I was chatting up with a colleague, who is a part of our four member media team in our office, on blogging and the new PR.

The media team, as we know, plays a big role in large PR agencies where events and crisis happen on multiple clients almost every day. While the client servicing teams need to concentrate on a whole lot of things in servicing an account, the media team can just focus on building relationships with key journalists across the country. So in times of crisis and big events, they can leverage on their networks to value add to the client servicing team.

Now the part that we were discussing was that the media team should now look at PR 2.0 seriously and gear up to equip themselves with knowledge of the blogosphere and start building relationships with key bloggers across the country across verticals and subjects. And why not. Media teams have been building relationships with journalists in the print media, tv, online media, and now social media should be a natural extension. Talk about digitally enhanced media teams.

So are you a media relations expert? If yes, my next questions could be ‘how many bloggers do you know well?’ Knowing and engagibng with bloggers is no longer the perogative of the client servicing person alone.

My question is can the media teams of today adapt themselves to the new challenge (or opportunity), or will  there be a new class of blogger relations teams in agencies? For now, there is just the socal media team that do everything.

We all have pitched journalists on the email and on the phone. We can also remember those times when we chatted up with journalists while on a media round and threw in a pitch. Now all these are the regular ways. I am wondering if any of us have pitched in a unique manner and have been successful at that.

Talking about this, I googled the topic a while back and found this article from Read Write Web - Five Wrong Ways to Pitch RWW and One Great Way, which seems to suggest a lot of ways of how not to pitch. The only way it thinks is okay is bundling up all your client’s information in an RSS feed and sending it to the journalist. Now while this might be working for RWW, for others, this seems as unpractical as coming up out of a geek to the normal person. I mean while a few techie PR professionals might send this to another techie journalist, the rest of the PR professionals and journalists in this country won’t be able to figure it out. Besides it doesn’t seem to serve many other purposes than keeping a journalist updated on developments.

There are no best ways to pitch a journalist. A lot of bloggers seems to love taking out their ‘how to pitch me’ sermons for PR professionals, each with his/her own individual preferences. However basic rules stand. Like spelling the journalists’/bloggers’ names right on your email salutations, researching well what he/she writes on, understanding that every journalist/ blogger is different, not giving a unsolicited phone call out of the blue, not flooding journalists’/bloggers’ inboxes with irrelevant stuff and press releases.

To take this conversation a bit further, we have written about the five key things to keep in mind while pitch a journalist, which includes the quality of the story peg, relationship with the journalist, knowing what the journalist writes on, industry knowledge, and media list. We have also written that perhaps the first half of the day is the best time of the day to pitch a journalist, because that’s the time when a journalist is mostly free. Calling in the morning has the advantage of also helping the reporter plan the day. Nothing will cheer him or her up more than an exclusive landing in the lap in the early hours itself.

Now coming back to the topic, consider the pitch methods below. What do you think? Have you done any of them succesfully? Are there more?

1. Post interaction pitch: Remember those times when a journalist is through with an interview of your client and you are generally chatting up some niceties before saying bye. Or remember those times when you and the journalist are waiting for the spokesperson, or when you are on way to the meeting the journalist. I mean all those times when the journalist is keen to know what other clients you handle and what are the new things going on. I have pitched stories at such occassions successfuly for many clients, and these are priceless moments that I never get on the phone, when you can explain evrything in detail.

2. Gtalk pitch: I notice some of our young PR colleagues today have many journalists on their Gtalk. Not so much when I was doing the client servicing actively. They chat away with these journalists like they were good friends and say they have pitched many stories succesfully from GTalk. Wonder how they did it. It’s understandable when you know a journalist personally but what I am talking about is people using GTalk as a social networking platform or as a common internet chat forum where you get to invite new people, accept invites, and then start chatting about anything in the world including pitches.

3. Twitter and Linkedin pitch: Almost same as Gtalk pitch, but out here you direct message a journalist or the blogger on Twitter or on Linkedin. I think this method depends a lot on how well you know the journalist. Note that many have written that they consider direct messaging quite intrusive and would prefer a public message update instead. You can consider the Twitpitch.

4. Blog comment pitch: When a blogger writes on a particular topic, you can leave a nice and valid input on his/her post and maybe on your service, that he/she takes notice and perhaps checks out your service. That could be a good way to start a conversation.

5. Online pitch tools and platforms: We have platforms for journalists and PR professionals like PitchWire that help both parties to manage pitches. How successful are these, I have no idea. anybody any luck?

Don’t forget to check out our top media relations tips.

