Yes, message is a HUGE component to good PR. If you are spending money on PR you are likely spending that money to make people aware of your product / activities. As such, messaging is absolutely critical. Yet, that is by no means all there is to PR.
A clear example of this is a recent article written by CNN Money - Even RIM doesn't want their Playbook tablet. In this article the writer articulates how he could not return the playbook to RIM and equated the tablet to herpes (as in something that just won't go away).
So what happened here? Simple. This is the relationship management side of PR.
In my career I can't count the number of times where something negative didn't appear in the press as a result of the way in which I serviced reporters. On the flip side, many of the positive things were a result of how I serviced reporters also (not just as a result of messaging alone).
I can't over emphasize how important the relationship management side of the job is. When a reporter calls me, they usually get me on the phone, but in the rare instance where they leave a message, returning their call is priority number one to me.
Many times in my career I've had a meeting booked with the CEO only to have a reporter contact me right before the meeting with a request. What did I do? Believe it or not, I would cancel my meeting with the CEO and jump right on the inbound media request.
For those of you who work in the corporate world you know that time with the CEO is rare and cancelling a meeting with the CEO is almost unheard of. Yet, I've never had a negative experience in doing so as most CEO's actually appreciate that you are putting returns to the business ahead of your face time with them.
My point being that if responding and managing relationships with reporters is second or third priority on your list, bad things can happen.
In RIM's case, for whatever the reason, they clearly did not service the reporter well. It could be because their PR staff was overloaded. It could also be that the reporter, because he had not given the playbook a good review, simply was pushed to the bottom of the queue in terms of being given priority and attention focused on reporters that were wriing (or about to write) positive reviews.
This is a huge mistake a lot of PR people make, treating different reporters differently. Big big mistake. In fact, I've always spent more time on the reporters who were negative on the company I was working for. To me that's where you can make an impact, converting those that are negative on your company into believers. But you can't do it when you ignore them (and oddly enough it's much more common than you'd think).
I think some PR people think if they simply ignore certain reporters that they will go away. That rarely happens. More often than not, at some point down the line, such reporter takes a pot shot at your company. While remaining factual they emphasize negative facts as a way of giving you a nice slap to the face for the way they were treated.
Likewise, I've delt with reporters who I knew where going to write something negative about the company I was working for (perhaps because they truly felt that way, or perhaps they had a bad run in with an executive at some point), yet by the time I was done servicing them, while they may not have been writing positive things, they weren't writing negative things either.
When a reporter is serviced well, when they appreciate you busting your ass for them, they come to associate your efforts with your company. In light of that they find it harder to slam the company when their personal experience with the company (ie. YOU) was positive.
It's unfortunately that RIM took the hit it took in this reporter's comments. It's good to see the situation was ultimately resolved. Apparently it resulted from a breakdown in communication, whatever that means. Even if RIM was not receiving the reporters emails, it's still the PR person's job to be following up with folks they've sent the tablet to!
Either way, PR folks need to remember that the job is not just about creating messages. It's also about relationship management (and many other things as well). This is why it's hard to find really good PR people, because very few excel in all the areas that encompass PR, and as you can see here, you can have a good product, good messaging, good collateral, market interest and things can still blow up in your face if you fail at relationship management.
A clear example of this is a recent article written by CNN Money - Even RIM doesn't want their Playbook tablet. In this article the writer articulates how he could not return the playbook to RIM and equated the tablet to herpes (as in something that just won't go away).
So what happened here? Simple. This is the relationship management side of PR.
In my career I can't count the number of times where something negative didn't appear in the press as a result of the way in which I serviced reporters. On the flip side, many of the positive things were a result of how I serviced reporters also (not just as a result of messaging alone).
I can't over emphasize how important the relationship management side of the job is. When a reporter calls me, they usually get me on the phone, but in the rare instance where they leave a message, returning their call is priority number one to me.
Many times in my career I've had a meeting booked with the CEO only to have a reporter contact me right before the meeting with a request. What did I do? Believe it or not, I would cancel my meeting with the CEO and jump right on the inbound media request.
For those of you who work in the corporate world you know that time with the CEO is rare and cancelling a meeting with the CEO is almost unheard of. Yet, I've never had a negative experience in doing so as most CEO's actually appreciate that you are putting returns to the business ahead of your face time with them.
My point being that if responding and managing relationships with reporters is second or third priority on your list, bad things can happen.
In RIM's case, for whatever the reason, they clearly did not service the reporter well. It could be because their PR staff was overloaded. It could also be that the reporter, because he had not given the playbook a good review, simply was pushed to the bottom of the queue in terms of being given priority and attention focused on reporters that were wriing (or about to write) positive reviews.
This is a huge mistake a lot of PR people make, treating different reporters differently. Big big mistake. In fact, I've always spent more time on the reporters who were negative on the company I was working for. To me that's where you can make an impact, converting those that are negative on your company into believers. But you can't do it when you ignore them (and oddly enough it's much more common than you'd think).
I think some PR people think if they simply ignore certain reporters that they will go away. That rarely happens. More often than not, at some point down the line, such reporter takes a pot shot at your company. While remaining factual they emphasize negative facts as a way of giving you a nice slap to the face for the way they were treated.
Likewise, I've delt with reporters who I knew where going to write something negative about the company I was working for (perhaps because they truly felt that way, or perhaps they had a bad run in with an executive at some point), yet by the time I was done servicing them, while they may not have been writing positive things, they weren't writing negative things either.
When a reporter is serviced well, when they appreciate you busting your ass for them, they come to associate your efforts with your company. In light of that they find it harder to slam the company when their personal experience with the company (ie. YOU) was positive.
It's unfortunately that RIM took the hit it took in this reporter's comments. It's good to see the situation was ultimately resolved. Apparently it resulted from a breakdown in communication, whatever that means. Even if RIM was not receiving the reporters emails, it's still the PR person's job to be following up with folks they've sent the tablet to!
Either way, PR folks need to remember that the job is not just about creating messages. It's also about relationship management (and many other things as well). This is why it's hard to find really good PR people, because very few excel in all the areas that encompass PR, and as you can see here, you can have a good product, good messaging, good collateral, market interest and things can still blow up in your face if you fail at relationship management.
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