PR’s PR problem – all substance and no image
The Australian PR industry is thriving, but it has an image problem, argues Mumbrella’s Tim Burrowes
For the last few weeks, I’ve been mainly thinking about PR.
That’s because I’ve been putting together the program for this Thursday’s CommsCon conference, and running the awards that go alongside them.
And I’ve been pleasantly surprised – it’s been a more inspiring process than I’d anticipated.
It’s been a pleasure talking to the leaders of some of the biggest and busiest PR agencies as they explained how they have been grappling with the changed media landscape. Many have made bold moves – changing the entire structures of their agencies to make the most of the opportunities that are opening up to the industry.
Most of course realise the opportunities that social media offers. But I was impressed to see how many have also capitalised on the growing world of branded content. To use the jargon, many PR agencies are extending their footprint from earned media into owned media.
And I’ve also had the opportunity to see the best work being done on behalf of clients. Sometimes high profile, but often unglamorous yet clever stakeholder work.
Overall, I’ve come away thinking that the Australian PR industry is actually in excellent health, with many clever and inspiring people leading it.
Which isn’t my way of sucking up to the industry ahead of CommsCon. You see, I think the PR world’s biggest problem is that it has failed to do a good job for its own image.
One of PR’s biggest constituencies – journalists – often doesn’t get to see the industry at its best.
In most newsrooms I’ve worked in, there tends to be a casual (and arrogant) assumption that the PR person they are dealing with is more stupid than them.
It’s an attitude I’ve never been comfortable with, but can also understand.
Typically, a newsroom interaction with a PR comes when somebody is calling to follow up on a press release.
Too often, although every agency I talk to always says they aren’t guilty of it, the person delegated to make those calls is inexperienced. Often, they are fearful of the conversation that might follow. Frankly, journos can be rude pricks. Or at the very least, stressed pricks on deadline, who want to make a decision in the next five seconds about whether the call is relevant.
(My personal appeal: If we don’t know each other, cut to the chase if you’re making a follow up call. You may well be the fifth PR that day who has opened the conversation by telling me you’re looking forward to the weekend.)
But even if they do get a sympathetic ear, they often lose the opportunity because they don’t know enough about the product at this point.
All day, every day, this pattern repeats itself. Some journos start to think of PR as simply the source of those annoying and distracting phone calls. Or equally bad, a bunch of clueless charlatans who are ripping off their client as they’re not doing them any good.
On an emotional level, many fail to associate those same people with the one press release that day that contains the great story, or the person they called who quickly and promptly gave the info needed.
The unsatisfying exchanges tend to be the ones that stick in the mind.
And of course, they may be intellectually aware that there are others within the agency who may be more strategic, but they’re not getting the daily exposure to them. So they form their view based on their daily experience.
I know a couple of police officers. It reminds me a little of how they think of the public. Deep down they understand that most people are decent. But when they spend every day arresting scumbags, you can understand why they start seeing the public with a more jaundiced view.
I think PR’s lopsided relationship with journalists goes further than that though.
There was a great piece about the journo-PR relationship on ABC Radio National’s Media Report a couple of years back. The most interesting point the show made was that when you talk to journalists about their best sources, many of them are indeed PRs. But journos have stopped thinking of them that way. They’re simply a source.
They’re not the people who annoy you with phone calls, they’re the person who gives you something that will make you look good with your editor. So they’re a source.
Yet when journalists form their attitude to the world of PR, they forget about this sort of contact.
Another issue PR faces is that non-practitioners think it’s easy. This even goes for people working in other communications disciplines.
My heart always sinks when I get an email from somebody at a creative or media agency introducing themselves as the company’s new PR contact. Often, a quick glance at LinkedIn reveals this new contact is somebody quite junior who hasn’t actually got any PR experience. As a result, they’re hopeless at it, although I often get the impression that their bosses don’t know this. Inevitably the agency gives up on the role a few months later, presumably wondering why their attempt to PR themselves didn’t work.
And by the way, there are other constituencies with whom the reputation of PR may be better. Clients probably see a more senior face, so they do get more exposure to the strategists and creative thinkers of the PR world.
But I’m not sure I can offer a solution to PR’s PR problem. Given that the leaders of the Public Relations Institute of Australia offered a text book case in how not to do crisis communications when Mike Watson deposed Terri Helen Gaynor as president last month, I’m not sure we can look to industry bodies to offer a meaningful lead.
Ironically, PRs are often thought of as being all image and no substance. In truth, it may just be the opposite way round.
