PRs, you’re failing to adapt to the digital news cycle
The pressures facing journalists should be the perfect opportunity for PRs to place more stories, argues Anthony Caruana. Instead, ‘spray and pray’ press releases reign, follow-up phone calls abound, and spokespeople remain ill-prepared to give journalists compelling interviews.
Over the past 15 years, since I started working as a journalist, the media landscape has undergone a revolution. Daily, weekly and monthly publishing cycles have been largely replaced by a thirst for content that means a new story needs to be ready every 30 minutes. Ad revenues have been squeezed and the many people researching and writing the content have been made redundant.
That should be a boon for PR agencies. After all, if journos are under the pump to deliver more content (and perhaps even help out the ad sales guys with some coverage of specific companies), then surely the opportunities for PR to successfully garner coverage for clients must be falling like pennies from heaven. Yet, the reality is far from it.
What I see is a broken system. Given the way today’s media operates, I would have expected the PR industry to have adapted. Recent LinkedIn data suggests there are now 10 times as many people identifying as working in PR as there are journalists. Despite all those resources, most of the PR interactions I have are the same as they were at the turn of the century.
This opinion piece has great intention, but is very light on with recommendations on how to ‘adapt to the digital news cycle’. Yes I agree 100% the spray and pray mehtod is a waste of time, but what tips and tricks can you recommend for brands trying to navigate the digital age, where journos need to file a story every 30 minutes. Trust me when I tell you that these journalists are not sitting down and speaking to your client. Most journos dont have that luxury of time. You still need an excellent news hook in order to have a journalist want to speak to your client on the phone even for 5 minutes.
How about this for some real advice.
* Relationships are everything!
* Do not hide behind an email – you cant form a great relationship with a journalist over email – even in the digital age of journalism. I was speaking to the COS at one of Australia’s top online news sight yesterday who said, ‘Drew we get 50-70 pitches each day – but on three people would pick up the phone and speak to us. That is effective – because we can tell you straight away if we like the sotry or not, or tell you what elements are missing in order to get it across the line’.
* Pick up the phone – pitch your idea before sending the follow up email.
* Pitch a journalist at the start of their shift – if they start at 6am – well guess what – that’s when you should be contacting them.
* Research who is writing about your storyline, that day. If they’ve written a story that you can add to, mention that in your email if you can’t get them on the phone.
* Understand the importance of an exclusive or an embargo date – no journo wants a story that everyone else has already reported on. They want it first, or at the least publish on the same date.
I’ve been in this biz for more than 20 years and the number one thing that will stand you apart from other people in this business is the quality relationships you have with the media. Be genuinely passionate about news, and understand how a journo/producer works. Once you understand this – PR should be a walk in the park
Couldn’t agree more! Great advice right here. My only take away from the above article is that publicist should also be story teller’s which I would suggest good ones already are mining the client for the story. PR should stand for Powerful Relationships!
Brilliant acronym Bronny. PR = Powerful Relationships. I’ll be using that from now on.
The problem with so many junior PRs is they are not being given the chance to form these relationships. My former PR account coordinator, who I was mentoring, was on the phone every day pitching media stories and building those relationships. Since leaving me for a bigger agency, he has told me he rarely gets the chance to speak to media, and is now drowning in admin work. Big agencies need to stop wasting their client’s money on unnecessary admin work and start delivering real results. It’s no wonder so many of the smaller boutique agencies are booming – we are nimble, more cost effective, and get the results where it counts.
“Story teller’s” ?
Please don’t tell me you have a degree in Communications… Your grammar and spelling in horrid!
Bang on, thanks Drew! 100% agree, relationships are so important to actually getting a journalist to pick up the phone.
Respect is a two way street, earned through researching the journalist and what they cover, along with knowing your client and their story to be able to deliver relevant content.
Solid gold advice for any PRs, starting out or otherwise.
