Why Ranting About PROs Is a Waste of Time
You must know the story by now but to recap, yesterday a freelance journalist withdrew a blog which “named and shamed” a huge list of PR executives whom the journalist claimed bombarded him with irrelevant emails. A lot were from big name agencies which will have spent thousands of pounds training their execs to do the exact opposite!
This is probably the millionth “hack knocks flacks” blog I’ve read in the last year and the complaints are always the same: badly targeted pitches, poorly-written press releases, irrelevant “news”, and so it goes on. I’ve written about it before.
It does raise some serious questions, though, because the PR industry receives widespread training – often from the horse’s mouth (journalists) – yet nothing seems to change. Is PR training rather akin to protest songs? They make a lot of noise, generate some short term action and someone makes a lot of money, yet years on the same problems still linger.
I’m not saying that journalists should tolerate bad PR – I’m not going to make excuses for under-pressure, often inexperienced execs, although it’s most likely their superiors’ fault for not reigning in expectations at the client end – but badly directed emails are an occupational hazard that can easily be logged as spam if they persist.
I’ve decided to retire from commenting on the “hack knocks flacks” front from now on as it’s been going on since I entered the trade in 1998 and will still be here in years to come, because nobody’s perfect. As PROs we can but ensure that we follow best practice so we can stand out and do not end up on any future name-and-shame lists…
For more on this subject, listen to this podcast with freelance journalist Gordon Kelly on pitching to the media and this podcast with Phil Dwyer of Brand X PR on drafting and distributing press releases.
Jason Whitmen said,
Great post. I will read your posts frequently. Added you to the RSS reader.
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Paul Wooding said,
Great post. I think the training point you raise is a very valid one. Most PRs (and clients) will have sat in a training workshop with a member of the media, yet the very same people that nod wisely when a hack says “cut out the superlatives in the releases, shorten them, pitch the differently etc. etc.” will go straight back to ther desks and do the polar opposite because it’s easier than making a song and dance about it.
While hacks need to accept that PRs aren’t perfect and this sort of generally well-intende spam is an occupational hazzard, we in the PR industry have to change our ways, and if this means standing up to clients (often it’s the direct stakeholders of our clients) and teaching our juniors that this isn’t the way of the world then so be it.
Fundamentally, we need to change our ways else these sorts of hack v flack posts are – as you say – going to continue ad infinitum.
Ian Delaney said,
Ultimately, this training you talk about and the hand-wringing blog articles bemoaning the lack of real relationships seems to amount to lip-service or a small minority of switched-on people. The AEs that were named are answerable to their ADs, who are answerable to their clients. The happiness or otherwise of journalists isn’t of especial relevance. Particularly so if you’ve got 10,000 hacks on your mailing list – if one gets grumpy, then there’s still the other 9999. Maybe you’ll treat section editors on the nationals with kid-gloves, but freelancers are ten a penny.
But, as you say, this sort of approach doesn’t do you any good. The journalist concerned will simply get less email and less cooperation from the people he attacked. As a freelancer my options are this: grow up and live with the fact I’m not that special: sort out my email filters rather than throw my toys out of the pram.
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Max Tatton-Brown said,
For better or for worse, the change has to come from the journalists and take place between them and the original email. The PRs who do this don’t read the articles complaining about it.
This sounds arduous but if you flagged all the incorrect emails then at the end of each day sent a single response to them all in one go, it’s not such hell.
Without something like this, it will continue forever and ever until the end of PR.
runmark said,
Indeed – sounds like “occupational hazard” is the most appropriate term. Thanks for your thoughts, guys. The bad PRs will be found out, ultimately (you would hope…)
Chris Gibbs said,
Training as effective as protest songs. Indeed. Reality often gets in the way of the best intentions and sadly PRs are human and under deadline pressures which may make someone say “that’ll do” to a press list and chuck another name onto the BCC list, just in case that journalist has space to fill and wants to cover the latest world leading new unique widget of the month.
What needs to change in the industry is the scatter gun approach and the need to beat last month’s metrics. The coverage monkey PR approach cannot sustain itself. This should come from the top down in agencies and if clients don’t understand it, then they really don’t understand the role of PR either. There is a difference between mass marketing and the strategic, targetted PR that we should be aiming for where we only focus on influencing those that care or need to be made to care.
Julien Speed said,
There’s never been any excuse for badly-written, poorly targeted press releases. However, if you have 400 journalists on your media list for a given client, you can’t realistically pore over it every time and delete individuals who might not be interested in that particular angle. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day.
What PR execs need though is to be tougher with their paymasters. No we won’t send out a press release with no news; no we won’t accept your re-write that reads like ad copy; no we won’t send it as a word attachment in the official corporate font with trade mark symbols and embedded images that make the file size 10MB…
Receiving unsolicited approaches is sadly a fact of modern life. We PR people are bombarded every day too by sales pitches for things we don’t want: recruitment agencies, photographers, purveyors of photocopiers and, dare I say it, the media themselves. No we’re not an ad agency so we’re not going to pay to have our story published, thank you.
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