When I got into PR in 2008, I fell into a world that had made up its own mystique so powerful that before my first day I had\u00a0literally no clear idea what I\u2019d be doing.<\/i>\u00a0My first day I was given a spreadsheet of phone numbers and email addresses and effectively told \u201charass them until they do what you want.\u201d I eventually learned this was called \u201cmedia relations,\u201d that it was really difficult, that it was pretty lucrative, and that a lot of PR people were bad at it. Why were they bad? Because media relations required knowledge about the product, the industry, the journalist and being able to talk like a person who didn\u2019t eat and shit out a few college term papers.<\/p>\n
And let me tell you, my first pitches were bad. I was instructed to write like I was writing a college thesis about things that were fairly self-explanatory. So I did it, and even though they read like The Architect from the Matrix, I sent them. Nobody responded. So I\u2019d call, and then the person would typically hang up, or swear at me, or listen with all the attentiveness I\u2019d give a really,\u00a0really<\/i>\u00a0insistent door-to-door door salesman. One that didn\u2019t realise I opened up a door to say hey, uh, buddy I\u2019m good.<\/p>\n
Eventually I made up this amazing strategy, where I\u2019d write short emails to the people after asking them what kind of things they wanted to hear about. They\u2019d then write about these things on the internet, making my clients happy who would in turn keep paying the agency I worked for. Eventually I created my own agency so that they\u2019d pay me directly, and this is called a business.<\/p>\n
As the business grew, I really stuck to media relations as it was the thing I was good at and the thing that every client seemed to want. In fact, many complained about the crap firms offered like content marketing (\u201cI write your blog\u201d) or vague strategic documents that take a month to write out. A lot of documents, a lot of puffery, a lot of garbage that would hopefully stop the client from firing them when they realised there weren\u2019t any actual media results. Big companies, small companies, every company seemed to want to get press.<\/p>\n
This was great. This\u00a0is<\/i>\u00a0great. For me, I guess, because that\u2019s what I do. But for some reason media relations has become some sort of weird thing that the PR industry is desperate to marginalize. After the Business Insider PR50 came out (a top 50 of PR people in tech, with a lot of reporters being the ones who vote, yeah I was on it, I\u2019m writing the blog not you), the Holmes Report was quick to put out the gaslighting \u201cMoving Silicon Valley Beyond Media Relations\u201d. The website, claiming to be \u201cdedicated to proving and improving the value of public relations,\u201d certainly seemed to be looking to\u00a0de<\/i>value one of the more public appreciations for the value of PR. In 2015,\u00a0the Holmes Report also put out a study\u00a0that said 15.1% of PR professionals thought media relations will be most relevant of all PR skills in the next decade.<\/p>\n
To quote the quote that Adweek quoted, because I won\u2019t link to the damn Holmes Report again:<\/p>\n
\u201cAcross the world, however, one thing remains more or less constant. Media relations skills (15%) are not seen as particularly relevant. That should cause a measure of trepidation among the older generation of PR industry executives. Such is the nature of change.\u201d<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
What the\u00a0fuck?\u00a0<\/i>Who are the people that answered this? Are they eating paint? Or are they doing the PR industry\u2019s favourite job \u2013 making themselves feel better?<\/p>\n
The bloviating PR blogs are desperate to find new ways to make PR people, locked in the loveless marriage that is this job, feel important and\/or make up for things that are difficult that they can\u2019t do. PR is at peak pontification, trying to make up reasons why the day-to-day is important and that any problems you have are solvable in listicle form or asinine \u201clearnings.\u201d Perhaps\u00a0it\u2019s that your press release doesn\u2019t suck, it just needs visuals, or\u00a0maybe it\u2019s a conversational issue,\u00a0or maybe you just need to copy a giant brand. Click on the \u201cmedia relations\u201d section of PRDaily if you want to hurt your brain \u2013 there\u2019s one milquetoast article about \u201cmastering media relations\u201d with great tips like \u201cthink like a reporter\u201d and \u201crespond in a timely manner,\u201d followed by a bunch of irrelevant news stories and one thing about sentence construction. The same goes for\u00a0PRNewsonline\u2019s media relations section, with\u00a0the requisite generic how to get press post,\u00a0a byzantine post about integrated marketing\u00a0(reinforce the message through social media? Uh\u2026)\u00a0and a tribute to well known media relations professional\u00a0Nancy Reagan<\/i>.<\/i><\/p>\n
Most PR subjects aren\u2019t discussed in a substantive manner, because doing so would probably make it fairly obvious that a lot of PR people do a lot of bullshit, but media relations has its own weird place. It\u2019s something is the selling point of most agencies (most have some sort of \u201cwe get your brand noticed\u201d schtick on their website, and guess how that happens? It isn\u2019t through their own blog or through tweets, buddy), and a good chunk of them do it poorly by simply mail merging an entire list.<\/p>\n
Both Adam and I, two not-actually-reporters,\u00a0still get a bunch of form pitches from agencies. Real agencies that have millions of dollars a year in revenue.<\/i><\/p>\n
My theory is that PR people are fighting media relations because it\u2019s A) an actual results-driven process and B) it\u2019s difficult.<\/p>\n
