Doing PR right: a technology journalist’s view – part 2

CONTACTING JOURNALISTS

However, a large number of PRs are very annoying. For instance, they send me a press release asking me to get in touch if I’m interested and want more information. I’m not interested and don’t want any more information, so I don’t get in touch, so what do they do? They ring me up, as I didn’t ring them up to say I wasn’t interested.

Now, to be fair, the above doesn’t happen to me too often these days, as I currently work for more specialist magazines and websites, but when I worked for Computer Weekly and ComputerWorldUK, my mobile would go off regularly asking whether I was interested in a press release recently sent to me, often that same day, or even just an hour ago.

Whoever a PR is calling, they should bear in mind where a journalist could be located when they ring, notwithstanding the fact they may well be very busy. Many journalists now rely on their mobiles for their own practical reasons – I’ve not used a desk phone for about 15 years. So, when you ring about your press release I may be in Las Vegas, San Francisco or San Jose sleeping off my free wine and food on a press trip, when your office hours in Blighty are eight hours ahead. This isn’t good PR.

Email is good. I like email. Some journalists get offended about receiving too many emails, but I don’t. If you want to ask me via email whether I am interested in a previous announcement, feel free to do so – I’ll either respond politely or politely ignore it.

EVENTS

The same goes for press invites for events. If I want to go and get on the list, rest assured I will email you back. You emailed me, I will email you back if I’m interested. The feeding frenzy seems to know no bounds however when it comes to big events like Mobile World Congress and Infosecurity Europe. The amount of PRs who see such events as an opportunity to hound journalists with repeated phone calls or emails about whether they are attending is immeasurable.

Consider this. 99% of technology journalists across Europe, and increasingly North America, will not attend a foreign event unless they are flown out there and put up in a hotel with other modest sundry expenses also covered. So, if you want a journalist to attend your press conference or stand at a trade show, fly them there.

In the UK, you may also assume that a London-centric PR industry is serving a mainly London-based technology media. Wrong. Because of the price of housing in London [or a weak liver from attending too many press events] many UK journalists now live in places like Brighton or even further afield like Bath, Cornwall, Dorset or Yorkshire, and even other countries like Portugal, Germany and France.

So, don’t expect them all to turn up to a London breakfast event or boozer or hip venue you’ve chosen for 6pm to 10pm if it’s a “party”, unless they are already in the smoke for other reasons. If there is a day event in London, offer to book them a train ticket and give them lunch if required, you’ll be surprised how this can sweeten the pill.

“EXCLUSIVES”

In technology journalism there is often something called an “exclusive”, but it’s really just a press release or a case study given out to either a favoured journalist or basically a journalist who plays the PR game.

I don’t play the PR game, although some do, desperate to get something different on their list of online stories. This makes their news page slightly different from the other few thousand news pages around the world that given day. This is before many of the other few thousand cut and paste your story for themselves, adding a bit of their own context and background along the way (if they can be bothered).

Apart from getting a few more hits for a couple of hours on your site, what’s the point when it’s someone else’s turn tomorrow? When a PR contacts me about getting an “exclusive” on the understanding I will definitely run it, I simply tell them I’m happy to get it when everyone else does.

The same goes for “embargoed” stories. Would I like the story a couple of days in advance on the understanding I won’t run it until the given day when they’re ready to announce it? Technology journalists are literally drowning in stories to choose from, this process is not needed when it comes to making genuinely interesting announcements. 

I am not going to spend time reading and preparing an embargoed story that cannot appear until anything between two, seven or more days in the future. For me, embargoed stories are just a marketing technique, but yes, as with exclusives, not everyone sees it that way on my side of the fence.

BRIEFINGS

Technology vendors are obsessed with “briefings”. They are normally linked to an announcement (a press release) and are designed to either make something more exciting than it really is, or a way of vendors making executives available to the press at a time that is convenient for them rather than for journalists.

A call or email comes through inviting me to meet an executive in London I have not heard of before, for a briefing on something I have not heard of before either. First, I don’t live in London, in fact I live almost 200 miles away, or two hours by train however way you want to envisage the pain going through my head at this point.

Second, where do you think I am going to go with this briefing, based on the wise words of this vice president no one has heard of before? Now, don’t get me wrong, if someone offers me a meet with a CEO of a leading global company which everyone has heard of, I’ll book my own train ticket (and claim it back from you afterwards). As what they say will be of interest to people that can pay me for writing what they say.

That is not really the case for most briefings that are offered out to us hacks though? I may be a freelance now, but even when I was staff working in Surrey, I would rarely venture into central London for a briefing, they would have to come to me, with the three-course faux Italian on them dulling the pain.

Third. And then we have the “phone briefing” instead, if I don’t want to travel 200 miles and back to get it. Well, I really want to use 30 minutes of my life talking to someone on the phone I don’t know, talking about something I can’t make any money out of, don’t I?

A good PR will obviously be able to target such briefings at the right people with the right executive in the right location. But looking at the briefing invites I get, I really do wonder how anyone can turn some of these “opportunities” into either money if they’re a freelance, or a worthwhile story in return for the time spent if they’re staff. Although, amazingly, a good lunch with excellent wine can sometimes generate very good news angles for some.

These are just a few pointers to how I see my world of almost 30 years, here’s to the next 15 or so!