Tim Burrowes is content director of Mumbrella and curator of CommsCon. The program can be viewed via this link.
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I think the real problems are going to start when the PRs outnumber the journalists.
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There’s a classic adage – “the best PR is invisible.” And it’s true.
There is so much that PR people can’t tell journalists to protect client confidentiality and to ensure the client or company they work for gets the credit.
Seasoned PR’s have the ear of top management and can often be involved in redirecting entire company or product direction in certain areas. They are also deeply involved in customer and stakeholder relations – arguing the case for the “public” behind closed doors, ensuring that public sentiment is taken into account. This is all invisible to a journalist – why would anyone tell the media that it was a PR person who convinced an organisation to do an about face…
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PR is the antithesis of journalism.
Getting those ‘Did you get my release?’ phone calls makes my skin crawl and guarantees no coverage unless ordered by the COS.
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Well said Tim. Much of PRs problem stems for the “Communications and PR degrees’ that combine false expectations and poor skills.
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Toby – we do already outnumber the journos …. I read somewhere it’s a ratio of 4:1.
Tim – I would agree that many PRs are all substance and minimal image and that is exactly because as “sure” notes above – often the best PR is invisible …. PR has so many more faces than many ever understand. I’m really delighted you are getting to see this for yourself. And I’m looking forward to CommsCon too ….
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well said and balanced, Tim, thank you
the PR industry can’t PR itself anywhere near as well as the ad industry because it’s obviously anathema to the average journo to admit the influence that a good PR source can have AND (as usually goes unsaid), the ad industry wields unspoken financial power in the form of directing funds to journo’s employer
working in a senior level across both industries, my observation is that good PRs are of the same calibre as the journos they serve (fact that they chose the higher-paying growth profession, aside), it’s just that the proportion of good to dud PRs is lower because journalism has a lower tolerance for duds because it’s a contracting industry
i totally echo your comments around ad agencies being essentially clueless about how to influence editorial, which is why savvy PR agencies are making a name in content marketing
ad agencies are just clueing on to the fact that it’s better to communicate what people want to hear/read/see than what your client wants to say
this two-way approach to comms strategy lies at the heart of PR and is also why media relations/PR/corporate affairs is the natural home of social media activities, the failures of which are often sheeted home to inability of the marketing department to not use social as a 1 way marcoms channel, but a conversation in which a company can learn something and potentially change itself in response to the prevailing community attitudes
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As an arts publicist (books, theatre) and sport it certainly does help to know who you’re talking to, but not essential. You must know what you’re talking to a journalist about,. It’s also important to know when to quit the flog and leave the conversation with both parties feeling they’ve done the best they can. But there are an awful lot of contacts out there that don’t reply or answer calls or messages. As the media opportunities gets smaller the PRs will obviously find the competition more fierce and journalists will only answer those people with subjects that interest them at that time.
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One of the problems here is that for many journalists their only contact with PR is people, often quite junior, pitching stories. Media relations is only one aspect of a very wide ranging profession, and one of the least strategic. To judge the whole industry by its media relations face is unhelpful, both to reporters and to PR as a whole.
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Absolutely spot on about the junior’s having to make the calls. I would say this is a problem across the entire media/communications umbrella (if you will allow me to reference this site’s way of putting it) – if not a problem in almost every industry.
See, when you get contact from a junior person its breathing down the phone at you proof that most organisations are stupid. What does almost every organisation do? Make sure that it’s public face is an 18yo who hasn’t had time to know what they are doing. From the receptionist just about anywhere – to the customer complaints line, to the person who answers the number on your business card, to that PR kid calling out….
Almost everyone gets to a point in their career where they feel they have earned the right to not have to deal with people anymore. And so they hire some part-time uni-student to do that for them, typically some polite sort without the backbone to stick up for themselves. Forgetting of course that they have just downtrodden part-timer the most visible/audible public face of their organistation….bravo genius.
I’ve seen this not just with PR as well but NGO/Charities trying to get a story. I won’t name names but there were times a well meaning NGO would put out and interesting press-release. We’d call the contact person on the bottom of the page who was supposedly the “talent” to interview and get some quotes for the story. Inevitably the talent is not the wittiest, cleverest, most charismatic and well-informed person at the NGO – but rather the chump who got dumped with the job because no-one else wanted it.
Dumb, dumb, dumb. But definitely not limited to PR – and definitely something News organisations do themselves.
I’ll add that the fact PR is presented as the “Dark side of the force” in journalism degrees probably doesn’t help.
