Over the years, I’ve worked with some great public relations professionals. This post is dedicated to them because they got it right.
That’s unlike other PR reps who wittingly or unwittingly make my job harder by their actions or inactions.
Here are my picks for the top 5 most annoying things PR people do:
1. Get the facts wrong. I recently did a feature story for a business publication that involved at least a dozen interviews and researching umpteen other companies and organizations. In the course of fact checking the final draft, I discovered that not one but two PR execs representing companies I’d interviewed had gotten important facts wrong, in one case the spelling of a source’s name, and in another, the spelling of a company’s name. Takeaway for writers: don’t rely on PR people to check facts for you. Thanks to an eagle-eyed copyeditor, neither of these mistakes will make it into print. But next time, I’ll make sure I fact check names myself.
2. Promise what you can’t deliver. Thanks to Facebook, Twitter et al, publicists can go all out drumming up attention for an announcement, event or new product release. But there’s a fine line between bringing attention to a news and bringing so much attention the sources associated with the event–or book launch or whatever it is–are inundated with interview requests to the point where they can’t accommodate all of them. That means some writers will go without, not a great way to win friends and influence media people. I know because it happened to me this week. Worst still is promising access to a newsmaker for an interview and then “forgetting” that they’re not available, or changing your mind about an interview. That happened to me this week too. Takeaway for writers: Don’t rely on promises of access. If they come through, great. But in case they don’t, have a back up plan. If you have to, do an end around a PR gatekeeper: show up at the source’s office, hand write them a letter, email them directly, call after hours when the switchboard is closed and they’re more likely to answer their own phones – you get the picture. Worst case scenario, you do the story without the source’s cooperation.
3. Interrupt during interviews. My preference is always talking to a source directly. Sometimes I just need to confirm a few facts. For that, interviewing a PR person who can act as a company’s or organization’s spokesperson is fine. Otherwise, if you’re a PR person, my goal isn’t to interview you, it’s to interview your boss, whether he or she is the executive director, CEO, author, etc. Unlike some writers I know, I’m not freaked by the fact that a PR person is sitting in – or listening in – on an interview, in business journalism that’s par for the course. But after we all introduce ourselves, be quiet. Let Mr. Big or Ms. President do the talking. If he, she or I need to follow up on something, we’ll ask. And that’s why I don’t mind having PR people in on interviews, because they’re great for that, and the good ones will have that missing statistic or study or contact name and number in my email inbox before the day’s over. But it’s not your job to finish anyone’s sentences, interject an opinion, or explain what I can or cannot write – all things I’ve had happen in interviews before.
4. Be a pest. Don’t send a press release and then follow up to see if I got the press release, then follow up the next week to see if I’ve read the press release. Don’t send me a press release at all if my beat doesn’t cover the organization or company you represent. Most PR people have this figured out. To all the rest of you over-eager newbies – chill. That’s putting it a lot nicer than this Houston Chronicle arts reporter did recently in a public letter to area galleries and arts groups published on Gawker. The flip side of this is just as bad. An agency announces an event you want to cover or offers an interview you want to follow up on and when you try to get more details the PR person’s vanished, gone, nowhere to be found.
5. Ask if I’ll send clips of a story when it’s out. I don’t get a lot of requests like this anymore. But I do get them. Back in the day, PR agencies could use a clipping service to keep track of stories that mentioned their clients. Today there’s a similar tool: it’s called Google. Use it. You’re getting paid to keep track of that stuff, I’m not.
Got your own favorite stories of PR people behaving badly? Please share.
Lest you think I’m blind to how poorly journalists can behave, and they can be pretty bad, I’ll share my top 5 stupid reporter tricks in an upcoming post – stay tuned.
Perhaps PR firms should start soliciting journalists’ views when doing performance reviews on junior staff who do media relations. I’ve never believed media relations was a ‘junior’ task and was always bemused by the fact that senior folk constantly offload it onto juniors because, frankly, they find it difficult and scary.
Very good points. But who finds it “difficult and scary” – the junior account reps, or the senior folk? You’d think agencies would use their experienced staff in those positions because they have more experience. But maybe they view that aspect of the job as so onerous nobody wants it so they offload it to more junior people as soon as possible.
Michelle
LOL I think the juniors don’t have the sense to be scared and senior folk have been burned often enough through their own ineptitude that they’re ALL terrified. 😉 And yes, it’s definitely offloaded. I was one of the few senior consultants at my agency who wasn’t constantly trying to get out of doing media relations (for me it’s the best part of the job!).
That’s funny; I don’t think of my self as being terrifying. On the other hand, I know some writers and editors who are so abrasive that even I’m afraid of them. I can only imagine what a novice jr. account exec would do.
More seriously, you raise an excellent point that’s relevant not just to PR firms, but to companies of all kinds. That is, what’s the best use of your experienced talent? Generally speaking if people are really good, they get kicked upstairs to supervise more people. But what if they’re bad at that? You’ve taken them away from what they’re good at and replaced them with someone that’s not experienced, and made them do something that they’re bad at, so it’s a lose-lose. Why not let people who want to stay in what they’re good at. At my old newspaper, there were some star reporters who could have been promoted to an editor job, but they loved what they did and were really good at it, so they got to stay and did what they did best. That’s a smart use of talent.
Michelle
The wisest thing anyone’s ever said about media relations is that building/maintaining/media lists is the bane of every agency’s existence, and that can (and should) certainly be done by juniors who bill out at 1/3 the rate of the most senior folks. I think part of the problem is that agencies have been slow to accept the notion that quality of coverage is far more important than just quantity, and I’m pleased to see PR people moving away from the ad value equivalency notion of measuring PR ROI.
Amen. Whoever said any publicity is good publicity got it all wrong.
MVR
I’ve had all of these happen to me, too. However, I think it was more carelessness than maliciousness, so I’m not sure I’d call them “tricks.” More like “mistakes.” Just a few weeks ago, I had a PR person email about a source and when I confirmed the source’s company name and book title, I discovered that the PR person had gotten both of them wrong! These were small, niggling mistakes, not glaring ones, but she really should ask what her client prefers and make sure to use that consistently.
Another time, a publicist responded to a HARO query offering her Big Name Client. When I responded saying “great, when is Ms. Thang available?” she never got back to me. Lame! Yet another HARO publicist said she could get me the data I needed, and I gave her an artificial deadline. She said she needed more time, but PROMISED she’d deliver what I needed before my real deadline. Then on the appointed date, she emailed me (this is after repeated assurances) and admitted that her company didn’t have the type of information I needed and I had to scramble to find another source. Ridiculous!
Ridiculous indeed. And I agree that some of these are unintentional, but others are, as you’ve pointed out, blatant cases of a PR rep over-promising or promising something before actually checking to see if it’s possible. Either way they make themselves and the agencies they work for look bad, and make me extremely wary of ever wanting to work with them again.
Michelle