Chameleon's presentation to The Register on real world media relations in the PR industry.

1. PR, innit?

2. The official (and unofficial) definition
• Public relations is the discipline which looks after reputation,
with the aim of earning understanding and support and
influencing opinion and behaviour.
• It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain
goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and
its publics.
– Public Relations Consultancy Association
• “I want coverage”
– Almost every client

3. In practice, where media relations sits
The s w e e t s p o t...
W h a t t h e m e d ia Topical, quick, timely Ve nd o rs ’
w r it e s Business issues e x p e c t a t io n s
User pain points
Real research
Hard news - often ‘bad’ We have great products
Practical impact
Disaster/scandal Customers and case studies Our great track record
Business issues/trends Average Joe interest Our illustrious history
End-user issues/trends Pictures, box-outs, Our ecstatic customers
Interesting things value-add...

4. A Grange Hill analogy
Scruffy McGuffy Mr Bronson

5. The two middle men extremes…
Estate agents Consultants
•Coverage-led •Client relations-led
•“Got the press release?” merchants •Airy fairy ego strokers
•Response Source •PowerPoint jazz hands
•v2.1 •Corporate sausage machine
•“Press release a month” – Awful at implementation
– Good at (client) lunches
•“Only as good as your last piece of
•“His first born in my godson”
coverage”

6. Another reason for PR/journo conflict

7. It would be worse if PR wasn’t inept
Social media
Reporting
Getting approval
Convincing a vendor to Changing
say something Zs to Ss
interesting
Pitching to
media
Trying to explain to Americans why
The Register headline isn’t offensive

8. The PR business model
• PR is usually a small line item in the overall marketing budget
• Small companies will have a “in-house” marketing person (or
team) that covers PR
– Difficult to make things happen
• Large companies will have a “in-house” PR person (or team)
• Difficult to make things happen
• That in-house person (or team) will work with a PR agency for
– A brain and a spine
– Up to date, relevant, experience
– Fresh thinking
– Arms and legs support
– A scapegoat…

9. PR - Slim profit margin business
• Any fool can start a PR company
• Agencies are poorly managed (simply break even)
• Chargeable rates go down
• More and more junior (cheap) people
• Quality gets worse

10. Typical PR agency structure

11. Typical PR salaries
Title Experience Bracket
Associate director 8+ years £60K plus
Account director 5+ years £40-60K
Account manager 2+ years £25-40K
Account executive 0+ years £18-24K

12. The pain in the arse of getting coverage
• Agency PR: “Great piece in The Register.”
• Spineless in-house PR: “Yes, it’s great. Can you get me 20
hardcopies.”
• CEO: “What is this comic? I hate it. The headline is rude.”
• Spineless in-house PR: “This is awful coverage. Grrr”
• Agency PR: “That’s how The Reg writes, that’s why it has 5m
readers and is your key publication.”
• Spineless in-house PR: “Get them to change the headline. Our
CEO doesn’t like The Reg.”
• Agency PR: “It was offered to The Reg as an exclusive, we
supplied example coverage. You discussed it with your CEO and
it was signed off.”
• Spineless in-house PR: “Get them to change the headline.”

13. What a good PR should be…
• ‘Tough loving’ the client to make them operate in the real world
• Working with the client to discover/create interesting stories
(with some sort of beneficial link back to the company)
• Cutting out the corporate nonsense
• Ensuring the story/company sits in context to the outside world
• Prepping the story with proof points, third parties, photography,
infographic etc
• Looking at things from the journo point of view
• Working with known and trusted journos to have a resulting
piece of coverage that works well for both parties
• Growing a big pair of balls…

14. Thoughts from a PR on how journos can
use a (good) PR person
• A (not always successful) route to senior execs and customers
– Sometimes the brief is to hide the exec
• A source for additional/future content/ideas/angles
– A decent PR knows markets/people beyond their clients
• Build a trusted relationship with the PR, so they can take the risk
of championing you to client with a little more confidence
– Because life is too short
• Understand and ‘play the game’ with business culture
– CEOs don’t want late, scruffy, ill-prepared
• See it from the PR (agency and in-house) point of view
– Mortgage payments are at risk