep any job, and this includes producing a given number of stories during a certain period of time.

2. Gathering Facts – It’s not enough to have a story to tell. The reporter must also have facts that support story.

This is known as 5W’s and H: who, what, when, where, why and how. Without facts, it becomes impossible to tell story.

By nature and by training, reporters are generalists. Few have specialized knowledge, other than how to convert a set of facts into an interesting, intriguing news story.

As a result, every reporter is like a graduate student who is cramming for a new exam every day. Reporters must learn essential facts, arrange them into a coherent stream and master them long enough to sound as if they are experts.

3. Choosing Angle – Once reporters have story and facts, they must make a crucial decision. What is angle they will take to writing story?

The angle is simply format that reporter will use to arrange story into something audience can recognize and understand.

Is this a hard news story for front page? Is it a feature for Sunday family section? Is it a brief? Is it a six-part investigation?

These are just a few of angles that reporter might take to any story.

The most common angle is hard news angle. Something important has happened and here are facts, arranged in order of importance. The vast majority of stories you will read, see or hear are told with hard news angle.

The hard news story is based in immediacy. It must be told now, or it will lose its value to audience.