PRos in Training

Yikes! How does she really feel? *grin*. I’ll share this with my students. And here’s a link to a short presentation my Georgia Southern U students put together on 10 things Journalists Hate About PR Practitioners: http://publicrelationsmatters.wordpress.com/2008/04/04/top-tens/ I think they could add a few more after they read your guest post.

Shy, Missy is not. The thing that got me about her comments is that this seems like SUCH basic stuff. We’re not talking about complicated concepts. This is just basic customer service stuff.

Your students’ “top 10″ list was great.

Just playing devils advocate here… and this isn’t necessarily what I believe, but for the sake of balance…

Maybe the defence industry PR people are treading very carefully, it must be an incredibly difficult industry to manage a reputation in, so if you don’t have the confidence (or faith in your product) to push things out to journalists, then you probably would just keep quiet.

However, like the posters before me, they are simply not abiding to the basic principles of their job.

Maybe Smith & Wesson should hire a brave company that believes in their product and ethos, rather than one that (appears) to shy away from it all.

Sorry if this appears a little of kilter.

I hope that Missy’s email (and my post here) shows all of Kelli’s students that even when you graduate from the Journalism School, your connection to the “PR network” is pretty much instilled in you forever (ok, maybe not forever, but at least for a while after graduation). Missy and I had many PR classes together, so I understand how backwards her world is feeling right now. Note: I would advise you all to take value in your great education at the U of O. I currently work in a position that most people would not consider PR related, but I find myself using what I learned in the J-school everyday. In fact, in the last 6 month I have had the honor of being able to assist a well known PR firm president. Even he admitted to me that he has the “young ones” work on the digital part on many print campaigns, as well as has asked the employees for press release ideas. Was this what I was taught? To pass the work on to other people? To ask people for press release ideas? No. While for Missy, it seems really screwed up, it demonstrates how good the education is at the U of O, and how she knows the right way to do task, as well as the way to not do them. Knowing this will help you tremendously!

There are many different ways to be paid for a service you provide. You can be paid on a time-scale, a set price, commission, the quality of the job done, or a mixture of these. Many industries rely on a set price and also how well you did your job. However the public relations industry has lacked behind in changing while many of the other industries are changing. In a recent study by the Council of Public Relations Firms they discovered that less than one percent of agencies in the United States are paid by the quality of a job they did. The obvious problem with this is that public relations agencies are paid the same for failing their objectives as they are for accomplishing their objectives. However, public relation professionals have recently started looking at the pay for performance model. The problems with paying based solely on the success are some projects can be doomed from the start and be a huge failure even if the public relations team did an amazing job on there part. This could come about due to a bad product design or poor execution. Andy Fletcher, chief of Fletcher-Martin, an ad producing firm out of Atlanta, Georgia suggested a new way of charging companies in a story in the April 8th, 2008 edition of Adweek. His article was written for the advertising industry but can cross over to the public relations industry rather easily. He suggested that agencies charged a set fee for a program strategy. He then suggested that agencies get paid on the results that come about from the campaign. With this strategy the agencies will not get entirely punished too much for misfortune. This will also hold the agency responsible to do the best job they can do to make the largest profit they can. To measure success they would need to count appearances of your issue or product, measure and sum column inches and amounts of airtime about your product or issue, and then begin showing the effects of your work to the client.

T, Thanks for your comment. Measurement in media relations is a tough subject for sure. I have to disagree wholeheartedly with the pay-for-play model, however. An agency being paid on whether or not it receives coverage raises more issues than it solves.

Many times in a pay for performance arrangement, the agency goes for quantity, rather than quality which is a POOR measure of success – but when it’s getting paid per clip, that’s the incentive. This can result in shady practices, PR Spam and just a “telemarketing” approach to public relations, which ultimately is a disservice to the client.

In media relations, the variables for earning coverage are significant. It’s not, like advertising, a matter of choosing the right outlet, designing the right creative and paying the right fee.

Anyway, your comment is some good food for thought – I’m just not with you in terms of how we get to a better place.