Raging against the PR machine

Even as a junior PR I knew what many agencies now still don’t realise: Journalists hate follow up calls. You’re only useful if you’re helping them do their work. If you stop them, to make them help you with your admin, they’ll soon learn to cut you out the loop. So my first ever PR job was nearly lost over a huge row over follow-ups with journalists.

I don't mean the type of follow-up that journalists actually welcome - the kind where you do some legwork, provide them with the information they asked you for in the first place, on time and add as much value as you can to make their lives easier.

Oh no. When I had a stand-off with my boss and refused to make the time honoured cringe-inducing PR call which should have gone something like this: “Why didn’t you use our press release?”

The full wrath of the managing director then broke across my head. I was given a warning, had so many strips torn off me that I was practically fleshless. And then I was sent to Siberia. In agency terms, that meant press clippings duty. I was confined to a room and given scissors and toxic glue and made to cut and paste press clippings until my spirit was broken.

Luckily, I was rescued from this labour camp when a client appealed on my behalf for leniency. I was lucky that I had managed to establish a rapport with my clients through being honest with them. In a victory for common sense and freedom of speech, I was allowed to go free without serving my one-week sentence. It turned out that the client agreed with me. Why disturb a journalist just so they can help you with your own internal audit?

PR people, probably under pressure from someone like my old boss, do this all the time. “I wonder if you’ve got five minute to spare,” they’ll say. Journalists hate this. No wonder. How many people like being distracted from their own work just to help someone from another company to hit their target?

These incidents perfectly encapsulate what’s wrong with so many PR agencies. They’re obsessed with systems, numbers and reporting to the extent where they concentrate on that to the exclusion of doing the real work. They promise a journalist working to a deadline that they can provide them with just what they need. And then they don’t. However, you can bet that the initial call and the email will always feature on the activity report to the client even though no useful coverage was achieved.

This is a people business. If you want to do everything by rote, why not go the whole hog and get a machine to do the job? A robot could phone up journalists, read out the synopsis of a press release and email it. It could certainly annoy them. Why pay a human being to do it? They’re far too complex and sensitive, not to mention expensive, for such a routine task.

On the other hand, journalists cherish human contact and initiative. They warm to anyone who displays wit, warmth and initiative. So bring out the humanity of your staff, let them develop their instincts and success will follow. The best PR agencies worked this out long ago. It sets them apart from their competitors time and time again.

Let the plodders feed their obsession with routine, time sheets and numbers. Their job will be automated one day and they’ll be replaced by machines.