Two Indian journalists were recently seen sharing some opinions about PR agencies.
The Economic Times’ Joji Philip, among other things, said,
“in general, i have nothing against PR pros, they are doing their job – but some methods are wrong”
In the same conversation, Kushan Mitra, from Business Today, said,
“it is the duplicity I can’t stand. And the inbox clogging attachments. There is a reason I like certain agencies. Honesty.”
I have to add here that the above opinions are a lot more diplomatic and polite than what you may hear in person, from many media folks. But, these did set me thinking. Are PR agencies doing it wrong, most of the times? Definitely not – there are many things that are done right, but it perhaps would help to articulate the basics, once more.
So, when I ask, ‘How do you do PR?’, forgot all those academic explanations of public relations and how it is suposed to be done. Let’s talk ground realities.
Is this what PR does, hands-on?
1. Get a detailed brief from the client on what their objectives are – business-wise and communications-wise
2. Understand who they are targetting their business at
3. Identify target media who could impact that target segment
4. Create engaging content and communicate that with the target media periodically
Largely? Now consider what really happens.
Brief? Yes, this is something that is usually adhered to, across agencies. The better agencies ask more and more questions to clearly understand the clients’ priorities.
Target audience? Yes, a subset of the one above. Works, mostly.
Target media? Largely works, but there are sporadic cases of the wrong journalist targeted and they vent their anger, these days, on Twitter.
Content?
Here’s the problem.
Is PR about content? Or, is it about relationships?
I’d tend to opt for the former.
Journalists’ job is to report and talk about what is happening. They rely on a lot of sources for leads about news/information and one such source is the PR agency. So, a basic relationship is essential, no doubt. But, what does that relationship guarantee to the PR professional? Coverage for the client? Mentions about the client in the story the journalist is filing?
Why would it guarantee coverage? Isn’t the job of the journalist to stay true to his story and publication and report/write about only that which makes sense from the story’s perspective?
Would he plug your client just because you have a good working relationship with that journalist? Perhaps once. Or twice. But beyond that wouldn’t his story and it’s focus matter more than the relationship – he needs to justify his job too, right?
Next, how is that relationship built? By smoking together? Drinking together? Calling up many times? Of course not. Ideally, that relationship is built on respect. Respect for each other’s intelligence and capabilities.
What intelligence? The intelligence to connect your client’s story to what the journalist covers, in his ‘beat’, usually.
What capabilities? The capability to communicate that connection in an interesting manner, enough to attract the journalist’s attention.
So, it gets all down to content. The intelligence part is your own, but to impress a journalist enough to respect you, you need content that is appropriate to him/her and makes for interesting conversation with him/her.
Content is, therefore, king. It always will be.
The way you deliver that content is where PR professionals can add value, but content is the base. With vacuous content, however well you deliver, it will not help, in the end. Which is why PR profession is being ridiculed, in general. All talk and no content, is the crux of it.
It also matters when you have the guts to go back to a client and tell him/her if the base content (the news) you are asked to ‘sell’ to media is weak. If it is weak, it is – you can try to mask it with interesting numbers and data, but you need to have enough intelligence and discretion to identify weak content…from the point of view of what the target journalist needs. So, when you are telling your client that it is weak, you are doing the client a favor, because nobody needs to waste their time in selling weak content and get reprimanded from respective bosses later over the no-show. The alternative, while telling the client the truth, is to ask for additional information that can strengthen the content so that it becomes better.
What about the venerable press release, you may ask.
The ‘press release’ is merely a tool, to get an idea across. It is not the news, by itself. Press releases were hand-delivered long back; faxed, sometime back and are emailed now. The process, in general, is to email it and call the journalist who has recieved it, to check if he has recieved it. Duh?
Is that the point of sending and calling a journalist? Of course not. The sending part is easy – and done, in a matter of seconds. But the calling is done to ‘sell’ it. And selling involves what I wrote above. The point is to make yourself and your piece of news (carried within the press release) stand out among the numerous other press releases that the journalist may have got on any given day.
For that to happen, go back to the basics again.
Is your press release interesting to read, from the perspective of the journalist’s ‘beat’?
Do you have a ‘top 3 messages’ crux on what the journalist should look at if the world is ending in the next 2 minutes? Is it on the release? If not, can you communicate that without beating around the bush and more like an elevator pitch?
Have you done anything at all, creatively, in your email or its subject line to let it stand out among the clutter in a journalist’s inbox?
No? Then you’re just one among the millions and it is no wonder media hates PR professionals. It is both not interesting and not customized. The only reason why a journalist may still listen to you on the phone is perhaps because you helped him with good content some time ago….so don’t push your luck too much.
The practical problem is in scaling all these, to multiple clients. But that is a factor of team and time management.
So, please get back to basics. If it is about content, get your language right. Package relevant and sensible content creatively and confidently ‘sell’ it to media. It’s about time PR in India got some respect back, as a profession.
Photo courtesy: The Visions Of Kai, via Flickr.