Is there no end to the dirty tricks marketing wannabes will pull to try and bolster their company\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s image via media relations?<\/p>\n
What am I on about? Well, here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the tale\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n
Recently, I was invited to lunch by a marketing \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcfriend\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 who had recently started a new job. We had met when the person was at a previous role (the IT industry is sooo small I say there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s half a degree of separation between people but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the topic of another blog) and both agreed it would be good to catch up to.<\/p>\n
Yeah right!<\/p>\n
I really am good natured you know. Yes, I actually treat people as PEOPLE and not as something that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just there to be used for my own benefit. Na\u00c3\u00afve ain\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t I!<\/p>\n
So I take time out of my busy (yes) day to go and have \u00e2\u20ac\u02dclunch\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 with this person and upon arrival I get notified of a press briefing. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s right, with absolutely NO PRIOR COMMUNICATION I get ushered into a boardroom and introduced to a company exec. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not an issue at all, those who know me will tell you I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m happy to meet with anyone in the industry. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not an issue. The issue was, in this particular case, that I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t told that I was going to be given the run-down on this vendor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s offerings at all.<\/p>\n
So there I was listening to this exec babble on for OVER ONE HOUR about how good the company\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wares are and blah, blah, blah\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n
Obviously these people had absolutely no idea what long-term media relations is about and just snatched an opportunity. What am I supposed to do in that situation? Jump up and down and say I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t told (warned) that I was going to be brainwashed for an hour before \u00e2\u20ac\u02dclunch\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and storm out? Or just put up with that because I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m well mannered? Should I end up a burnt bitch?<\/p>\n
I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m too polite for my own good.<\/p>\n
The lesson in media relations is obvious. If you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want a journalist to think that you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re a bunch of morons who have absolutely nothing to offer the media but vendor guff, at least be honest with them. Of course, that was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153only a 10 minute briefing\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (bullshit) and the fact that it went on for so long was unexpected. Since I could see they had no idea then no, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not a burnt bitch and look forward to dealing with them in the future \u00e2\u20ac\u201c even though I probably should run a mile.<\/p>\n
So much for me thinking that I will ever be treated like a \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcreal\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 person\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 Ah well\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n
Rodney<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Is there no end to the dirty tricks marketing wannabes will pull to try and bolster their company\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s image via media relations? What am…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,22,23,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daytoday","category-marketing","category-media-relations-every-pr-should-read-this","category-the-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gedda.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34","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=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.gedda.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":705,"href":"https:\/\/www.gedda.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions\/705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gedda.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gedda.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gedda.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}