You know what? I don't want to be your client's kibble
In the latest in our series of #hackbugbears, Charles Arthur thinks the PR industry needs a wake-up call.
At present, the practice of PR is full of mistaken ideas. Let's spot a few together…
The first is thinking that email is an essential medium through which you can place stories without doing any more work than drafting a press release, titling your email "Press release", writing "Please find the attached press release" and titling the attached press release as (what else?) "pressrelease.doc".
Yeah, you're laughing, aren't you? I get a couple of those a month though, a statistic that has remained unchanged for at least ten years.
The second is thinking that "a follow-up call" will magically make me interested in what you wrote. Yes, I know that it's the client who wants you to make that call so you can put a little mark in the column next to my name, show them you sent the press release and then followed it up.
You know what? I don't want to be your client's kibble. Every journalist I know *hates* those calls. Every PR person I know hates making them. Feel free to print this out and "accidentally" leave it on your client's desk. Just because they're checkbox-obsessed doesn't mean the rest of us have to be. Your time and mine would be better spent considering one of the points below.
The third mistake many make is adding my email address to your mailing list because once upon a time I wrote a story somewhat tangentially related to something one of your clients did. For some reason, lots of art galleries think I'm fascinated in their new openings, judging by the emails I get from them, as do lots of wannabe bands.
Guess what? I mark those as spam, with prejudice. Once I've marked your email on my "mark as spam, delete at once" list, you never come off it, because I can't be bothered to go over it. Having a big mailing list does not equate with having a big readership, or influence.
A fourth mistake would be those who think they have *a story* for me and then ring me up (or email and tweet) breathlessly to say so.
Here's the thing: unless it's about how the chief executive of your client has been embezzling millions, or that their business used forced labour to make its products, what you actually have for me is *an announcement*. The difference between *an announcement* and *a story* is that an announcement is a statement of fact. A story has the following: identifiable personalities, some sort of tension between the existing state and the future state, and something having changed about that tension.
It's the difference between "Company X launches product Y" and "Company X, which has been struggling to compete with Company Z run by ex-Company X boss Ms A, shows off product Y which aims to grab every one of Company Z's customers".
Let's tease it out. Identifiable people? Sure, Ms A. And the customers of company Z. Tension between existing and future state? Sure - X and Z are at loggerheads, fighting for the market. Something changed about that tension? Yup - now we have product Y, which could change everything. (Or nothing. This one can run and run.)
Which one - "Company X launches product Y" or the battle-to-the-death version - would you rather read? Sure, it's down to journalists to fill in the context - and that's often the key part of our job; when we're doing our job properly (or even well) then we'll be able to spot those X-Y-Z-A links and make the connections, and fascinate the readers with it. But on its face, it's just a boring announcement; what turns it into a *story* is all those extras - the human angle (for every story has at some point to involve humans, even if, as with the Mars Curiosity lander, it's just our sense of wonder and accomplishment), the conflict, the change. To be a *story*, it *must* have those ingredients.
Apply this test liberally to anything you read - it works for books too - and you'll start to perceive the difference between an "announcement" and a "story". You can almost make it into a game. (Though please, not an app.) Apple launches an iPhone? It's an announcement *and* a story. It changes the dynamics of the mobile phone market, creates challenges for rivals. No-name company announces "iPad killer"? Announcement. Never heard of them, incredibly unlikely to make a difference (but keep a watching brief). Marissa Mayer leaves Google for Yahoo? I hope by now you can figure this out yourself.
Which is why I sigh inwardly so often when PR folk call me up saying they have a *story*, for I know that almost inevitably they don't. Believe me, I've been writing *stories* for longer than I care to think about, and I recognise them - or their elements - reflexively. If you're going to call me, or any journalist really, and can't assemble those pieces before you start dialling, think again about what you're going to say. A story? Really? Is it? Certain? Sure? Absolutely?
Yeah, I know I have a reputation for chewing people up when they call with PR pitches. Perhaps it's a faint frustration that after all these years, nobody thought it worthwhile sharing the difference between an "announcement" (ignore) and a "story" (picks up pen, opens notebook).
