Is the role of the PR to waste as much of a journalist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time as possible in the relentless pursuit of profits?<\/p>\n
Before you start flaming the hell out of me, take a moment to read this entry in its entirety and hopefully you will share at least some of my sentiment.<\/p>\n
The other week the team was invited to a vendor briefing in which representatives from the vendor spoke for about an hour about how wonderful the company\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s technology and products are. Also in the meeting was the requisite PR chick, all pretty standard stuff.<\/p>\n
The interesting thing about this particular briefing was that no sooner had it ended had I received an e-mail from the PR with the most extraordinary proposition \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a questionnaire on the relevance of the meeting. I kid you not.<\/p>\n
Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a summary of the e-mail and attached questionnaire, and gedda.info\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s interpretation of the content. In the interests of human decency, the identity of all those involved will remain anonymous.<\/p>\n
Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s begin with the e-mail. PR\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s words in italics\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/b><\/p>\n
Hello Rodney<\/i><\/p>\n
I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m too lazy to send you a personal message so I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll type up one and spam it out to as many people as possible.<\/p>\n
Thanks for taking the time to meet with us yesterday. I hope you found it worthwhile.<\/i><\/p>\n
The meeting didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t waste enough of your time so I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m doing my best to waste even more. I hope my clients didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t bore you to tears.<\/p>\n
To help us deliver valuable product briefings in the future, would you mind taking a minute to complete the attached feedback form and email\/fax it back to me.<\/i><\/p>\n
To help us think in the future, please waste your on this inane survey and return it so we can bill our stupid client for something in addition to the meeting. <\/p>\n
Now for the attached questionnaire\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/b><\/p>\n
Thank you for attending the\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 briefing. We hope you found the morning informative and full of story ideas.<\/i><\/p>\n
Reading your publication or articles doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t involve billing a client so we have no idea what you write about or what your readers are interested in. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll also insult you by suggesting the material presented will contain something you may want to write about.<\/p>\n
Please indicate your response to the following questions by marking the appropriate box<\/i><\/p>\n
<\/i>Time and day of week for a briefing<\/i><\/p>\n
What are your deadlines and why did you agree to the time the meeting was held?<\/p>\n
New product presentation content<\/i><\/p>\n
I have no idea if my client\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s products are relevant to your readership.<\/p>\n
New product presentation length<\/i><\/p>\n
I failed to check for drowsiness and head nodding.<\/p>\n
Overall usefulness of the briefing<\/i><\/p>\n
What do you write about again?<\/p>\n
Overall usefulness of media kit<\/i><\/p>\n
We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re in the age of electronic information but to attempt to make more of an impression we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll waste time and paper on a media kit that will quickly end up in landfill. <\/p>\n
If that wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t bad enough, questions followed with space for written responses\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/b><\/p>\n
What aspects of the briefing did you particularly find of interest and why?<\/i><\/p>\n
What is the name of your publication, who are your readers, what topics do you write about, and what did you talk about during the meeting?<\/p>\n
What aspects of the briefing did you find not of interest and why?<\/i><\/p>\n
I forgot to note when you dozed off.<\/p>\n
For which products would like to receive further information, review samples or images? <\/i><\/p>\n
I know you will request further information when needed but decided to ask if you need any for the sake of wasting more of your time. <\/p>\n
Other comments:<\/i><\/p>\n
There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a section called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Media Relations\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/a> on https:\/\/www.gedda.info<\/a> I should read to learn how to do my job more effectively.<\/p>\n Furthermore, if even THAT wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t enough, the document concluded by prompting contact details of the journalist!<\/b><\/p>\n \nSo there you have it.\n<\/p>\n \nIs it really that easy to make money? Simply start a business specialising in asking unnecessary questions?<\/p>\n Sorry for seeming overly critical, but as I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure any PR agency worth its arse will agree, the basic rule is to respect a journalist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time. And asking a journalist for his or her contact details (which are available in every issue of our magazine \u00e2\u20ac\u201c now put online<\/a> for free) only succeeds in making a fool out of the consultant and a mockery of an organisation’s media relations efforts.<\/p>\n Oh, in case you were wondering, no I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t reply to the e-mail or survey :-).<\/p>\n Rodney<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Is the role of the PR to waste as much of a journalist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time as possible in the relentless pursuit of profits? Before you…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21","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\/21","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=21"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gedda.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gedda.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gedda.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gedda.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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