PR Spam « 72 Point Blog

29th Jan

PR Spam

The PR spam row has seen a heated debate between journalists and the PR industry about the etiquette of issuing press releases.

After various bloggers named and shamed the PR people who have ‘spammed' them, a campaign has now been launched to try and stop the inboxes of hacks and bloggers being flooded with a PR's ‘breaking news'.

As someone who has worked as a newspaper journalist and a PR account manager, I have actually quite enjoyed keeping up with the argument, especially as I can see both sides.

While working as a hack, I was on the receiving end of the PR spam, and I'll admit that a lot of the releases were deleted almost immediately.

This wasn't because I was fed-up of being inundated with releases though, but because the majority were irrelevant to the publication I was writing for, or the story was so well hidden in branding and corporate information, it could have given a Where's Wally book a run for its money.

Now, working on the other side of the fence, I understand that the people sending the releases have clients to answer to and also managers who expect things to be done a certain way.

But the PR industry doesn't help itself.

The majority of press releases are very heavily branded, with mentions of a product in the first line of the release, or even the headline.

On top of that, the actual story is often buried in the last few lines of the release, or worse, in the Notes to Editors.

PR professionals could make the lives of journalists so much simpler, just by making sure the story was clear and one that would realistically be interesting to the readership.

Instead of increasing their workload by sending irrelevant releases where the story is buried, why not send them copy in their house style that needs the minimum amount of work doing to it?

I'm pretty sure that if you made a journalist's day slightly easier, it would be a fast-track pathway straight into their good books.

Most of these things are just common sense, but many PR people do the complete opposite, therefore making life difficult for both them and the journalist, and earning the entire PR industry a bad reputation in the process.

* Read the papers

Whether it's online or in print, everyone in PR should read the papers daily, especially the publications they usually target. If this is done, then you should be fully aware what style they write in and what stories they are likely to cover. So why not send releases around those types of stories, and written in their style? It is also extremely unlikely a brand or product will be mentioned within the first few lines of a story, which is clear to see if you read the papers. So why insist on mentioning the brand several times before the end of the first line in the press release? Doing this won't persuade a journalist to include the branding. In fact it will probably just have the opposite effect.

* Don't pester journalists with follow-up phone calls

A big gripe among journalists seems to be follow-up phone calls from PRs. Every time you send someone a letter, would you phone them to check they received it? It's the same principal with press releases. If a release is written in the style of the paper, with the story at the top of the release, not drowning in branding AND is relevant to the publication, the journalist will choose whether or not they want to use it, and it should be left at that.

* Avoid deadlines

Phoning on deadline is another massive mistake PR people can make. Deadlines on a news desk are usually stressful affairs, especially if there is a late-breaking story and they are rushing around to get it done. So phoning to check they received a press release, especially if it is irrelevant to them or has a story hidden in the twentieth line, is only going to add to this stress and reduce the chances of anyone actually paying attention to it.

As much as all journalists - and probably a few PR people - would hate to admit it, both parties need the other just as much to get their job done.

Almost every journalist has experienced the dreaded call from a news editor or sub, minutes before deadline, announcing a big wide hole on one of the pages.

And I'm sure almost every journalist has turned to the pile of press releases they had originally cast aside in the hope they will find that gem to get them out of their last-minute panic.

But without journalists' help, the PR industry would struggle to get the coverage their clients are demanding.

So hopefully, with a bit more understanding and respect from the newspaper journalists, and a bit of common sense from the PR industry, both sides might actually be able to work together without all the finger-pointing.

Written by Gemma Francis