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I’ve worked in PR agencies where I’ve been directed to make such “follow up” calls such as, “Did you get the press release?” and I have flat-out said to senior managers, “I’m not comfortable doing this. Everything I ever read from our journalists on the topic says these are the calls that irritate them the most.” I have then been instructed that people at my level aren’t hard to find and I should either make the calls, or consider my future at the agency. This has happened more than once and, at least on one occasion, led to a very poor third-month review which saw me leave the agency the month after. You see, while PR people are nice as pie to you, Tim, you have to keep in the back of your mind that they are still PR people and have made a profession of saying the right things to the right people at the right time. Behind closed doors, no matter how often their “public face” is saying that they’d never make follow up calls, their private face is a lot, lot, lot different.
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With 20 years + in PR I make all the follow up calls myself as does each senior member here. It is part of the gig – done properly. It’s never ever a junior’s job. Our clients are too important and often issues are sensitive. This is where relationships are nurtured and developed. While not every journo has been thrilled to hear from me – I usually get a good hearing. I do my research, know what the journo writes about in general and in detail as i’ve read their copy and social media. Usually i’ve met them or worked with them in the past. I know what times and what days to call. Yes it’s time consuming – but more than often, journos will have a laugh with me if it’s not their cup of chai and direct me to someone else. But above all – this still one of the parts of the job I enjoy and has led some coffee meetings, some fun drinks and ……coverage. More #journo love
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I’d say that PR’s reputation is held in higher and higher esteem by the marketing industry as it’s value is increasingly recognised by insightful decision makers in that space. That’s a really positive thing and a definite trend I’ve seen emerging on my frequent visits to Australia over the last 5 years. But I’m afraid that this will probably never be the case within the media. On the whole, journalists and PR people have a really good relationship – pointless and ignorant follow-up calls aside! But I’ve never expected the media to say too many nice things about the role of PR as, in a way, that could be construed as meaning that PR has too much of an influence on editorial output, which obviously the media does not want its readers/viewers/listeners to think. So, putting PR in its place every now and then is often the way to manage that. But even with this sporadic knocking down to size, I firmly believe now is PR’s time and events like CommsCon, which I’m really upset that I’m unable to make as I had planned to, go to show that.
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Disclaimer – I work in PR
More than half of the follow-up calls I’ve made to journalists have resulted in coverage, because more often than not, the journalist has not actually seen the release. It’s been buried among their many many emails. I can understand that, as journalists are inundated by PR people pushing consumer products (let’s be honest, those PR guys are the annoying ones), but to generalise across the whole industry is a bit much.
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In my 10+ years in marketing I’ve found PR professionals to be absolutely outstanding.
Every PR professional I’ve met has worked hard to foster relationships internally and externally. In addition they work hard to understand the industry and our products and services. Asking relevant questions etc.
As for creative agencies – well they’re mostly dreadful.
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Hey Tim –
what’s with the incredibly bland, boring & generic photo library images rudely interrupting your fine prose?
They add absolutely nothing.
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Fair question, Adam.
Something of an experiment – if truth be told.
It’s a bit of a first experiment for us with Getty’s new policy on allowing you to embed images free of charge for editorial use. The challenge will be to dig deeper into the archive to find something less generic, I think…
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Unfortunately, as long as there are all the so-called “social” publicists out there, going to parties, tweeting about their fluffy dog, posting reams of photos of themselves standing next to celebrities, and generally giving the more professional companies a bad name, then PR is going to have an image problem.
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To those journalists like JD, who say they loathe the ‘did you get my release?’ phone call …
Did it never occur to you that a quick ‘thank but no thanks’ reply to the release would save us all the trouble?
One of my favourite media contacts has earned his place in my heart for just this reason – simply because he would always reply. Even it was a brief three-word response. Even if it was to say no!
Conversely, my personal PR horror story is of a well-known journalist who called me to lambast me for not inviting him to a key event. When I cautiously explained that I’d sent him three emails (and left him three voicemail messages), his response – I kid you not – was, ‘well, I can’t be expected to check my emails!’.
Just so you know what it’s like from the other side … and why it’s not unreasonable to worry you haven’t seen the release, when you haven’t told us otherwise ..
TDMJ
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What TDMJ says is true. Journalists seem to think nothing is ever their fault. I’ve had a similar call from a journalist, whining about something that, in the weeks previous, I had tried multiple times to get them interested in to no avail. Yet, when they suddenly became interested in it, they were cranky as a bag of cats about how “slow” things were moving. Well, duh, if they’d paid attention the first three or four times, they would have had the information and the interview set up already…
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