When PR goes bad

When I was a journalist (it seems many moons ago now but was in fact only 12 months ago) my colleagues and I were in agreement about one thing in particular – there was a hell of a lot of poor PR out there. And there still is.

The major gripes were (and probably still are) as follows:

• Not understanding the concept they are pitching. Dig only gently behind the press release or the scripted phone call and it would become abundantly clear that the PR had no idea what they were talking about. Frustrating, time wasting and not exactly confidence building.
• Not understanding the title that they are pitching in to. If they had bothered to take a cursory look at the title I edited at the time (Insurance Age – the focus is regional brokers and the UK market) it would perhaps have dawned on them that a press release about facultative reinsurance risks in south East Asia might not be the most interesting.
• Trying to bully journalists into covering their release or speaking to their client. One thing that I know never, ever worked was trying to brow beat a journalist into submission or even begging as I had once experienced. The one thing that it will achieve is the loss of any respect the journalist had for the PR or the company.

I could go on but the above are the major gripes that appeared time and time again. Having moved over to communications and PR I can view things from both sides and can confidently say that there is no real excuse for the above misdemeanours. There can really only be two reasons why any of the above would happen – laziness and desperation and there is no excuse for either.

The desperation probably comes in to play when the PR agency has secured clients not because they understand their market but because they need the business. This is the scattergun approach to building an agency – get as many clients as possible regardless of whether you can actually help them or not. And so you get account execs trying to pitch a business to the press that they have no real understanding of.

One of the reasons they have this desperation is that they have such high fixed costs, in their office space and people, to manage. This tends to drive behaviour within the agency that does not bring real benefit to the client.

Desperation probably also accounts for the bullying and harassing that some PRs indulge in. They approach communications from the perspective of gaining as much coverage as possible regardless of its effect in order to justify their fees. If they find a mere journalist getting in the way of their press release carpet bombing strategy, they will attempt to force their way in.

And as for not understanding publications that they are pitching to, that’s where the laziness comes in which is simply inexcusable.

The real problem is that not only are businesses who are unfortunate enough to work with agencies like this receiving a poor service, but these agencies do the wider communications and PR sector no favours whatsoever. Poor performance, like experiences, will always stand out.

Good communications support should be just that, support. It shouldn’t be about piling up column inches but about ensuring the business is represented in its chosen markets in the best possible light and that if the proverbial does hit the fan, that the brand and reputation is protected and defended. There is so much crap PR out there that it can get depressing. But even when I was a journalist, there were always individuals and agencies that stood out for great service. If only there were more of them.