Archive for the ‘PR’ Category

Listening to Barack Obama’s speech yesterday, I was reminded of Shaw’s quote about how different we are in our use of language. Obama’s genuinely inspiring speech, referencing Martin Luther King in his call for supporters “to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day” while magical in a US context, sadly wouldn’t work for our politicians.

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And so are blogs according to a journalist from US Wired last week – a story that somehow made it into the Telegraph, Times, Sunday Times, Radio 4, Brand Republic in the UK – and those are just the one’s I happened across.

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Back in the balmy financial days of June I was bemoaning on this blog the absence of Mandelson and Campbell and the general decline of the spin doctor.

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Having steadfastly refused to ‘do a Cherie’ Sarah Brown has finally stepped out of the shadows today and by introducing her husband at the Labour Party Conference, set the tone for a speech which appears to be doing the impossible in inspiring the party to get behind their beleaguered party leader – at least for a while.

A former Brunswick PR, Sarah Browns appearance reminds us that Gordon is not just a politician but a family man who cares about people and the country. OK, he’s never going to be a charismatic speaker but by demonstrating his human side and his party’s past achievements, he’s going some way to re establish his leadership on a solid footing.

Alistair Campbell had also been drafted in to handle the BBC’s coverage of the speech in a dual with John Sopel and appears to be winning,

Nice to see PRs doing a decent job for Labour at last.

So 79% of PR agents have yet to add any online services to their portfolio according to Bigmouthmedia. I guess from this we’re meant to get the impression that the PR industry is a set from ‘Life on Mars’ with a visitor from the future – Bigmouth themselves presumably, striding around looking astonished at how backward we all are.

I suspect the truth is that every agency actually offers some form of online service, however basic, it’s just that they are probably not promoting it very well. There’s no doubt a lack of expertise and maybe confidence in just what part PR plays online. Should we be involved in content for search? Should we be involved in website content? Blogs? Vodcasts?

The answer is yes, absolutely. The internet has opened up a limitless demand for the written word and PR agents are needed in the thick of it.

I must admit I was suprised to read this sentence in a letter from the NUJ recently. “The NUJ considers PR as work within journalism..”

Can this be right? I suspect a few journalists may disagree.

 As a result of some holiday movie watching, I’ve concluded that PR characters in films seem to follow a fairly standard template. Though always slightly oily, they are generally depicted as idealistic people trying to find a moral purpose in a cynical world.

Three examples:

Hancock

Unsuccessful PR man Ray tries to persuade corporations to donate a percentage of their profits to his climate charity finds an even less promising project – the transformation of alcoholic bum with super powers – Hancock, into proper comic book super hero. His inspired strategy is to persuade Hancock to show contrition and go to jail. He emerges, phoenix like in tight fitting leather suit to save the world.

Jerry McGuire

Sports agent Jerry (PR near enough) is fired for suggesting his sports management company were too profit focussed. Jerry knows something isn’t quite right about his world but isn’t sure what exactly. His character arcs from superficiality to profundity finding meaning and success in his business and personal life.

People  I Know

Ageing burn out publicist Eli Wurman musters all his powers and famous friends to attend a benefit for a worthy cause but taking a moral stand against the corrupt political and celebrity forces he represents  has fatal consequences.

 With the persistently gloomy news agenda of credit crunches and house price deflation it’s a ray of light in a dark news world to read about a PR firm in Chicago managing to transcend money issues altogether with the introduction of an  employee appreciation programme which aims to reward staff with positive feedback rather than cash.

Here’s an excerpt from their press release about it:

 CEO of Chicago-based Empower PR Sam Chapman learned the benefits of this new theory firsthand. After implementing an “appreciation beanbag toss” every week in his office (in which he and his employees would toss a beanbag to each other and share meaningful appreciations), his clients tripled in number and his bottom line increased dramatically.

Is this weird? I’m not sure. Looking at their client list which includes ‘the nation’s leading sex therapist’ and ‘Space Command’s stress doctor’ it looks like it may just be a classic case of the PR agency adopting their client’s values. As my clients are mostly in online marketing, I guess I’d eventually end up doing a PR blog on a website about marketing..

As little as six years ago the majority of press releases still came by post. On DM Week, we used to have huge piles of them typed up so we could edit them on our trendy orange macs. How archaic that now seems. These days they arrive in unprecedented numbers by email and I’ve often wondered, as an agent now responsible for quite a few of them, how this change in volume and format has affected their impact.

Unable to find any research on the area I recently conducted my own small survey of B2B journalists.  The results were surprising – at least to me. They show the average number received to be 35 a day (far less than I’d anticipated) of which 50% were considered irrelevant or poorly targeted (better than I’d thought actually). The main complaint (apart from targeting) turned out to be a lack of clear labelling.

On this basis even if your press releases are relevant and clearly labelled, you’re still competing with around 17 other emails a day for a journalist’s attention. These are not great odds.

Your chances lessen even more if you happen to email the likes of Five News’s editor David Kermode who in the latest issue of PR Week says this:

 “One of my biggest bugbears is when an email arrives in my inbox that is obviously PR crap – it gets immediately deleted. One sure-fire way of not getting my attention is a bog-standard email. What irritates me about PR is the blanket nature of it.”

So the effectiveness of emailed press releases seems to lie somewhere between ‘not very’ and ‘suicidal’.

Note to self, best call Natasha direct.

It’s good to hear I’m not the only one who thinks Labour’s spin doctors are letting the PR side down. No less than Colin Byrne, Weber Shandwick’s chief and former Labour party chief press adviser says in PR Week today, “there’s no way these mistakes would have happened when Alistair Campbell was there.” He also compliments Conservative comms chief Andy Coulson for outmanouevering his opposite number.

Meanwhile, the client, no doubt fed up with the state of his public image, has escaped online, bypassing journalists altogether to commune direct with the electorate on You Tube. Good idea this, especially as press relations don’t seem to be improving much under the charge of Labour’s special press adviser whose approach is, according to Byrne, “just phoning up people and shouting at them.”

Perhaps with enough personal phone calls and vodcasts The PM can cut out the troublesome middlemen altogether. Might be easier to employ an effective PR though.