Unethical Lessons
Jason Simms, a Huffington Post
contributor recently wrote an article about what learned while working for an unethical public
relations firm. He said “PR is inherently an unpredictable business” and he’s
right.
What he learned from that experience
are lessons we could all benefit from. But first, let’s put this into
perspective. As he noted, mentors come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes we
learn strategies and techniques from the best people and sometimes we gain valuable
experience from the worst.
Of the five primary lessons Simms
addresses in What I learned from working
with an unethical pr firm, we think this one is the most significant:
Be clear
Do not lead
clients on. Tell them what they can reasonable expect from your services.
We have
never made promises we could not keep. Our clients are never told we could get
them specific coverage from a particular news outlet because we know that media
attention fluctuates on a day to day, actually hour to hour basis. Breaking
news ALWAYS takes precedence.
We explain
that to clients and also identify for them the media outlets we will be making
contact with. We also make it very clear that our primary goal is to develop
and maintain a good working relationship with the media. We do this because
sometimes we cannot get immediate coverage but we want to be able to come back
at a later date with updated news they might be interested in.
In some cases,
we’ve experienced a call back at a later date from those media personnel who
know have time to pursue our pitch. Or have passed our information onto to
another person who might be interested.
Our clients
know that we are prepared to deal with whatever media hand we are dealt. That
often requires us to have several strategies in place. And, we work with clients
to develop and promote news angles that are both effective and reflective of
the client’s goals.
We all learn some lessons the hard way. We hope yours are few and far between!
To read Simm’s
complete article, click here.
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