A lot has been written and debated these days about the paid media space; a compromise on journalistic ideals. Secondly, on the agency side most express the agony of dealing with clients who believe PR is just media coverage.
I haven’t yet come across any written piece on why is this is so. My understanding is perhaps to have a larger picture and to have an understanding of these issues, and find a reasonable answer.
To have a PR agency has somewhat become a norm for companies, as if it’s a statutory obligation similar to appointing a company secretary. Many of the companies, thanks to their marketing or communication honchos, who fail to understand their own needs correctly. The understanding of PR in most of the companies is limited to having media coverage and I must admit that PR agencies also fail to educate their clients what PR can deliver. Appointment of agencies at time is used for flaunting to get professional adulation and most of the time used to get pictures and interviews of their top bosses published to please them. One of my friend a Corporate Communication specialist went for his final round of interview and got rejected at the final stage after meeting the company director. His incompetence; he could not meet the wishes of the Director, who wanted to get his articles regularly published in one of the pink papers.
When a PR agency pitches for a business, much depends on the quality of the brief passed on to them, accumulated information on business segment and to have the understanding of the real client need. This is a stage where agencies falter by not having a clear grasp and understanding of client need and demand and finally not putting a straight talk and expressing what is realizable and what is not. The race at the pitch stage is perhaps to get the account at any cost. Most of the agencies commit more than what they or perhaps any of the PR agencies can fulfill.
Once on board, the strategy papers are dumped in the backyard and the race for coverage begins. I believe PR agencies are to be blamed mostly for not being honest by over committing at the first place and then succumbing to undue client pressure for coverage. The other aspect which is really disturbing is the questionable capabilities of the so called best PR agencies, many of them being in the scene for over 15 years now. Most of the agency top-shots crib about undue client pressure for coverage and over a coffee would share the definition of so called real PR, but themselves not having the capability or competence to work beyond media management. Most of the plans and strategy look excellent on papers but the capability to execute is mostly missing.
On the side of the media; last 20 years has seen the media space growing, booming, advent of niche mediums, getting competitive and saturating as well. The readership and viewer ship patterns changed, the formulas for cost of reach got redefined and eventually the editorial prudence got tapered. Today, increasingly media is being looked as a product with profits and reach its barometer to judge performance. What we saw meantime was owners of many of the old prestigious publications takings off the reins of managing the publication from their old trusted publishers and editors (if not on papers but in sense) and handing the ‘business’ to management professionals. In the transition years we heard of the fights between the editorial and marketing, fighting for space or at times editorial fighting over a piece of news grafted by marketing to please its advertiser or at times marketing trying to scuttle a news which was adverse to its advertisers. In most of those cases the new management acted quickly averted further fights and drove home what was justified; we all know what it means, after all a journalist and an editor also has his family to run.
Today every column is enumerated in terms of revenue potential. There are various Corporate partnership programs and the relation with corporate has become so close and inter-depended that it has become difficult, if not impossible for the media to remain independent.
On the other hand with modernization the cost of operation of media companies has increased, there is no doubt that the journalist of today gets reasonably well paid as compared to yester years, the slick technology adores the desk replacing the odour of stinky newsprints. The offices look more glamorous as the profession itself. Everything has a cost and undoubtedly there is increased stress on revenues. To remain profitable the media management devices various means to generate more revenue.
With business booming the amount of advertising has increased and one can also see piles of press releases reaching editor’s desk, though the space in the publications haven’t increased proportionately in correlation. Even if the journalist is served with a good piece of news by agencies, ‘worthy of cognizance in the medium’, it gets chucked off at the editor’s desk. Some newspapers have innovated columns like …………. for their big advertising clients and some have seen it as a revenue generating model and invented companies like Medianet who sell editorial space. The outcome; pictures and news from the marriage of Batliwala’s son with Hajamatwala’s daughter. But, somewhere I think the line needs to be drawn and so called news needs to be communicated as advertorial if not advertising, rather than being cheekily passed on to the readers as news.
The apathy towards PR of not being attended to by the media is agreeable to a point. The Lifestyle or consumer PR surely faces a stiff resistance but that’s not ubiquitous. Its quiet often that we find the way in which a news peg is created by the agencies is unpalatable for the publications or we find the agencies running after the very few publications or mediums that reject the most. What they forget is to catch on with the mediums which they can alternate or uniquely devise pegs which can catch on.
The yardstick generally used for work assessment of PR agencies is also debatable; one devised probably by agencies themselves to prove their worth, ‘Cost of coverage = cost of the same space if taken for advertising’ is also worthy of being reassessed. Another point which I thought is important to mention is the underlying fact that PR agencies get somewhat a similar treatment from clients as their advertising agency, however I have always experienced that PR agencies need greater retention, greater insight in the clients business and with time the quantum and quality of their deliveries improves.
I would have surely hurt many with my thought but I know it is difficult to stop the process of commercialization in the media space, nor would moral preaching stop the process yet I would not defend unscrupulous paid coverage which is today being cheekily passed on as news. The PR agencies needs to device better ways to position coverage, be upright is committing what is possible to the clients, get media space with innovative strategy, gain competence to service beyond media coverage, and most importantly break the misnomer within clients that PR is just coverage . The assessment criteria of an agency should also change with cost of resources allocated and perception studies as a base to judge performance.
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