They then get two choices. They can either say media relations is unimportant, or make sure that the bad habits that let you do it lazily (and shittily) are standardized, all while having a public face of giving a shit about doing it correctly.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Twitter account Smug Journo, clearly run by a sneering PR person who, in retweeting every reporter who has a legitimate complaint about a PR person, is effectively saying to PR people \u201coh they\u2019re just overreacting.\u201d The\u00a0#PRFail collection of PR people reading mean tweets about PR people\u00a0seems to be some form of complaint \u2013 comparing the horrible things said to celebrities on Twitter (that they read on Jimmy Kimmel) to the\u00a0legitimate complaints about shitty PR people.<\/i>\u00a0Comments on the agency in question were the standard of any kind of \u201cthe PR people are bad\u201d post, which means they were \u201cLol,\u201d \u201cwow, telling it how it is!\u201d and \u201chaha! I\u2019m glad I\u2019m not that PR person!\u201d\u00a0Entire articles exist to sort of say media relations is important\u00a0but let\u2019s not forget the rest of the things we do<\/i>.\u00a0<\/i>Then there\u2019re the extremely bad articles encouraging bad behavior,\u00a0such\u00a0as\u00a0any that say cold calling is something you should do\u00a0even though reporters say they hate it. When I wrote an article for Inc saying cold calling was bad, a random PR person began giving me the world\u2019s least subtle subtweets about how I was a huge idiot and cold calling, in fact, was good.<\/p>\n
\u201cUltimately it comes down to these certain PR people not understanding how to be successful in PR, so they try to cover their weakness,\u201d said Colin Jordan, Senior Manager of Corporate Communications at\u00a0Egnyte. \u201cMedia relations is still a vital aspect of building a brand, and to be a successful PR professional in today\u2019s media landscape it requires more than simply having a pulse and a Gmail account. You need to be educated in your subject matter, have a genuine passion for what you are pitching, and be knowledgeable about who you are attempting to work with. When someone tries to diminish the importance of media relations, it\u2019s simply showing me that they don\u2019t want to invest the time or energy in what it takes to be successful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet still the PRSA, the closest thing the PR industry has in my mind to the deck of 52 from Operation Iraqi Freedom, even likes to get in on the whole anti-media relations campaign. Even\u00a0in a post about media relations still being important they can\u2019t help but say content marketing is the future.<\/p>\n
They of course publish the words of PR\u2019s very own Lord of the Underworld \u2013 Richard Edelman. The multimillionaire CEO of his self-titled near-unicorn PR firm chop shop\u00a0said\u00a0\u201cDo not think that PR is [just] media relations. If you have to read PR as media relations, you\u2019re cutting off your future\u2026Give them video or other multimedia. Give them some kind of bounce \u2026 Go for big ideas. Don\u2019t wait for the ad people to have big ideas. It doesn\u2019t have to be elegant; it has to be clever.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is a really inspiring message for PR people and for sustaining the general perspective that PR is an industry where you get, say, a budget to work with, and enough importance to actually plan and execute something related to video or multimedia. It\u2019s also really inspiring to those who can\u2019t do media relations effectively, such as whoever it is at Edelman that form-pitches me every CES.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s really convenient to say that PR isn\u2019t \u201cjust\u201d media relations. It isn\u2019t \u201cjust\u201d media relations, thus making the statement that obfuscates the truth true. By saying it isn\u2019t\u00a0just<\/i>\u00a0media relations, you are inherently suggesting that media relations is some sort of old school play, that it\u2019s losing its importance, that it\u2019s simply a relic of a bygone era, like the dodo, or the unicycle, or\u00a0Edelman\u2019s climate change denial division.<\/p>\n
Man, I wonder why (to quote Richard Edelman himself)\u00a0\u201cwe operate in a world without trust\u201d?<\/p>\n
We use the phrase that something isn\u2019t \u201cjust\u201d something else to suggest that there\u2019s a deeper meaning to it, that there\u2019s complexity that is lost at first blush, when PR is almost entirely the opposite. The industry desperately WANTS you to see it as complex, as a dark art, so that when they pay you and you don\u2019t do the thing you\u2019re meant to do (say, get them media results) you can say \u201cwell you didn\u2019t get\u00a0nothing<\/i>\u00a0from the campaign.\u201d That big strategy document you got? Lasting value. A template for the future. That media messaging thing they made up? A foundation for your company\u2019s outward speech. Oh, nobody wrote about or knows about you? Well we\u00a0did all the stuff it\u2019s your fault somehow<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Perhaps it\u2019s that media relations can\u2019t be guaranteed, and relationships are hard to build. Maybe PR people are just lazy. I don\u2019t know. But thanks, I guess. Business is booming because apparently media relations isn\u2019t important.<\/p>\n
Ed Zitron is the CEO of\u00a0<\/i>EZPR<\/i>, a San Francisco and New York based public relations firm. He wrote the best-selling This Is How You Pitch and has been named one of Business Insider\u2019s top 50 PR People in technology three years running, which is why he mentioned it in the piece. His next book, Fire Your Publicist, will be out when he feels like it, also as an audiobook read by James Frain.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I got into PR in 2008, I fell into a world that had made up its own mystique so … <\/p>\n