| A few years ago I was working in public relations for a huge corporation. My boss had been in PR for years and had also worked years as an editor at the Associated Press. He knew what news was -- and wasn’t.
Unfortunately, he had the bad habit of honestly letting folks within the company know what was newsworthy and what wasn’t when it came to issuing press releases. This meant that sometimes when a young marketing guru came up with the latest great program, my boss would actually let him know it was simply not newsworthy, and that we wouldn’t send out a release on it.
My boss knew what he could sell to the media. If it was something that would not have interested him at the AP, no release was going out. Of course, rather than the corporation letting the media expert make media decisions, my boss soon developed the reputation that he was not a “team player.” In a corporation, that is the kiss of death. And it was for him.
His replacement was hell-bent to show the executive team that we were “team” players. That meant no matter how stupid or non-newsworthy an item was, we were going to issue a news release. And we did.
Whereas during the previous year with the former AP editor we sent out 46 news releases, our new policy resulted in 250! We virtually issued a news release every working day of the week.
Can you imagine how that bar chart looked to our executives with an increase of 204 releases from the previous year? They were orgasmic. It was high-five time!
Of course, those of us who regularly dealt with the media realized this was simply a smoke and mirrors tactic. Although we sent out more than five times as many releases, the increase in actual media coverage was almost negligible. A reporter once called me saying, “I have five unopened news releases from you on my desk. Are any of them worth a damn?” I discreetly told him “no.”
What had happened was instead of the media looking at our releases as possible news items they could actually use, they felt all we were doing was causing some trees to be unduly cut down. Our credibility was shot.
Over time, we gradually stopped sending out releases every time someone sneezed at the company, and eventually rebuilt some media credibility. It was a long and sometimes painful process to undo the news release blitzkrieg.
The lesson I learned from all this is that sometime us folks in PR need to work within an organization and sometimes do things we aren’t 100% sure will work. And, to tell the truth, although I have been in media relations for more than 20 years, I sometimes am amazed at how the media will jump on a news release that I really felt had little or no media value.
In public relations we need to be flexible. We can be honest with the folks we deal with and let them know what we think will get coverage and what won’t, but this is not an exact science. And, yes, occasionally issuing a release we personally feel is not terribly viable might be the best thing to do for all involved.
Once a PR Department loses credibility within an organization it is hard to regain. It is important to be recognized as “team players” if it helps us achieve our overall communications goals.
John Landsberg owns Bottom Line Communications, a media relations & media training firm based in Leawood, Kansas. The firm created the famous “16 Sure-Fire Ways to Impress the News Media” poster which can also be found on its Web site at www.bottomlinecom.com.
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