After years and years as a career finance journalist I shifted into a industry operations unit and quickly realised that:

Creating is tougher than commenting (…on the creation).
Creating is more enriching than profiling (…the creation or the creator).
Creating is much more powerful than criticism (…of the creation or the creator)

Comments, Profiles and Critique remain nevertheless essential tools of reaching the creation out to the public . Therefore we in Public Relations of a brand, a technology, a service use these tools a lot to create “stories” in the media to reach out to our respective TGs and for brand building. But despite the high decibel almost unbelievable level of PR and coverage created through these tools , they are not what journalism is about

Best to stay on uncontroversial ground and quote a personal example: as a journalist I got pleasure from and specialised in creating ’stories’ through investigation and discovery of information hitherto unknown for the benefit of the common man. As idealist as it may sound being the instrument of positive change was reason of entering journalism and giving up on my IAS studies on the day I was to give Interview. I had a strong aversion to commenting or profiling. The editors would rarely if ever put me to these tasks. I reckon any journalist worth his weight today has not made a career out of commenting, profiing or criticising.

Therefore its important that people in Corporate Communications, Corporate PR functions or PR Agencies use different yardsticks when dealing with the press. The yardsticks are completely dependent on the kind of orientation each category of journalists bring to their work.

This is easier said than achieved. Picture this – a journalist is writing a story on a brand. He has the entire story and needs nothing from the PR agency / Corporate communicator – Is it so impossible for us to digest that we mean nothing to him in the “story chain”. For instance corporate communications heads and the public relations agency of my beats disliked me with a vengeance. They disliked me for one simple reason - I took no cognizance of their existence. Furiously well networked I remained oblivious of their presence or even their sheer requirement in a story chain. So basically I was the dreaded kind of press – who bypasses the corp com people and creates a lot of internal problems for the department head including loss of credibility internally. They then struck back by entertaining the other category of my beat colleagues who commented and profiled and gave out so called “exclusives” to competing newspapers.

Today on the other side of the table as a corporate communications head, I find my kind of journalists quite a tiresome breed indeed. But lets give these thinking devils their due. One can respect them only if we know what drives them. An example of one thinking devil I knew who literally was dreaming up a rough draft of history for an industry segment :- In the mid 90s those investing into the mobile businesses were visionaries (…just like the owners of IPL franchises today will be hailed as five years from now) . The entry block was the handset cost of 30,000 and biggest irritant was all incoming calls were charged. A senior editor wrote a note to all us beat reporters covering telecom ..the note said and I quote since Ive kept it for all these years, ” Sunil Mittal is trying to buy a Modi Telstra (or was it Command) in Kolkata. Spice is getting out of the business down south, Vodafone is the biggest international player and has stake in Z company but its not yet flexing muscle. Reliance is busy setting up a backbone and has made no attempt to launch services…these are threads that I see now . These threads lie in your respective cities. In pretty short time these threads will be pulled together to become a braid that runs through India. We want to be the first one to pull these threads together.”

Today, You have a Vodafone as the biggest force along with Sunil’s Airtel!

So if I look back we beat reporters were also particpants to this rough draft of history because of the type of journalists we were. I was leading the pack from Kolkata writing on who was buying out whom in the mobile business and who was stalking whom and what would happen if things went this way or that. I had no clue who the corporate communications heads were. Sunil Mittal was just a phone call away and in the quickly written well researched “stories” was the pleasure of being a journo.

For this kind of journo a corporate communicator is really a coordinating clerk and a PR agency is one notch lower in this coordination chain for one simple reason – they know more about your industry and brand than you do, they can get to the “spokesperson” quicker than you can..and that’s the Achilles’ heel for PR professionals. This is relevant now, and for times to come. Mind you Im quite aware of reporter profiling and risk assessment done by PR agencies as part of strategy for clients. All things remaining equal corporate communicators need to respect the journalist’s profession slightly more than they do…maybe not all but some of them.

To my mind, seven things we can do to strike up a rapport with a good reporter who will then loop you in whether they need your assistance or not.

1. Never hardsell the brand you work for.
2. Own up to the mistakes and don’t demand / expect positive stories inspite of them
3. Have information about your company/industry on your fingertips
4. Be strongly networked within your management ranks so that you can quickly get the feedback – No. Yes. No comments – whatever it be.
5. Respect that the journo’s product goes to bed at a certain time so speed up reverts.
6. Ensure your internal corporate stakeholders take the press and your job seriously.
7. Ensure that your internal stakeholders have standing instruction to always loop you in when contacted by the press directly. Be upfront, confess to them that you lose credibility if they respond directly. This stakeholder could be the CEO therefore this could get really tricky!

As I said before, true there is high decibel PR but if you look carefully there is high level of disbelief on what is written, why it is written, whether its an advertorial or not. All about the press and journalists is not good just as all is not good with brands, technologies or services. They however remain invaluable. When they do their jobs well, our jobs get done well too..most of the time i.e.

