Can it all be so simple?

Can it all be so simple? This was the exact thought I heard when a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) express surprise that a press release hadn’t gotten as much coverage as they’d anticipated.

There have been many times when I’ve heard the phrase (or similar), ‘there must be more people out there who are interested in this.’ I’m not wholly sure if that quote should end in an exclamation or question mark, but it’s certainly not as easy as it seems.

Life indeed would be so simple, if we could press send on a press release and the coverage came in. It doesn’t and it’s been quite interesting to reiterate some thoughts I’ve seen and heard from journalists in recent weeks that demonstrate how it works.

Firstly, I should say from the top, I don’t expect everyone to understand the process. It is our job to understand who writes what and how to ideally land something, but I think we all need a better logic to how that undertaking happens in the first place.

For example, just because we issue something under embargo (and it does make perfect sense), it doesn’t mean the coverage will flow in the next day. James Hurley, enterprise editor at The Times recently made the point that he likes at least two weeks’ lead time. Yes, there will be time and column inches for corporate results, regulatory stories, fundraisers and general news that doesn’t require a fortnight’s advance notice, but we shouldn’t think that our one story will get over the line with 24 hours’ notice.

Partly it comes down to this. I recently went for lunch with a journalist at This is Money who said emails are relentless. They said they wouldn’t be surprised if there were 100 unread emails upon the return from lunch. The outgoing editor of Sky News’s Ian King Live, and ever wise, Scott Beasley, regularly points to the weariness of people chasing him, not only by email, but landline and WhatsApp. This from last week is highly dry, but true.

The fact is that news gets lost in events (look at this week’s gas and petrol stories) but closer to home, into the mass email mailouts we send every day. Relations perhaps aren’t helped by over officiousness over quite often bland or poorly pitched news stories.

That’s not to say that this is a wasted endeavour. It’s good to see who is saying what and these ideas do get picked up (especially if it’s an interesting organisation and a friendly PR), though many tell me that everything quite comes down to the subject line.

Perhaps most interestingly was recent feedback from the Telegraph’s business editor, Chris Williams, who said some company RNS announcements are too dry. Yes, they want to report company news (be it good or bad), but the best companies are those who go out of their way to tell a story, give access to senior members of their team and say something interesting.

I can’t lie that there’s often a bit of luck or indeed misfortune. Sometimes the best laid out plans can be ruined by an event. Sometimes a story or product can be interesting, but the company isn’t quite big enough. That does frustrate me, but there’s realistically there’s little we can do.

However, I think if one wants to have a fighting chance of landing something positive, you have to think beyond what’s happening in your company.

Can it all be so simple? (As once asked by the Wu Tang Clan, thus the photo) It never is, but at least try your best to plan and you may have a fighting chance.