Good Vs. Bad
Posted by Joscelyn on June 28th, 2006
My colleague Chris Clarke has recently posted about an advertisement for PR he found on Craig’s List. Chris takes the view that this is not, in fact, PR. I disagree. This is indeed PR. But it’s a product of the PR “professionals” who give the industry a bad rap. This is the sort of ad that gets around and, unfortunately, gives the people who aren’t sure what PR is, an idea of what we do. The thing is, as we in the PR business know, good PR doesn’t get recognized. That great story you got on the cover of the Toronto Star? Only your company and your client know that you were instrumental in getting the coverage. Everyone else assumes it’s a product of pure journalistic talent.
It’s up to us PR practitioners to spread the word and educate people as to the true nature of PR and what the job entails. It’s a lofty aspiration, I know. But as far as I’m concerned, that’s just part of the job.
Posted to Pot Stirring ;)
June 28th, 2006 » 4:04 pm
Joscelyn, I think that the listing on craigslist is more publicity than public relations. I think PR is about building relationships and connecting an organization to its publics. It sounds to me like the person posting on craigslist is trying to drum up publicity, not do PR.
A press release is certainly one of the tools of PR, though, but that doesn’t mean that anyone using a press release is doing PR. I think that if people knew that, there would be fewer misconceptions of what PR is. Claiming that what appears on craigslist is PR is sending the opposite message.
June 28th, 2006 » 6:37 pm
I agree with Joscelyn. The goal of PR is to get publicity – preferably positive publicity. The person advertising on Craig’s list is just doing it cheaply, much like Walmart PR. As always, those who do it cheaply often do a poor job and make the PR industry look bad. Nevertheless, it is still PR.
June 28th, 2006 » 7:05 pm
I’m going to disagree, William. If the goal of PR was to get publicity, all we would do is canoodle with people in the media. That’s not to say publicity isn’t something we aim for, but it’s not the be-all, end-all of PR, and it’s certainly not the goal. There are goals beyond landing the front page of the NYTimes.
June 28th, 2006 » 8:14 pm
Front page of the NY Times - I could retire!! I spend my day talking to and developing relationships with the media. Media relations is the “nuts and bolts” of what we do - not event planning (MOM!). Yes, of course we help clients prepare for and work through a crisis, we develop strategic stakeholder communications plans, we help navigate our clients through government regulatory issues (among other things), we write alot…and the relationships that we develop with the media are a huge component of all the this!!Media are a conduit to all of the audience that we try to reach everyday!
Any media out there listening…please chime in!
June 28th, 2006 » 9:59 pm
Canoodling with the media is not a bad place to start. The more you know about journalists and how they work - the reality of their jobs and their pressures day-to-day - the more successful you’ll probably be. For better or for worse, just about every PR plan has a media relations component in there somewhere, and it’s usually the more junior people in the agency who get the job of picking up the phone and making the pitch. (Funny that, isn’t it? Ink is one of the things clients tend to measure, sometimes obsessively, and it often means the difference between a happy client and one about to walk. But it’s not usually senior management making those calls.)
June 29th, 2006 » 1:32 pm
There have been countless debates about whether the media could exist without PR and if PR could exist without media. I feel, as I always have, that it’s a symbiotic relationship where one party helps the other.
PR agencies help members of the press understand the message. The media carries the message and delivers it to the people.
Although, depending on the topic or what the other stories are, sometimes the media needs to make a choice. Having great media contacts isn’t always a sure sell of a front page story, either.
It’s a strange world, isn’t it?