Fiction: It’s all about relationships – Take 2

• December 17, 2007

By Francis Moran

Francis’s Favourite PR Fictions started out as a presentation I used to give to technology company executives who always reacted strongly, and, surprisingly, usually positively, to the subtitle of the presentation, “Everything I know that’s wrong about PR I learned from technology company executives.” This fiction, that successful public relations relies mainly on the existing relationships I might have with the media and analysts my client needs to reach, has always been top of the list because, as I wrote in a previous post, it continues to persist despite ample everyday evidence to the contrary.

I am moved to come back to it today because belief in this fiction leads to the extraordinary comment I heard a few months ago from a highly paid marketing consultant and author who said she had to hire a new PR agency every 90 days because that’s how long it took each agency to exhaust its contacts. She was openly skeptical of my contention that a good PR agency was worth much more than just its contacts, and should be able to pitch her story anywhere it deserved to be covered. She couldn’t see how her own approach to agency selection was guaranteeing the lousy results she had come to expect. However, I wrote it off at the time as just a more extreme outcome of this favourite fiction of mine.

Then I was gobsmacked to read more recently that this idea that PR agencies must be replaced every three months or so enjoyed a wider currency, and even more astonished to read it in a blog post by respected social media commentator and publisher, Jeff Pulver. While I can easily endorse much of what Pulver wrote about his interactions with public relations agencies, especially his demand that they state up front what they are going to achieve in return for a client’s investment, I am in profound disagreement with his comment, “Most PR firms are good for one time thru (sic) their rolodex which translates into a 60-90 day shelf life.”

Now, Pulver is a success, and I assume he got there because, among other evident talents, he is a professional. I state this caveat not to brown nose but because I’m about to hoist him on his own petard and I’m hoping he’s professional enough that it doesn’t come back to bite me.

Here’s what I mean.

A little over a year ago, we were retained by a new client whose voice application technology meant that Pulver’s VON Magazine and VON trade shows were critical targets for our efforts. This was new space for us, however, and, as with many new clients, we did not have existing relationships with the journalists we would be targeting, including those at VON. While we work very hard to establish effective working relationships with our key media targets, having them is not a prerequisite, and that’s what makes this “It’s all about relationships” such a fiction for us. This new client was no different.

Starting with our very first pitch and continuing over the past 14 months, we have engaged successfully with four or five people within VON, from the editor in chief to the keeper of the briefing schedule for VON reporters attending the organization’s trade shows. Armed with no rolodex entry, just our client’s good and deserving story, our own thorough and hardworking approach and, of course, VON’s interest in what we were pitching, we have generated articles in the magazine, news briefs and other coverage on the web site and briefings at trade shows.

And the results continue, long past the three-month mark.

All in all, it has been an excellent, mutually beneficial interaction, exactly how things should be between flacks and hacks.

Bottom line, Jeff, is that even within your own organization your belief that PR agencies are only as good as their rolodexes, and then only for a few scant months, is being proven a fiction. I do hope this doesn’t mean we can’t continue to work together…