March 2006

MEDIOCRITY KILLS

Is the crafty, lateral-thinking PR in danger of being wiped out as clients favour safer options over passion and pluck

I lower the phone to another breathless recruitment agent making a plea for a bright prospect who will not fail to impress me.
"Trust me Mark, give her 10 minutes to pitch. I am sure she will impress, she is a brilliant publicist."

http://media.guardian.co.uk/marketingandpr/comment/0,,1737124,00.html

True to form, the potential recruit had as much grasp on the subtleties of publicity as the Princess of Wales had for non-ferrous metal welding.

As you will gather, in the hopeless pursuit of finding raw talent with the instinct to place a story, I am constantly disappointed. As I sink back into my chair, I contemplate the reality that the craft of the publicist is an endangered skill.

When breaking bread with prominent scribblers, I am continually told that the profession just doesn't have what it takes to deliver ink.

I am reminded of the line that Charles Clover delivered to a hapless publicist when he managed to get the journalist on the phone to inquire whether Mr C had read his press release. The retort must go down as one of the greatest reposts: "Your press release has all the complexity of Kafka but none of the narrative flow."

Public relations has many faces, more than the two it supposedly offers: from public affairs to the riches of investor relations, the labyrinth is long and twisting. Forward-thinking clients have a cornucopia of options to choose as the industry goes about picking pockets for fees. But the confidence in taking a leap into the unknown is not an option when so many examples of ill thought-out ideas turn into over-promised hype.

The industry tries to educate the uninitiated and hold up excellence, but memorable campaigns are as frequent as twitching the Hawaiian Oaaa bird on the Romney Marshes.

The gig has become a process game: to keep the client and sustain a moneymaking relationship over a long period. Large media groupings are under pressure to return profits at the expense of crystallising opinion. This, coupled with brand inertia, karaoke me to-ism and fear of fresh thinking, has disabled this once proud tradition.

Pitches constantly throw up mongrel ideas that are honeyed with marketing and sale promotion flavourings. A composite communication plan helps brand managers digest a strategy that keeps them in a job and retains an agency, but ultimately fails to change the perception of a business.

Bill Gates' much-used soundbite that he would spend his last marketing dollar on public relations is beginning to lose its impact as more and more campaigns fail to connect in terms of winning meaningful column inches.

At a dinner party recently, I met a senior marketing head of a multinational who had just awarded a huge chunk of business to a PR conglomerate. When I quizzed him on the pitch he said that they were far from the best. The ideas were ordinary but he knew the board would be happy with the company's process.

More shockingly, he said that there was an outstanding agency that pitched a breathtaking campaign, but having been burnt before, he was unwilling to pick passion. Who wants to hear whining apologies when the great ideas don't make the cut?

So if a client is happy to accept the mediocre, why is there any need for the plucky publicist? The PR industry is more comfortable mimicking the 70s, where the best-in-breed were the oleaginous client wranglers that spent their time boxing up the client in cotton wool, hypnotically keeping them in a state of oblivion of the status quo.

It is a skill that is plentiful, but the crafty lateral thinker will soon be a museum exhibit as the fast-moving media agenda moves on and the deliverables become impossible to sustain

POWER PLAY

Should PR be about selling a product at the expense of the truth?
Amid the self-congratulatory back-slapping of the 'Pubbies' - America's annual PR awards show - there was much talk of a brave new dawn.

http://media.guardian.co.uk/marketingandpr/story/0,,1738259,00.html

Richard Edelman, the biggest cheese of US PR, has seen the future and it is the blog.

Edelman's firm took in a cool $260m (£150m) last year, while the industry raked in $3.4bn in 2004 rising to an estimated $5.2bn by 2009.

According to Edelman, we - the PR fraternity - don't have to worry about journos picking apart our press releases and checking our facts any more. We can counteract negative stories in the press simply by posting the real story on a blog.

"If The Wall Street Journal goes after a client, we don't have to accept that anymore," he announced to the 1,000 PRs chowing down on truffle polenta at Manhattan's trendy Tavern on the Green.

"Let's post the documents we gave the Journal; let's show the interviews the newspaper decided not to show."

What he meant, of course, was that PRs can spin their clients' interests on a blog without any interfering journalists messing up their message by checking the validity of their claims. Especially as none of us believe what we read any more.

"PR," Edelman declared, "plays much better in a world that lacks trust." And, he might have added, pays better.

The less the public believes, goes Edelman's thinking, the better that is for his - and my - business.

Me, I'm not so sure. Maybe I'm too cynical - or maybe I'm not cynical enough - but I've never seen PR as being all about selling a product rather than telling the truth. Call me old-fashioned, but I like to think the two are not entirely incompatible.

No one has a monopoly on truth and nor should they. As we all know, the truth is relative - even in PR. And the truth is that PRs, just like the journalists who sit on the other side of that information superhighway, are obsessed not so much with The Truth as The Power. Edelman's only angry because the media, as the conduit between his message and the public, always holds the ultimate power; hence his new-found enthusiasm for the blog. But who reads blogs anyway?

Still, it was not all doom and gloom at the awards. The prize for student of the year went to Tara Burnham, 21, whose winning pitch for a cruise line involved putting a positive spin on a (fictional) story about a ship that hits a 60ft whale.

"I said we should be as straightforward as possible," she declared, controversially, "because whatever we hide is going to get us in the future. People would trust us more in the future if we told the truth."

Whether Mr Edelman offered her a post upon graduation was unreported but I'd rather take Ms Burnham's youthful idealism over his world-weary cynicism. In fact, if anyone knows her number, put her in touch. We might have a job going.

ORGAN GRINDER

The Sons of Barnum by Guardian Unlimited / Stuntwatch 12:00am

If you're wondering where Mark Borkowski and his Stuntwatch have been in recent weeks, then here is the explanation

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/organgrinder/2006/03/the_sons_of_barnum.html