I'm looking forward to hearing from you all from now on because I'm never going to get a thoughtless email, follow-up call, or announcement dressed as a story ever again. Things are looking up.
Charles Arthur wrote this in a personal capacity.
About the Author
Charles Arthur
Charles Arthur has been a journalist for almost 30 years, writing and editing stories on all sorts of topics including technology, sports and health. He has worked at New Scientist, The Independent, and since 2005 at The Guardian where he is technology editor.
Charles on Twitter: @charlesarthur
Comments (7)
Chris Lee
The PR industry never seems to change when it comes to pitching announcements. This post or similar has been written a thousand times by myriad journalists yet nothing changes.
There are some heretic PR firms which go against the grain, but alas not enough it appears.
PR needs more journalists at a training and creative capacity to reel the client (and old skool PR types in-agency) in a little/lot.
In 2012, PR agencies are broadly still measuring the same old stuff(coverage) that they always did rather than adding key performance indicators such as sentiment, social reach, link building and SERP ranking(SEO) - far more measurable metrics - into their monthly performance reporting.
Paul Rayment
My only problem is that while I still hate making these calls I have, on plenty of occasions, secured coverage off the back of them. Once upon a time I even spoke to a journalist as they were updating the website and they added my story there and then.
I'm not suggesting these would work on The Guardian, just that I don't think following up releases is always a bad thing, you just need to use common sense.
Charles Arthur
Good subject lines, contact details - those are the keys to a good email. And I still recommend Twitter. Announcement/story dichotomy remains, of course.
Alexandra Kedward
Chris Norton
I remember meeting the tech journalists from The Times who showed me (showing my age now) the pile of news releases they had received that morning. He had more than 500 and I thought oh dear that is going to be difficult to get through.
The truth is you have a job to do, as do the PRs, and you are very good at it. As you know I read your articles and blog pretty religiously as I have a huge interest in all things tech. Clients sadly don't always fully understand the PR process and many of us do our best to try and educate them. I think if I got as many pointless emails and phone calls as you do though I would go crazy and so I tip my hat to you.
Sam Golden
It's important for PRs to think about whether they could ever envision their 'news' appearing organically in the publication they're pitching it to.
It's likely a channel publication will be interested in covering an appointment story involving a channel executive, but a national newspaper? I don't think so.
Chris makes a good point about clients misunderstanding the value of their own news. They are often confused why their announcement about an updated product/new CEO/b2b white paper isn't front page of Time magazine. I find it's always a good idea to manage expectations and explain that it's fine to announce every little thing but they might not see a massive return in coverage.
One thing I'm still slightly confused by is your rule to blacklist PRs for eternity. Surely when you started off as a journalist you made mistakes. You probably had stories spiked by editors, does that mean that you've never written a good article since? What if at that point you'd been told "Sorry that last story was shit. Go home now and never come back." Ok probably not the most accurate comparision but you know what I'm getting at. People learn.
Anyway yeah, ace piece & useful for PRs & journos alike.
Charles Arthur
To be clear, I don't blacklist individuals in this way - that would be potentially counterproductive (though of course there's no way of knowing, is there?).
But "PR by mailing list", which of course used to go on in the paper days, is worse than ever now that email costs nothing. At least with paper, companies would give a little thought to the cost. Now? Same effort to hit a thousand as a hundred, even if 990 don't want it.
It's a miscomparison to set it against writing a story for an editor. The comparison would be if I kept sending stories to an editor who didn't ever use stories about that subject and who kept ignoring my emails. I'm not as blunt as you suggest in rejecting such stuff, but I certainly advise PRs just as I do journalists to read what I write and commission.
Unfortunately many don't. Even yesterday I had a PR call me who, when I questioned why I might be interested in their event, said to me sternly "I was told you write about consumer technology". Which told me all I needed to know about what they knew about me and what I write - that is, nothing, apart from my name and perhaps title.