A BIZARRE BUSINESS - THIS WEEK I'LL BE AN ASTRONAUT

I have encountered many different things since setting up in business in the late 90s – the good, the bad, the hugely gratifying and the downright impossible.

The praise of people is always welcome and heartening. Complaints, justified or otherwise, have to be dealt with. The demands need to be put in context and the expectations matched to reality. I like the mix and doing my best for clients who invest so much in me.

I’ve learned that keeping a level head is essential. Listening to sage advice is very important. I believe in good manners in business (as this blog has mentioned before) at all times and dealing with people respectfully.

And in the main I have been fortunate with clients from the public and private sectors who have been a pleasure to work with, to socialise with.

However, I’ve just experienced a business world first. Without naming any names, let me explain. But I do think this bizarre.

At two meetings at the tail end of last year, I was invited to discuss PR support activity with a company for a series of events it was planning. Before the second, I submitted a detailed proposal that included costs. The company said it was pleased with the advice I had given, the suggestions offered and that the proposal was “excellent” and suited in every way. A contract was prepared but not signed as no starting date had been finalised.

Then the first proposed event was postponed so any work I had to do was, rightly, delayed and the company said it would be “in touch.” Busy with other clients, I did not think this was unduly remarkable.

But, when I checked the date for the second planned event on the original list I had been given, it was obvious a fair chunk of activity was quickly required to ensure the strategy agreed could be carried out to the client’s advantage.

I contacted the company several times and heard nothing in return. I didn’t want to badger them and as the day of the proposed second event was getting closer and closer, I had increasing concerns that any worthwhile PR support activity could be achieved.

Then out of the blue, a new “PR” company announced its arrival via a social media platform.

One of its listed clients, its only client actually, was the company I’d been speaking with – and that’s because those behind the new “PR” outfit were those in the company I’d been talking to.

I did smile even though this was a surprise development, bizarre even. I wasn’t aware those involved with the company who had sought my assistance had any expertise in PR: that’s why I was being hired, I reckoned. Silly me.

If those involved – and on their website they rattle on about PR/Marketing but focus their words on marketing mainly – believe they can undertake an efficient and effective PR campaign for their business and their events, then good luck to them. How they can help meet the PR needs of any other client they manage to secure must be open to question.

What’s happened is a bit like me saying: “This week I’m going to become a photographer, a web designer, or an accountant, no wait, an astronaut.” If I did, nobody in their right mind would hire me, would they?

Of course, there’s been no communication from the company, even out of courtesy, to say we won’t be working together. An associate suggested I should write and ask them if my services are definitely no longer required, just to be awkward. But I haven’t and, frankly, don’t want to waste any more time on them.

I would never wish to work for an outfit so blatantly – it would appear – at odds with my own standards and straightforward approach.

CHURNING OUT THE WORDS

I’ve been following the conversations and reading a range of articles on the issue of “churnalism” – and I am struggling to work out what the fuss is all about.

I run my own PR business and I am a former print journalist and when I started out in newspapers in the early 70s, PRs, as we know them today, were as rare as a news editor saying ‘thanks, well done” on a big story. Times have changed in PR, though I don’t know if news editors today are any more praiseworthy when it comes to the staff they have left.

Is the media becoming “a pawn” of the PR industry has been one question raised. My answer to that is: “We wish.”

The Media Standards Trust charity and its new website – good coverage of its launch was created by its PR team, incidentally – examines “news” of print and broadcast outlets, and measures up how much the information slavishly follows news releases from PR companies.

You can check the results for yourself http://churnalism.com/

In my experience, rarely – if ever – do newspapers or radio outlets or TV stations run a News Release word for word. The News Release can form the basis of news or feature copy for the media outlet concerned if and when editorial executives decide that the content is interesting enough for their readers/viewers. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

It’s no secret that media outfits have slashed the size of their editorial teams. As a result, there are fewer journalists in house to drum up the ideas to fill the daily news, features, specialist schedules that in turn fill the following day’s papers or the evening news bulletins. PR companies can provide information, suggestions and opportunities for the Press to take a look at, develop or, as often happens, reject.

But PRs are not in control of the media, well, I’m not and never will be. Or want to be for that matter. As I say to hopeful clients, I have a measure of influence but no final control. After all, the best PR fed story in the world will vanish if a major disaster strikes or last-minute advert is needed for a page.