I concur with all Anthony is saying and will add the majority of the problem is that PR people are put into 1. areas they may know little about – if anything.
And 2. “play it safe” and think that the “big” media is the place to put EVERYTHING
Two examples in my sphere in this area. In the first instance, I was once sent a camera to review without a lens. Well duh!
In the second, (and the agency has since changed thankfully), every product on release from a popular “action camera” company went to the morning shows on 7 and 9 whilst I, with 160,000 DEDICATED users of such products waited 9 months for review units.
So yes, relationships and knowing what specifically any journo / publisher does, how they do it, their market and more, and then feeding that direction is paramount. It can yeild far better results than you may think.
The option is just shooting for numbers hoping something sticks.
And one final gripe every journo regularly comes across: receiving a missive from a PR, you have a query, call them and they are “unavailable” or worse “just gone on leave”. As Anthony says, the news cycle is now immediate, not daily, weekly or monthly. If we have to wait for you to come back from as weekend in the snow or a fortnight in Bali (God knows why) or wherever, the chances are that release or promotion will be binned.
Actually there is one more bitch. PR folk tend to either not know, or conveniently forget at best, freelance journos and publishers are not paid to print or otherwise publish your stories.
So often when I ask if there is any budget to do a campaign around a story as against just print / rewrite the release, the response is almost Lord of the Rings-ish ie: you can almost hear the hiss of “any budget is m-i-n-e, MINE!!”…. Most times it is now even checked if there is any budget from my experience.
If businesses are investing in PR (and again as Anthony says, in training people to get the message through to the right people), doesn’t it also make sense to invest via sponsorship / advertising etc in the deliverer of the message to those who actually buy the product or service being touted?
I think you’re missing the point of the math that Anthony highlights in the piece. With 20 Australian journalists a week over the past few years losing their jobs and with about 20,000 new PR roles created in the same period, it’s impossible for journalists to build relationships with all PRs. The message I hear is that spokespeople need to be well trained and coached as effective storytellers – not just so PRs can get a quick coverage hit but for wider ranging business success.
Also how about employing some people who know how to write great content people will actually read, that also understand the audience you are trying to target?
With so many redundancies happening at major publishers, there will be a huge number of unemployed smart and experienced content creators that also have the contacts you need to get cut-through.
Sadly I see PR agencies using cheap inexperienced people over and over again, and wondering why they don’t get results. Here’s a tip: spend the money and find the right person who has the skill-set and experience and “spray n pray” will not be needed to get a result.
Relationships are great but when the number of PR is so much greater than journalists, the only way to build that relationship is through targeted pitches that specifically address the needs of then journo and publication. And, in my experience, that doesn’t Nearly as often as it should.
As for the idea of “relationships” – there was a time when long lunches and getting to know each other was the norm.
As for the phone calls – I rarely had time to answer the phone.
One publication I was on was publishing a fresh story every 30 mins on weekdays. There was one FTE and me as a freelancer (I was doing 4 stories each day). Time for relationship building doesn’t exist. I rarely had time to answer the phone let alone going out for a coffee or lunch.
Part of the challenge of PR is that the metric of coverage is flawed. Getting 100,000 readers from a daily paper looks good but if none of those readers are potential customers or investors then it’s not a useful result. Better to target a niche publication with 100 readers who will buy or invest.
BTW Drew – much of that advice is sound. And it’s part of what I focus on in the media training I do with spokespeople.
Spot on!
Strewth Drew, your CoS mate isn’t going to thank you when she starts getting 50 phone calls a day from PRs pitching stories.
Also. I’d genuinely fear for the safety of any poor unfortunate who is the News Editor’s 70th caller for the morning. I’m not sure that’s the kind of ‘relationship’ anyone wants.
Haha – I don’t answer the phone now. My missed call numbers are going to skyrocket!
Great article and commentary.
This wasn’t about the digital news cycle at all but good to know you offer media training services.
Drew made a great point about picking up the phone!