PR doesn’t suck

I gave a talk this weekend at Barcamp Seattle. Well, calling it a talk is being quite glamorous. I made up about 45 minutes worth of loosely jointed opinions and I called it “PR doesn’t suck.”

My alternative title was: PR doesn’t suck. Well, OK, there’s some really shitty PR stunts out there, but YOUR PR doesn’t have to suck.

I wasn’t trying to convince the attendees that PR as an industry doesn’t suck. But what I did want to convey was that with some simple steps in choosing the proper counsel and setting a clear direction, your PR can not suck.

The client relationship

I started off by asking who had been a client of a PR consultant/firm. Since it was a small group, only a couple of folks had, but the stories we shared quickly became all too common.

Her: They didn’t get it.
Me: What steps did you take to fix it?
Her: We fired them.
Me: What was the WORST part of that experience?

Of course there were some steps in the meantime, but this seems to be a pretty common theme and I’m actually kind of thankful that most people are willing to fire a company that simply isn’t getting it. But  before you scrap the relationship, make sure you’ve gone through the effort to help them “get it.”

I wanted to make sure this session was meaningful, so I thought up five ways to help un-suck your PR:

• Treat selecting a PR person like selecting a spouse. This person or company will know your deepest, darkest secrets. Interview them, spend time with them and be honest with them.
• Let your PR person do his/her/their job. You have hired a person to be your communications professional for a reason. Let them have some freedom to be creative, try new ideas and experiment. Trust.
• Share your passion. Carefully. We feed off the passion and excitement over your products, services or thoughts. But it’s our job to ask you what’s cool, why is this news and why should people care.
• PR does NOT mean public relations anymore. A press release is not the most important document your communications counsel produces. Fully comprehensive digital and analog plans encompass both media relations, as well as publicly consumable content. (there’s a whole other technical topic here, but we won’t go there)
• Look in the mirror. If the messaging sucks, maybe you haven’t communicated it well to your communications counsel. It might be time to reassess your goals and objectives.

You’ll notice in number 4, I switched the language I use. PR is no longer “write press release; write pithy email to editor; profit.” This is an important shift. I think that it embodies the change in dynamic that digital media has caused in this industry.

Say it with me: PR today is about creating a plan that encompasses media, public and consumer relations through the use of multiple channels of communication.

If you want your PR to suck less, there’s a few ways to do it. Tell me how you made your latest campaign suck less in the comments.

Note: All of my photo glory can be found on my Flickr page.