I enjoyed the blog post "10 reasons PR is a tough job" over at RP Daily (originally published over at PR at Sunrise).
The top 10 reasons given were:
10. Demanding clients.
9. Demanding bosses.
8. Meetings, conference calls, meetings, conference calls.
7. Time management difficulties.
6. Getting the raise you want is no easy feat.
5. New tools keep appearing.
4. Nothing is harder than securing a top-tier media interview.
3. Nothing is harder than securing an interview, regardless of outlet.
2. You’re always on-call.
1. To borrow a line from Rodney Dangerfield: Hey, we get no respect.
I really agree with #4 and #3 - people really have no idea how hard it is to get the media interested in you if you don't already have mindshare with them.
Having said that, I'd toss a couple more reasons why PR is a tough job in to mix:
Soft ROI
Organizations really have almost no way of measuring the value of PR. How much media coverage is enough? How much time should it take to generate media coverage? How much of the media coverage (or lack thereof) is the result of underpinnings in the business (is PR always the reason for coverage? Is it always to blame for lack of coverage?).
Point is, there is almost never a benchmark against which PR folks are measured. The last PR person may have done a bad job, or maybe the organization didn't support PR, who knows. Maybe you come in and do a great job, but perhaps that's tied to the business finally taking off and people showing interest due to increased product adoption.
It's very hard to measure the ROI of PR, but the good thing, and I say this from years of experience - you know it when you see it.The reason companies keep hiring PR people, despite it being very hard to measure ROI, is because they know the value when they see it.
Executives think they understand (but often don't)
Because they are often the spokesperson, executives think they understand how PR works (after all, they interact with the media regularly). Unfortunately, this is only half true. They tend to undervalue the time-consuming aspects of the job (the writing process, research process, etc.) and think that all you have to do is 'call up the media' with your 'pitch' and badda-bing, interview the next day.
I'd encourage every executive out there to spend one day and practice PR. Write a news release, write some pitches, contact some reporters, and get a sense for how that process actually unfolds. A lot of CXO's who try this (often when their company was smaller and without a PR person) quickly realize that meaningfully engaging with a reporter is no easy task, partly because it's not just about what you say, but also about what you can't say (since not everything is for public consumption).
The Buck stops with....YOU
Unlike marketing divisions that are filled with dozens or hundreds of peopel, PR departments can be as little as one person and rarely grow beyond five or six.
Which means that there is nowhere for you to hide. There is no massive department who can stand behind you and say 'They didn't mess up, we all agreed on this course of action."
PR is NOT for the faint of heart or those who want to hide in the pack. You have to have the thick skin of a lone wolf to do PR, because you've got to stand up to overwhelming forces, divisions with budgets 100 times yours, and get everyone to listen to you and take what you are saying seriously.
The only item I'd disagree with in the original top 10 list is that we get no respect. I do know where the author is coming from on this, but I don't think it's a respect thing. I think PR is more seen as a 'value add' function to a business versus a must-have (like sales and R&D). As a result it can seem like we get no respect.
But from my experience, executives have shown tremendous respect to me and shown an extremely high levels of appreciation for results I produced (more appreciation than someone would receive in say a giant marketing department, where they may do excellent work but never get acknowledgement from a CXO because they are too far down the food chain).
Don't get me wrong, there will always be bosses that don't respect PR folks, but generally when that happens you quickly find that they tend not to respect anyone. Lack of respect is simply how they roll.
Yet the vast majority of success executives I find to be highly appreciative of the work their PR people do for them (provided such PR people have a strong acumen for business logic and possess a strong work ethic).
10. Demanding clients.
9. Demanding bosses.
8. Meetings, conference calls, meetings, conference calls.
7. Time management difficulties.
6. Getting the raise you want is no easy feat.
5. New tools keep appearing.
4. Nothing is harder than securing a top-tier media interview.
3. Nothing is harder than securing an interview, regardless of outlet.
2. You’re always on-call.
1. To borrow a line from Rodney Dangerfield: Hey, we get no respect.
I really agree with #4 and #3 - people really have no idea how hard it is to get the media interested in you if you don't already have mindshare with them.
Having said that, I'd toss a couple more reasons why PR is a tough job in to mix:
Soft ROI
Organizations really have almost no way of measuring the value of PR. How much media coverage is enough? How much time should it take to generate media coverage? How much of the media coverage (or lack thereof) is the result of underpinnings in the business (is PR always the reason for coverage? Is it always to blame for lack of coverage?).
Point is, there is almost never a benchmark against which PR folks are measured. The last PR person may have done a bad job, or maybe the organization didn't support PR, who knows. Maybe you come in and do a great job, but perhaps that's tied to the business finally taking off and people showing interest due to increased product adoption.
It's very hard to measure the ROI of PR, but the good thing, and I say this from years of experience - you know it when you see it.The reason companies keep hiring PR people, despite it being very hard to measure ROI, is because they know the value when they see it.
Executives think they understand (but often don't)
Because they are often the spokesperson, executives think they understand how PR works (after all, they interact with the media regularly). Unfortunately, this is only half true. They tend to undervalue the time-consuming aspects of the job (the writing process, research process, etc.) and think that all you have to do is 'call up the media' with your 'pitch' and badda-bing, interview the next day.
I'd encourage every executive out there to spend one day and practice PR. Write a news release, write some pitches, contact some reporters, and get a sense for how that process actually unfolds. A lot of CXO's who try this (often when their company was smaller and without a PR person) quickly realize that meaningfully engaging with a reporter is no easy task, partly because it's not just about what you say, but also about what you can't say (since not everything is for public consumption).
The Buck stops with....YOU
Unlike marketing divisions that are filled with dozens or hundreds of peopel, PR departments can be as little as one person and rarely grow beyond five or six.
Which means that there is nowhere for you to hide. There is no massive department who can stand behind you and say 'They didn't mess up, we all agreed on this course of action."
PR is NOT for the faint of heart or those who want to hide in the pack. You have to have the thick skin of a lone wolf to do PR, because you've got to stand up to overwhelming forces, divisions with budgets 100 times yours, and get everyone to listen to you and take what you are saying seriously.
The only item I'd disagree with in the original top 10 list is that we get no respect. I do know where the author is coming from on this, but I don't think it's a respect thing. I think PR is more seen as a 'value add' function to a business versus a must-have (like sales and R&D). As a result it can seem like we get no respect.
But from my experience, executives have shown tremendous respect to me and shown an extremely high levels of appreciation for results I produced (more appreciation than someone would receive in say a giant marketing department, where they may do excellent work but never get acknowledgement from a CXO because they are too far down the food chain).
Don't get me wrong, there will always be bosses that don't respect PR folks, but generally when that happens you quickly find that they tend not to respect anyone. Lack of respect is simply how they roll.
Yet the vast majority of success executives I find to be highly appreciative of the work their PR people do for them (provided such PR people have a strong acumen for business logic and possess a strong work ethic).
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