I read the paper this morning with the view of trying to figure out what stories they chose to leave out.  I saw everything there which was a) going to make me buy the edition, b) cause me to turn the pages and c) hopefully get me to buy the one tomorrow.  Sadly, it left me cold.  It just wasn’t me they were catering for.  They were thinking of the broader community and making it something for everyone.  Unfortunately I, like many others, are getting much more selfish about how I part with my cash and the information I get for it.  Enter the people who are supposed to be generating the stories.

 

Any PR worth their salt knows that the press release, with or without the media event, is not going to capture the true potential of your organisation’s or product’s audience.  Well, not anymore.  Yes, it’s ok if you want to announce something locally and you’ve already forged your relationship with your traditional media – think Government, corporate giant, consumer watchdog or celebrity.  But in the era where information is King and there are a lot of King makers (read as information channels) to put all your effort into one press release, and one type of information channel ,is the modern day equivalent to an advertisement in a telephone directory.

Once it was the media who provided everything we needed to know for our daily dose of news, views and gossip.  And there’s the point.  People want more that just what the traditional media want to serve up to them.  Add in the fact that a lot of media is now calling itself unashamedly tabloid and you’ve got an information provider who is happy to sell you information with a certain bias – naming, shaming, blaming and gossip, innuendo and the first exclusive story with pictures!

Consumers of information are more discerning it seems and with good reason.  They want the personal recommendation, much like the age old conversation with the neighbour over the back fence.  They want the true story, warts and all; what’s good about a product/person/organisation but also what’s bad.  Heaven forbid they also want the full story.  Why is it bad?  What makes it good?  Who else says so?

The Pandora ’s box of requirements for launching not just a good public relations campaign, but a great one, requires the PR’s of the world to step back and look at how its own behaviour has led to bringing the right stories to the forefront.  It’s harder than ever to find out the name of the journalist on the other side of the world.  Newswires are now are charged proposition.

Everyone is being encouraged to send a news tip, send in the photos of the accident that they took on their mobile phone.  Emailed press releases join a long queue of hopeful others in the inbox of a harried junior who is guarding the phone of the editor.  Why?  Spin.  That talent from the dark arts of PR which has turned the tide, to a place where most of us aren’t sure of what the truth actually is.  The ‘contact us’ button with most of the world’s media encourages you to write to a bottleneck managed by some harried person of the end of it filtering, through the flood of things coming in only to then allow the smallest of things to come out.  I want to know the pre-requisites for the coming out bits.  Oh, right.  Politics, sport, finance, celebrity, local identity does something good and possible angles for getting a bit more of the advertising dollar.

The ability to have a conversation with a journalist has also been stifled.  But I will gladly admit if you do get to speak with one and have something decent to say, then you’ll have a friend forever.  Even they must recognise the grind of what makes news and what doesn’t.  Yet it’s not all about news these days.  Sometimes it’s just about what is of interest: what is going to grab attention amidst budget deficits, wars and murder.  That’s why there’s been a shift to lifestyle based information throughout the media.  Mmm, what shall I do on the weekend?  No, maybe not go out and blow up civilians.  A spot of gardening or cooking sounds so much more rewarding.

Enter the world of blogging, social media, fan pages, discussion forum and the plain and simple word on the street.  These exchanges are taking place because people have always and still do (rampantly) use word of mouth as their way of getting information about what they want to buy, watch, invest in, see etc.  Entire networks are being set up within niche areas of consumerism and most of the time they aren’t easy nuts to crack.  You need to prove your worth to them and you can’t just do it by sending a press release to a journalist who may, if you’re lucky, report that what you’re saying is a good thing.

Consumers are looking at your newly released ‘whatever-it-is’ with a 360 degree critical eye.  They want to know that you have some type of brand integrity, that you will provide further information to them if they choose to ask you for it, or that you will still be in operation in 12 months time.  They want to know things like whether you damaged the environment making it or whether your CEO gets paid too much for what they do.  All that doesn’t get covered in a 100 word report with a picture of your latest product ambassador smiling gloriously at your latest and greatest. (Oh, and by the way, they know you’ve most likely paid your Ambassador a quiet sum which would feed a small nation so they no longer cut it either.)  No, it get’s covered in all the other places and all the other places are unbelievably numerous.  So ask yourself, is your press release enough?  I doubt it.

Go to the creative edges of your current universe and then a few million miles further.  Write a list of how you get your information and then ask another ten people how they get theirs.  Then poll a few thousand others who you don’t know and see what you come up with.

There are no simple answers to how you reign in your audience all of whom are floating in this information explosion.  But therein lays one type of solution to the quandary.  You can’t reign them in.  You can’t necessarily reach all of them but you need to branch out of your comfort zone and create information which is accessible. 

PR has so often been a sprint to the line.  But it now requires marathon efforts from those serious about the craft in order to provide sustained information into an environment which is morphing and changing minute by minute.

Take away the barriers to what you have to say and let all those people out there, who are tweeting, blogging and bragging, get your information and make it fly.  Then you may find it reaches the traditional media as a news story extolling the next latest and greatest, months after nifty consumers already know about it.