05 June 2012
PR tip 4
Several of you, to my knowledge, are making a classic mistake. You're hiring a big-name agency because it's a big name, and perhaps you think both that prestige will rebound upon you and that you'll be getting top-end advice and assistance from a company with a global track record of success.
But you should begin by asking yourself for whom these agencies have been successful. And whether the clients for whom they've been successful are relevantly similar to yourselves.
The answer will usually be 'no', and the major dissimilarity between yourselves and the clients that so impress you, and amongst whose powerful and illustrious names you think it would be good to be listed, is that they have lots of money, and you don't. So long as they remain amongst the agency's clients, these big-spending corporate giants are going to claim most of its attention. You're a minnow in a pool of sharks, and it's the junior staff for you.
What you want to be is the largest goldfish in a far smaller pool. You don't want a global name with high overheads and high hourly rates. You're getting a great deal less for your money than if you hire a small operation for whom you are the largest client, and for whom you are providing a significant proportion of the its total revenue: preferably the majority of it. You'll pay less for its services. You'll have the full attention of the company's principals, and they will do everything they possibly can to keep you happy.
They'll keep me happy, too. I'll get prompt and helpful replies to email queries. I'll get to talk with people who have actually taken the time to get to know your destination and its tourism products well. They'll help me develop story ideas, and what they don't know, they'll research.
With the big boys I'm often lucky if I get a reply within a week. Sometimes I'm lucky if I get one at all. You might have thought that replying to journalists' queries, especially on such innocuous and non-controversial subjects as the communication of positive messages about a holiday destination, would have had absolute priority. If it does, I'd love to know what comes second.
There's one destination I've been to on several occasions, originally represented in my part of the world by a one-person company who could not conceivably have been more efficient and helpful. Once she'd thoroughly sounded out my bona fides, determined I wrote for outlets she wanted to reach on that destination's behalf, she researched every story idea I had and filled it out with worked examples, suggested several stories to me related to angles the destination wanted to push, but was responsive to what I thought I could run and what didn't interest me.
After a few years of successful cooperation, the country decided to take things in-house, and sent out a civil servant instead, who quite possibly had far too much on her plate in terms of dealing with the industry as a whole, but certainly had no time for the press, and was completely disorganised. Getting things arranged became something of a struggle.
But matters became worse still when after a while it was decided to hire a PR agency again, but a very big-name one.
The person I deal with there cannot systematically read an email and reply to the questions it contains. She seems to think that I have an hour to spend chatting on the phone on a 'get to know you' basis—she wants to know what television shows I like, and so on. I neither know nor care about such matters, and all I want to talk about is business, not make friends. I'm not short of friends: I am short of time.
She is profoundly ignorant about the destination, not even knowing in which parts of the country major cities lie. She cannot answer any question about the destination without having to go and ask someone else first. She has no story ideas to offer, and does not pay attention to what sorts of stories I say I'm looking for, nor to where I say I might want to go. On my last trip the itinerary came in so late there was little time to do anything about it, and it contained several profoundly irritating made-for-tourists day trips of precisely the kind I don't usually cover. Luckily there was much other good material because this is a fine destination full of colour and interest. But what I found of that was more in spite of the agency's assistance than because of it. I couldn't see that it added any value at all. Indeed it bordered on being a hindrance.
Unfortunately in recent years my experiences with three of the big name companies tell me it is very often like that with them. The value all goes the other way, with the agency feeling that having the travel PR/destination marketing accounts of sovereign nations looks good on the portfolio when they're chasing the accounts of the Motorolas, Microsofts, and McVitie's of this world who have spending power orders of magnitude greater than most government tourism bureaux.
Often, when I arrive, you'll sit down with me for a general chat and in passing ask if I got everything I wanted from your representative back home. I'd love to tell you the truth, but the fact is I cannot. Suppose I quote chapter and verse of lacklustre, embarrassingly ill-informed responses, and cocked-up and aborted arrangements, and suppose you then take this to a higher level and sit down for discussions with the agency on my version of its shortcomings.
Do you think it will take that well? Or do you think that perhaps instead I'll be blocked from all future trips and that word will be put around the industry that I'm difficult and unproductive (really nothing's further from the truth), so that instead of fending off invitations I'll have to go begging for them? Some PR companies that make a complete hash of things have no scruples about stabbing journalists to save their accounts.
So instead, without naming names, let me ask you to re-assess your strategy. Never mind impressing the tourism minister with a glittery name, think instead of value for money. Talk to the journalists who arrive and ask them in complete confidence to tell you frankly of their experiences. To be sure not all the junior members of the big name companies are entirely lacking in gumption, and some of the journalists certainly are lacking in that commodity themselves (there's no point in asking bloggers anything) so the results may vary, although the big fish in a small pool argument still applies. Become the most important client at an agency that will care desperately about keeping you, and at which the people you deal with are the same people who deal with me.
I think we'll both benefit.
