Sad but true.
PR people are often desperate - desperate to get the media to attend our events, cover our press conferences, write about our products, etc. We bug (and beg!) them constantly to interview our clients, we call them to ask if they received our press kits, we call them again to ask when our stories are coming out. We're rather pushy, it seems!
As it is quite difficult to get the press to do all these things, we resort to sucking up. We ply them with gifts, give out goodie bags, provide free meals at our events; we throw parties for them, pamper them, fly them in business class, give them the VIP treatment - all in the hopes that they publish our stories.
While this may or may not be effective, our professionalism - both on our part and the part of the media - should not have to rely on a string of exclusive privileges. It has come to such a stage where the media EXPECTS these things from us, and sometimes even demand it. That should not be the way.
I may be idealistic, but there has to be a more dignified way to do PR. Surely begging, bugging and bribing are not the only means. As I wrote previously, mutual cooperation is the key to success in the relationship between the media and PR professionals. I do not think, however, that the Malaysian communications industry has reached that level of maturity.
Cheers,
John.
3 comments:
Hy John
I agree with you,almost all the P.R people like to suck the journalists in order for them to publish and attend their events,something I feel its not right at all.
P.R practitioners should come up with some ways rather than sucking in order to work with the media.They make the media to believe that they are desperate in a way.I mean I just attended a event last week and you know what the organisers do,they make sure they provide food,drinks,transport and even some present to all the media attended.
I feel if its going to be like this our p.r is in danger because there will come a time when the media will say we are tired of being sucked and will this mean p.r will not host events??
Its time pr practitioners come up with some ideas or tactics to use instead of begging the media.
Nice comment John.
Hope you enjoyed your intenship very much
All the best.
Cheers..
John,
A good example of a PR department that actually turned this relationship completely upside down and made the media 'beg and bug for stories' was G.W. Bush's communication department.
One vital strategic outline that they followed was to utilize the exposure of events. Because events are the bests for grabbing the media attention to your organization without begging..The larger the event, the better the exposure...Especially if you can broadcast it live from some TV channels sometime in an early morning and..How about couple of explosions? Cool nah? Think about the impact that it would make!
Also I believe, they were successful (in business terms) not because they were the most important governmental body & had maximum exposure in the media, but because they managed to contextualize their "releases" in a "narrative of need and fulfillment". That is to say, when you make a connection between organic elements of human being (like fear) with your organizational objectives (to control middle east), then that would grab a lot of attention & retention (from everybody including the media) as far as you are keeping that link alive! Hence the equation:
I think, making your organizational objectives, part of the hearts and minds of the people (& the media), would help you not to "beg and bug" in front of media.
I have put this into practice in a miniature scale in my organization & I have seen that it works!
Cheers,
Ali.
that is true john. but here in Malaysia is even better because last two weeks we had an even on green packet which i am the one who called the media list but so many of them had attended and they did their job accordingly, which after the event they asked our client so many question for the sake of feeding their readers with the information and they even published them, because i saw many of them /publications.
In the other hand the thing is quiet different with Africa more especially my country Nigeria, where anyone that want his event to be covered and publish must accompany it with the brown envelope you all know what i mean. so in this case as PR practitioners we really need to obey and respect the media all the day so we can maintain our media relation which is the most important thing. nice post see you guys soon at school.
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