There are people within the industry who are their own worst
enemies.
These are the people who work for large, well-known communications
companies, who espouse high standards and ethics, and yet somehow manage
to smear egg on their own faces at every turn.
The worst perpetrators are to be found, ironically enough, within the PR
industry.
This industry is made up of companies whose job is to promote goodwill
and positive coverage for their clients - yet you wouldn't know it from
the day-to-day run-ins you have with PR practitioners.
A classic case in point is the PR account handler who calls up the press
and begins the conversation with the fatal line, "My client has booked
an ad in a forthcoming edition of your magazine and we would like to
arrange editorial coverage in the same issue".
Nothing gets a journalist's back up faster than this; and the PR person
has effectively destroyed any goodwill that might have existed prior to
that ill-conceived phone call.
But is the PR company necessarily to blame? Could the fault really lie
with clients who fail to brief and prepare their PR reps to deal with
situations?
Oddly enough, it is the PR companies with large media owners as their
clients which are the greatest offenders when it comes to downright
stupidity in dealing with the press.
And you would think that as media owners, they themselves would have
stringent standards and ethics when it comes to dealing with other
media, simply because they should know what is and is not
acceptable.
Yet, time and time again, MEDIA is at the receiving end of telephone
calls from PR account handlers who clearly haven't the faintest clue
either about their client, or how to do their jobs properly ... and it
reflects badly on the client, too.
