In our continuing conversation on media relations in India PR, suppose we try to merge a bit of Sigmund Freud and the Art of Negotiation- we can come up with some bizarre thoughts on boosting our media relations skills.

For instance, psychology says in a typical psychopath-victim kidnapping scenario, the victim should try best to convince the psychopath that he/she is a human being. What they called humanize the psychopath! Because the psychopath couldn’t see the victim as a human being but sees him/her as a mere object to help him achieve his sadistic pleasures. So when a victim tries to listen to him, talk to him, asks the psychopath about his background, or try to involve him in a conversation- the psychopath starts seeing the humane side of the victim/ the situation and might slowly start feeling reluctant to harm the victim.

Now let’s suppose we, the PR professionals, are the victims, and journalists, the psychopaths- just for the sake of this discussion, we know everyone’s fine. (Ok let’s not feel pity for ourselves, we will imagine ourselves as hunters and the journalists, the hunted, next time) But suppose if this is the situation, journalists will almost always tend to think that PR people as objects/ machines who always call to pitch or follow-up for an interview, press conference, press release, and the list is endless. So they don’t feel bad being rude, in slamming down the phone, or saying an outright – I’m not interested. The worst thing a new PR person can do is fall trap into the routine way of following up and calling journalists, and in going with handful of press releases to journalists. That way, we become just one of the hundreds of PR people who visit the media offices everyday. There is no differentiation, and no recall value.

But if we cultivate our own way of interacting with journalist, talk to them on a human level rather than on a PR-journalist level always, and try to build a human-human relationship, then the outcome might be different. The trick is putting a point in the journalist’s head so that after you are gone, he/she thinks – hey, that was so and so who has just visited me, and not like – hey that was this chap from this and that agency coming for this so and so client.

Now, let’s bring in the Art of Negotiation. We, as hard pressed PR people, tend to follow-up like anything. The first rule is to stop following up more than once or at a maximum twice. The trick is to let your story go sometimes. If a journalist doesn’t file your press release or your client’s interview, let it go. I know it’s easier said than done. But we need to understand that this is also one way of building a long term relationship with a journalist while sacrificing the short term goals. That said, as business people, we should hammer down the point again to the journalist that look, I let you go and didn’t trouble you much. I suffered because you didn’t do my story, but I let it go. The journalist will most likely remember it. Let it happen the next time. The third time, when the journalist feel obliged to do a story for you because he/she had dropped two before, you should hit hard with a vengeance and get your best story out. That’s what I called merging the marketing negotiation trick with PR.

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