The rapid expansion in the media space has done many good things for the nation. It has provided choice in beats across entertainment, movies, news and education that earlier was simply not ever thought of or envisioned. The proliferation has brought about waves of soaps, contests and now with the first IPL season shaking India, it has brought a gaggle of new anchors anxious to make their mark.

In a landscape dotted by hungry journalists, anchors, show producer, sometimes this breed, crosses the line of prudence and fair practice in the quest for exclusives, scoops and the most dramatic of them all; stings! In times of deadline overload and a lack of any tangible research, editorial balance becomes the first casualty to TRPs, popularity polls and advertising revenue.

How many times have you had a trick e-mail or a innocuous phone call translate into a bombshell in the press the next day, or even the same day in these times of broadcast and online media explosion? If you are out there working the space, then I am sure you do this more than you’d like to and while we all employ our own ways and means to deal with the scourge, maybe the time is right for a discussion. Keeping quiet is not an option so here are a few PR plays I’ve seen practiced:

• No comment - This is the most basic defense of the scared communicator or resident PR punter in the establishment. It creates a doubt in the mind of the viewer or reader about the authenticity or veracity of the story but has the potential of making front page all the same or the lead story in the dozen or so television channels out there, business, news, and combinations thereof.
• We do not speculate on market speculation - This or another variation of the same featuring words like ‘policy’ are yet another wet blanket in terms of media credibility, will they stop your brand image from get a contentious tag or even a black eye is arguable.
• Denial - This is the last reprieve of either the aggrieved or the very stupid, especially if its a lie. It will give a pause to the editor or the journalist, who will question their gut, chances of going to print or being aired, fifty per cent.
• Half Agreement, half denial - This Molotov Cocktail is the most sophisticated of the ploys, and clearly agrees to all or some part of the allegation but uses the loop in technique to include crisis messaging. Sent as a quote and usually written, it forces the hack to use the statement in full. Only the most savvy can do this bespoke but chances of being quoted out of context or half quoted remain high.
• Retraction or Rejoinder - These are mostly ego plasters to paper over bruised management egos, striking how the size of the retraction and rejoinder is in contrast to the placement, font size and prominence of the offending piece.
• Confirming statement - This is the pushover statement, executed along with a sincere sorry note and a display of the belly in submission. These are very bad for the ego and best suited for real tragedies, fraud, accidents, calamities and other industrial or infrastructure and government type of communicators.

I am sure there are hilarious variations sitting out there in your very fertile and successful minds and would love to get any more classification here or a anonymous war story, do feel obliged to share your scary knowledge with the tribe.

These are some concerning times that need both awareness of the stakes and training, if it is your privilege to be charged as the guardian of your brand and company image. There are lots of ploys the feverish hack employs to in the get-rich-quick-or-get-fired-trying, exclusive hunt. You need to understand that it is their job to report, to analyze, to predict and to expose, the end is fine but the means are most questionable. This pool is further muddied by competition and the dirty tricks department using friendly media for planting, seeding or plain obfuscating an issue. I will not use examples but the watchful here will see and read patterns in politics, industry and most media reporting, even that front page headline or the lead story on that television channel that looks innocent at first pass. Go figure…

If they know that you know, then you will receive their respect and maybe the show can continue down the road for all. Right now these are dangerous times for Image and Brand and all seems fair in the media war for exclusives. Next week sticking to a statement and dodging trick questions on the phone. Happy skirmishing! 

Last night the Kings XI Punjab made another killing! Shaun Marsh produced what some would colloquially describe as giving a right walloping and Yuvraj Singh followed through with more arson on the pitch; the two are the cynosure of all eyes in the cricket world in India, the Commonwealth continents and many points further.

This wasn’t always the case, suddenly a team that was for long an underdog is making huge waves. The IPL analogy is no different, it came from nowhere and took over the house, and those in the marketing and PR fraternity who were watching the wind speed and its direction are smiling, while the laggards are now wringing their hands in furious frustration at the massive opportunity loss.

A few months have passed since the marketing and PR landscape got hijacked by IPL, the usual heavy-lids marketing and PR veteran, already bored to death with the monotony of the hot summer, mistook it for a flash in the pan, many weeks later it was still there refusing to go away like a bad nightmare, rocketing TRPs and bringing in eyeballs by the truck load for competition; the ones who got on the band wagon are laughing to the brand bank, the ones that did not have conceded defeat. The ’serial shock’ gave all channels a huge scare and the war moved from the pitch to the air waves as the IPL tsunami sucked all eyes to a single channel away from the staple ’soap and serial’ diet!