No journalist today - be they staff on a tabloid or a broadsheet or in a news agency - would be in their right mind to shovel News Releases into a paper or broadcast programme without all the usual, necessary checks being made. At times, the News Release submitted can even be tweaked, twisted and torn apart to suit a particular newspaper’s editorial agenda. We’ve all been there, but, thankfully, not that often.

http://www.prmoment.com/585/by-copying-press-releases-word-for-word-are-churnalists-journalists-destroying-the-authority-of-news.aspx

So any notion that journalists today are in any way sloppy and happy to grab a News Release with both hands, slap a by-line on it and submit it to their editorial superiors is fanciful in the extreme. Doesn’t sound like any of the fine journalists I know and deal with on a regular basis. In fact, that insults the good journos working flat out in news rooms where empty chairs outnumber the occupied.

On the other hand, there is nothing devious, cheap or nasty about PRs offering ideas to journalists, or supplying images because a media outlet doesn’t have resources to take one for themselves. But that’s a far cry from leading the Press agenda. I see my efforts as a PR of being only part of it and, yes, if my clients have a positive, profile-raising outcome, I reckon I’ve done my job pretty well.

Neither is the so-called lack of investigative journalism – being replaced by churnalism, some claim – the fault of the PR industry. The MPs’ expenses scandal was a big, full-on exemplary piece of investigative journalism, so that weakens that argument in some ways, doesn’t it.

To my mind, PRs and journalists benefit from each other’s existence. The journalist who gets the case study for a feature in time to meet a deadline because a PR has set something up is grateful, and so is the PR for a positive outcome. By the same token, the journalist who can’t persuade a PR to be more revelatory in some circumstances will be displeased. The PR whose briefing is distorted will also be far from chuffed.

The journalist getting, for example, the “big jobs boost story” is happy, the PR acting on behalf of the jobs’ boosting organisation is equally content. And the readers/viewers will be interested in new jobs. This is a simplistic example, I admit, but it does show the mutual benefits to both the Press and PR camps.

If you agree, I’d be pleased to hear from you. If you don’t, I’d like to hear what you think, too.

SIZE MATTERS

I must have got the short genes in my family.

Both my brothers are tall – over five feet 10 – and my eldest sons are tall. One is just under and the other just over six feet.

In my stocking soles I’m 5 feet 7 inches, and nothing I can do about it. My wife is taller than me. I’ve always wanted to be taller. It would certainly help when the last-minute gig goer barges into the crowd to stand right in front of me, all 8 feet 10 inches of him, or so it seems. And big guys get served quicker at a busy bar.

But this week I’ve read and listened with interest to a couple of discussions on whether big in PR is better than small. http://quietnewsday.co.uk/ and http://www.prmoment.com/403/Who-does-better-pr-big-pr-agencies-or-small-agencies.aspx

At the end of the day, I don’t think there can be a winner in the size stakes. That’s because there are excellent small PR companies (like Mike Ritchie Media) and equally top-class larger PR agencies, too many to mention. Doubtless, too, there will be some smaller PR companies and some bigger ones who are not considered to be ticking all the right boxes, but that’s a subjective matter and not one for me to focus on.

I recognise that some major organisations will have demands that can only be met by the manpower available in a company employing a lot of staff although I provided comprehensive PR support for a leading Scottish housebuilder for over a decade to that company’s satisfaction.

The clients who have entrusted their PR needs to me like the fact that after I turn up at the pitch or discussion and if I win the account, then I deal with it personally. I may bring in additional bodies – photographers or event managers and the like – on some projects and campaigns, but the client consistently and exclusively deals with me. It’s the only way a smaller business like mine can ensure the best possible, effective communications’ service.

To my mind, the bigger agencies have one major in-house advantage and that is the ability to have a lot of people bringing ideas to a particular campaign or project. But, I have to say, that I am indebted to be able to tap into the expertise of many fellow PR practitioners when I need advice or confirmation that what I was proposing for a client was OK or needed refinement. Often this help is just a phone call or a cup of coffee away.

The bigger PR outfits also enjoy bigger budgets to offer corporate entertainment to movers and shakers but, once again, I am often sanctioned to buy a journalist a lunch in the course of my duties. So it’s a question of scale rather than size.

So I don’t think big versus small is a clear-cut issue at all. In another area altogether, I use a local one-man band car mechanic in preference to any of the big garages. I’d rather buy a newspaper from a street vendor than a multiple chain newsagents. I prefer quiet neighbourhood bars to brash and noisy city centre pubs. I like smaller gig venues such as Barrowland to the SECC.

So big versus small is not the be all and end all. I try to offer a mature, appropriate, cost-effective quality service and I’m sure, in fact, I know, that those bigger company PR teams strive to do the same.

We’re all different, and that’s a good thing, don’t you think? It gives those in the market for our services greater choice – and that’s healthy.