YOUR PRESS RELEASE IS 'PANTS'...

Sometimes with my clients I come across a situation where I have to work with a PR team for another company, inhouse or outsourced.

This may be when a client is involved in a project for a third party and they want to shout about this project or relationship. I absolutely embrace and approve of that.

However there are some problems with it which can cause a difficult conversation with my own clients - the press release that the other party has come up with and have got approved their end , looks all pretty but is utter rubbish.

When and if that happens, I'm now at a stage in my business and well known to many within the UK media industry, that sending out something that's absolute garbage damages my personal reputation and brand - and can also, by association, damage the reputation of my client with the media.

The problem for my client then becomes their relationship with the other party where they have been involved. How do we square that circle?

The truth is sometimes we can't square it at all. Sometimes we have to say 'no' or we have to let them get on with it and step away...

Recently I had a trusted and long-term client in this position. The press release had to go out on a certain day so it was time dependent and it was bloody awful to say the least and I wasn't happy to send it out without a complete re-write. This other PR company (I know) wouldn't agree to me making any changes at all. It had all been approved their end and they were angry that I wanted to mess about with it.

I understand that's frustrating but I'm not going to beat about the bush. It was a dog's dinner of a story and frankly awful.

In the end, my client and I agreed that they could send it out as my client's 'section' within their terrible press release was okay but that I wouldn't send it out representing them or me.

This scenario is why I will keep doing talks in my community and in my sector - and being paid to do talks to bigger audiences about the total BS in PR.

I see it so often and I just know that the PR company which wouldn't accept that their press release was pants is probably charging that poor organisation a monthly retainer of at least ￡2,000.

I've searched for that story on the internet and have not found one place where it was used. Not one. Even in sector specific media which may be more forgiving. They haven't even had the confidence of putting it on the Wire and paying for it (as I often do for clients).

Here are a few things wrong with it:

*Embedded logos of the PR company - that's an absolute no-no. The media hates that, they want the story straight and simple with no 'fluff' and while the PR company is a middle agent in this, the story is about their client, not them.

*No sensible headline - the headline was almost a paragraph of inane drivel which didn't capture the story in a single sentence. If you do this, you've already lost the journalist.

*This story, based on data - referred to maybe five findings from that data but included no link to the wider data or survey to allow a journalist to write more and to fact check what was being said - an absolute no-no. Data has to be supported to allow the journalist to make an assessment themselves independent of your brand. Data makes great stories but it has to be backed up. This is a half-arsed attempt to do a data-led story.

*The body of the text started with a date - no introductory paragraph about the story so by the end of paragraph one you are wondering what is this all about? I doubt any journalist will have got much further than that.

*A celebrity relevant to the story was quoted and no photograph of said celebrity was provided and the celebrity was introduced as a voice almost at the end. If celebrity sells, it certainly wasn't selling this excuse of a story, so what's the point?

*When we chased for the celebrity's photograph it was portrait and less than 1mg for the image - totally unsuitable for most of the media and not doing the celebrity any favours either.

I can't reveal other things about this without revealing too much but the value of the media is such - and their audiences so vast - that spending a little time, or even some small degree of training to get these basics right can pay such dividends.

Also please, please listen out for red flags or BS promises from some PR agencies. You need to really trust your gut on this if you are new to PR. At least get some training first so that when you do outsource you know, 100 per cent, what you are getting into.

For me, I was left to draw the conclusion that the data was perhaps made up and not part of a proper survey exercise or 'grabbed' from somewhere else without being upfront about that (and that can be done but be honest about it). I was also left with the impression that this celebrity had been rather stitched up and hadn't been asked for her proper publicity images and may not even have known what a portfolio of publicity images should include. This person is a bit of an influencer so would therefore default to portrait images and may have very little knowledge of providing a more varied portfolio of images.

However let's bear in mind, I'm not the fount of all knowledge and now, a few weeks on, this 'story' might suddenly break across the national news to the delight of that PR company proving me wrong and they can then justify their retainer. Somehow though I seriously doubt it...