Comments on: Aaaaaargh! Sometimes, it’s just PR Fail.

By: Brendan

Brendan — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 09:25:44 +0000

Ah well, just one phrase for that: “bloody journos”.

That was a joke, btw, in case anyone suffers a serious sense-of-humour failure.

By: Robert

Robert — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 21:51:31 +0000

Some years ago I brought a mission of six senior fashion editors from New York to London Fashion Week at considerable expense to the UK taxpayer.

A month later I had to take the same six editors for a very expensive lunch to listen to their complaints about how we had wasted their time flying them first class to the UK because none of the PR representatives of the British designers had bothered to follow up in the way they promised to do. Consequently they felt unable to write about any of the designers they had met in London!

By: Brendan

Brendan — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:21:09 +0000

Dead right there Gaffers. Good PR is like good design or indeed good writing, which is why I started this blog in the first place – you really don’t notice them when they’re good, because they do what they’re supposed to do. You only notice them when they get in the way. This is espesh the case with PR. You don’t notice good PR because, when it’s done well, it’s seamless and, well, unnoticeable!

By: Kerry Gaffney

Kerry Gaffney — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:17:11 +0000

This is a slight tangent from your post but PRFail was always, always going to beat PR Win. Admittedly the example you cite above is the failure of a PR person to do their job, assuming that there wasn’t some sort of reason why they didn’t want your journo mate to cover the story.

The reason it will always win is three-fold, spotting an excellent bit of PR can be a bit tricksie, especially if the result was to keep a story out of the news. On the other hand many things that are not actually down to the hand of PR are deemed a PR failure, for example the recent Facebook redesign. Finally, it’s so much easier to be dismissive of something rather than praise it.

By: Kate Hartley

Kate Hartley — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 11:21:55 +0000

Completely agree. There is some bad practice out there that needs to be stamped on (actually I like the fact that you’ve highlighted this; the more good comms people distance themselves from the rubbish, the better in my view).

By: Brendan

Brendan — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 11:06:36 +0000

Believe me, I really don’t like promoting PR Fail – that’s why I was the person who set up PR Wins as a direct response to PR Fail. The full story behind the story is that the journo emailed me and I was the one who suggested we put a bowdlerised version on my blog, to gauge reaction. I mean, there are some good points made in the anecdote.

By: Kate Hartley

Kate Hartley — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 11:03:25 +0000

That’s a good point – but ultimately we’re paid by our clients. Although obviously we need good relationships with journalists, and on that score the agency above has clearly failed! I’ve been in situations though where for whatever reason it is not in the client’s best interest to give a particular story to a particular journalist. (I know it’s a long shot – most of me is resigned to this being yet another predictable example of agency incompetance = PR Fail.)

By: Brendan

Brendan — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 10:50:26 +0000

Hi Kate,

Interesting point, but don’t PR people work for both? Isn’t that what the word ‘agency’ implies?

I think that, in this case, the PR didn’t benefit the client because the journalist didn’t get the material, right? If I were the client and I thought my PR had failed to provide something that a prominent journalist was desperate for – to splash out as a lead item on the main news channels – I’d be fairly upset, I think.

You’re right that we don’t have the whole story here however.

Btw not come across your blog before, very interesting, have subscribed.

By: Kate Hartley

Kate Hartley — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 10:44:55 +0000

I’m not in any way defending lazy PR people – and if the agency in question was supposed to send the information to this journalist, then that’s obviously A Bad Thing. But PR agencies work for their clients, not for journalists. Is it possible that they had a reason for not wanting this journalist to cover the story? Would be really interesting to know more about whether the agency actively witheld information for a reason, or whether it was simply poor media relations.