CEOs: Why you are always disappointed with PR

“Let’s be honest here you hate paying the invoice”

￡8000 a month and you still don’t appear in a double page feature in the Financial Times, what are we paying this for. You told your CMO you were happy to sign off the budget but wanted 3 articles a month.? Another PR agency under delivering.

You feel you are paying and getting nothing, your competitor seems to crop up all the time. You wonder which agency they use, is their marketing team better than yours.

We just launched our new product, you signed off a press release which, by the way, you had to make a load of amends to and not one news channel has written about it or requested an interview.

I’m Patrick Muir. In 30 years of marketing experience as a CMO and consultant , these scenarios come up over and over again and I have had the same conversation with CEOs.

So, I thought I would write this, what your CMO isn’t telling you about PR.

So, I will try and explain. You can trust me. I am not selling anything.

So why are you disappointed?

Firstly, you have the wrong expectations.

No agency can guarantee you coverage. You will have to do a lot or work yourselves to get any degree of success. The right agency will guide you and help you understand how the ‘game’ works and ensure you are set up to succeed.

Secondly you may have some internal thoughts on a cost to impact type of equation. Some things in marketing can and should be measured to the nth level of detail. PRThis is not one of them. You either want to play in this arena or you don’t. If not, that is fine, you will just have to ignore what your competitors are up to. If you are going to play you have to commit over a longer period of time and do the sustained groundwork before you regularly secure coverage.

So let’s talk about News.

The first question I put to CEOs is ‘who decides what is news’

In short, every company and boss thinks what they do is super important after all its why they come into work every day.

The truth is we don’t decide what news is, the publisher does. More specifically it’s the person who has the final say on editorial matters. And it’s not their job to drink your Kool-Aid.

So even if you have a conversation with a journalist about your piece of news and they say lovely positive things about it, they then have to talk with their editor and it is their job to decide whether it runs.

?So, assuming you want to play let’s start with the first question.

What do you need PR for?

?There are two reasons

1.???? Crisis or reputational management

2.???? Growing your awareness share of voice, brand awareness or salience (marketing speak for opinion) in your existing/new market.

?

You need to be clear on which is the key task as they require very different agencies, approaches, relationships.

1.???? Crisis or reputational management.

Unless you are doing lots of questionable things often, or run a business where a failure in your operations could seriously inconvenience, or even harm the public, this is not an everyday need. You may choose to have an agency on standby (small retainer, occasional meetings to keep them up to speed, get your crisis response processes in place). Or you can do some of this internally and have a roster of agencies you may call on should an incident arise.

?

2.???? Growing your awareness

It is quite common for people to just think they need a PR agency to launch a product. This is just the start of where things can go wrong. What you actually want is to make an impact, improve how people think about your brand, so that when you launch that product they know it is from a company worth paying attention to. This is only done through ?doing positive things that show up positively consistently in your target audience’s news consumption -, launching a product is part of what we refer to as your newsflow.

?Put simply your poor PR agency cannot do anything for you without newsflow.

But that is why we pay them I hear you cry.?

No, it isn’t.

?So what then is newsflow

Any good PR relationship should start with them challenging you on your newsflow. The product launches, service enhancements, deals that you have in your plan. They should then challenge whether these are sufficiently interesting to get any traction.

A friend who runs a PR agency calls this the “so what” test. It’s the question they get asked by journalists when they have to sell-in a story, so if your supposed story can’t get past “so what”, then it’s probably not news.

Another friend and ex- money editor of a broadsheet left her role with over 20,000 unread emails in her inbox. The majority of these were press releases sent by companies or over the newswire of unremarkable product launches that didn’t get past the headline being interesting enough to open.

But hang on my competitor seems to be getting into all sorts of articles and I don’t think they are as interesting as we are.

So, you want to play a little catch up.

In truth your competitor has probably invested a significant amount of time in building their relationships with commentators and journalists. This isn’t buying them lunch. Almost every journalist could spend every waking hour being bought lunch/ coffee/ tickets to something. This isn’t the currency these relationships are built on.

?Their currency remember is news and being able to make their editors happy. They are the same as you. They want to get on.

Your competitor and their team maybe available 24/7 to provide relevant insight, quotes, opinion to help develop a story and move it along. They may have done the legwork in sourcing and preparing case studies, making interviewees available, invested in photography and video content. They may create news through their quarterly research they make available, not just as data but as a ready-made story.

In short, help the journalist do a great job and the door creaks open just a little.

?"But I did all of this and their article they wrote about us was not as positive as I wanted."

?OK, this is another “understanding how journalism works” points. PR is not advertising – it has to be earned. You can’t control what a journalist writes about you, but you can control the quality of the news you are offering them and the robustness of the messages you are communicating.

Most writers pride themselves on accuracy and impartiality so they want to present a balanced view. So they will write about your fantastic deal or new feature but then will make a point of ensuring they also highlight any risks or downsides. They may, shock horror, even mention one of your competitors in a positive way. You should expect this and as long as it is accurate then it’s still a win.

?The last question is ‘where do you need to show up’

?CEO’s get obsessed with FT, Forbes, Bloomberg, The Times etc but for many the key may be bloggers, influencers, online trades etc. So, in short don’t let your ego or thoughts of bragging rights influence your objectives. This is about effectiveness and nothing else – getting the right story in front of the right audience in a publication that they read.

Summary

Decide if you are serious about PR and why.

If you are going to play, commit to it and play for the medium term, there are no quick wins.

Find an agency that is right for you and knows your subject – if they’re promising you the Today Programme and Wired in week one, then they are probably blowing smoke.

Establish sensible expectations built on growing your relationships and footprint with your target media.

Understand your audience and build newsflow into your annual strategic planning thinking. One1 big announcement per quarter is ideal.

Don’t give into vanity metrics. The right mention, in the right place, to drive the right outcome.