I need to get something off my chest.<\/p>\n
It relates to the PR firm\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s insatiable quest to get something for nothing. You see, if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re a journalist (already glad you aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t?) every month of so (the frequency tends to be sporadic) you will receive a phone call from a PR \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcconsultant\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 asking you to partake in a client survey.<\/p>\n
What that essentially means is that the PR company is either pitching for \u00e2\u20ac\u201c or even worse \u00e2\u20ac\u201c has just won a new client and wants to gather the perception of that company from a member of the media. My guess is that with journos being perpetually bothered by vendors they have a good idea of who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s who in the industry and what they stand for. And judging by how much a reporter knows or doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know about said vendor they hope to gather an idea of how well the company\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s communication efforts have been thus far \u00e2\u20ac\u201c lame I know, but true.<\/p>\n
I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be honest with you. Once (or perhaps twice, can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t remember), in a fit of generosity, I agreed to do a client survey and became so annoyed at the fact that I was clearly being used for absolutely no gain (for me OR the vendor) I vowed never to do another one again. Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n
I like to remain as consistent and as fair to all my PR brethren as possible and there will be times when participating in a survey is just impossible. To give an example, last year I had just landed in Melbourne for a conference and got a call on my MOBILE (stay tuned, topic of another post) by a PR pitching a client survey. Apart from nearly having to swear her off the phone, she expressed no remorse for my situation (trying to find my luggage) and made out as if it would be no trouble at all. Bullshit. So I hate to think I would shrug off one pitch only to turn around and do the next one.<\/p>\n
There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no guarantee of anonymity. They say it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s anonymous but I trust PRs less than I trust journalists \u00e2\u20ac\u201c go figure. So there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no way in Hell I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going to have my name (and possibly publication) appear in client survey material to be read by a vendor. Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s value some objectivity guys.<\/p>\n
But most importantly, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m still unclear what the purpose of a client survey is to begin with. So you get a journalist’s rapid-fire opinion of a vendor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s place in the market\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 and? Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t you think attempting to survey at least a portion of your potential CUSTOMER base might be a little more beneficial? Of course, all public perception and brand equity begins and ends with media relations, doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it<\/a>?<\/p>\n So before you pick up the phone and pitch me a client survey, go back and ask them (the vendor communications intelligentsia) what they have done to proactively build up public perception. If they can answer that then they will at least have half a clue about where to direct their future media relations efforts. If they can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t, unfortunately no survey will help anyway.<\/p>\n Rodney<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I need to get something off my chest. It relates to the PR firm\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s insatiable quest to get something for nothing. You see, if…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-relations-every-pr-should-read-this"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gedda.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gedda.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gedda.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gedda.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gedda.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.gedda.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":721,"href":"https:\/\/www.gedda.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions\/721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gedda.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gedda.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gedda.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}