Who Gives a Hit?
“They called you directly—so that is not like you did anything!”
“We better get the credit for that!”
“Man, can you believe it? They bypassed us and just called our client.”
These scenarios are ridiculous at best, but they happen all too often in PR. They are about claiming the hit as opposed to working together to stay razor-thin-focused on the strategy of a client (or boss). After experiencing the above for years, I now stand firm that this is wrong. The next person who asks me whether or not it is our hit … will simply get hit.
No longer debatable, this tug of war is over with no clear winner. Nowadays, when the self-important blogger, big-time media, local daily, or eager President of the United States actually gets what you are trying to say — no matter how she got the news — it means you win. No more tactics over strategy. PR is about everyone working together to make it work. Contests are out, like Katie Perry and Taylor Swift.
This seems obvious?
Liar.
You, like me, are still trying to hide who did what from your payee.
That is what this post is about, even with 12 quite understandable lines of preamble. I am asking for a new way to work that says everyone (me too) will play from the same rule book for the first time, starting on the page entitled, How the hell are we going to get this thing to work?!
I want to experience the calendar date when a CNN producer calls an agency because he heard something somewhere and everyone rejoices. This is not happening. All I get is, We have to say that person was on our pitch list, as if that matters.
If that is what matters, then we are mere order takers. Pushily put, I want my people and yours to practice in a PR community where we create compelling messages that get folks hopping excited … even, nay especially, the other media who see it out there.
Simply: Stop shouting from the rooftops about who did what; just get energized by the mutual work. Remember that media begets media — it is that simple.
Then there is offline versus online credit—the nonsense about who got any given blogger to report about some new press release. I hear it said that the release running on a site triggered a Google Alert or RSS-seeker and thus the hit. That is poppycock.
Then, reviving a 70s reference, what is all this fuss about bloggers handing our stories to the major media? Such logic baffles me — more AP and Christian Science Monitor stories are quoted on blogs than any dead tree columnist would take time to read.
Finally, a gripe that needs no introduction: IR versus PR. When did investor vs. media become the norm? Neither thinks the other does anything that valuable, so when an IR rep gets media to act, the PR dudes say Gee, wait a minute! That is our contact. Reads funny, right? Come on people now, everybody get together… try to love.
The client who cares only about tactical hits — or upper manager breathing down your neck for another inch-thick clip book—needs to be slapped down. Show him the value of COMMUNICATING the fiercest ever message to all constituencies, with all the support that is muster-able. During this period of shrinking media and rising tempers, let us get a little Rodney King and work for the same goal—exposure that moves needles.