Team sponsorships that went a begging are now worth their weight in gold and next season; by all means, do please expect to see the phenomenon of inflation translate to cricket sponsorship. In these incredulous times of USD 130 for a barrel of crude oil, why should inflation be confined to steel, onions and cement?

The fight for eye balls has been won by mobile companies, banks and FMCG companies being the usual suspect that also ran and got some successes. The losers were car and bike companies, ringed in first by the RBI triggered, inflation killer, CRR measures, that squeezed the already flat credit situation. Across packed stadium; the howls of delight and screams of incredulity submerged the Bloomberg story reporting how this had been the lowest growth in the last 10 quarters for India.

As crude oil price insanity triggered troubling visions of more tax and ‘cess-upon-more-cess’ crowded my radar, the oil companies were slowly sinking and losses were being reported first time in the current quarters of these public sector behemoths. As ministries quibbled over customs, excise, luxury tax and oil stabilisation funds, the screams of cricket hooliganism in stadiums kept growing louder, so much more dignified than the marauding Chelsea club fans in England that would shame Genghis Khan but the days are not far! Welcome to the Indian version of the superbowl!

As stories got pitched to the print, television and online spaces and the pickled brain of the now smiling senior PR types picked up the sweet stink of plugs a headline or byte away, agencies were being whipped to leverage the sponsorship investment and brand types were churning websites and campaigns by the dime across outdoor, print and online; search or ad word. Here in this very fertile climate unnoticed a bevy of writers, television anchors and producers were taking birth.

In the text message histrionics of Shah Rukh Khan and Vijay Mallya’s tantrums, the hugs of Preity Zinta and the exploits of Ness Wadia with the Punjab Police hijacked dinner and tea time conversations across the homes and offices of the unsuspecting consumer in a heady brew, without alcohol, nicotine and caffeine. Healthy I thought!

In this entire din, the lessons have been many and things have changed forever in sports marketing and PR. The heady mix of entertainment, blaring team songs and not to forget the introduction of cheer leaders in a morality stricken nation, helped tone down changes that would have otherwise not gone down well.

I am talking about the erosion of nationality as the basis for cricket teams. Questions about how ex-team mates will reconcile their fury and belligerence once IPL is over and things are back to normal for the Indian, Sri Lankan, Australian and many other teams. Of course and then unlearning all that when the next IPL starts. In the confines of Wankhede, Eden Gardens, Mohali and many other cricket stadiums, the energy was electric and someone watching the same show on TV would never understand the fury of the music, the hysteria whipped up by the cheer leaders and the crowd as it chanted favourites or booed down others.

The good change that has again gone largely unnoticed like the bad is the new faces that have got the opportunity to play with the reigning cricket gods. Good for India and good for cricket and definitely good for brand endorsement, marketing and Public Relations!

As I wait for the semi-finals, I doff my hat to LK Modi and despite the large headline in a prominent Indian newspaper harking back to a real or imagined misdemeanor 20 years ago in a foreign country, life in India after IPL will never be the same! They are obviously trying to get back at his temerity in bringing in IPL Media Guidelines in the usual petty and spiteful style characteristic of the large egos of the rather spoilt Indian press fraternity. Long live IPL!

It was after a long lunch session that she shared this with us: “They promised me an exclusive. The interview with the Chairman was to happen in the next couple of days. The meeting was cancelled at the last minute. Reason? The Chairman had to fly out of the country. Next day I saw the interview promised to me in three different newspapers.”

This is part of an amusing conversation my colleague and I had with a senior business journalist from a leading English daily. The ‘they’ she refers to is, of course, a PR agency. Have you come across an incident like this in your PR career? Something promised to a journalist is never delivered – an important piece of information, an exclusive one-to-one, a research report. I am sure you have because it happens all the time.

Among the many bad things that we – PR pros – are accused of, not keeping promises tops the list. It’s an age-old discussion: “why can’t they stick to their word?” This happens in other industries and the communications industry is no different. So why is it that PR agencies are seen as incorrigible truants, and why have we created such a mean reputation for ourselves? If you have seen Colin Farrell in the movie Phone Booth, you know what I mean.

I can think of two reasons immediately. First, the stakes in this business are high and sometimes we fail to understand how important content is for a newspaper. Second, the pressure to please the client and keep our bosses in good humour. Actually there are more reasons but I want to end with two.

I have spoken with a few friends in our industry but there is no satisfactory answer on how to curb the ‘menace’. We are also naively unsure if this menace exists. So very often these incidents are shoved under the carpet and the thrust is on moving on with our lives. We are also uncertain if our industry is in need of an image makeover.

A few weeks back, a journalist from a business magazine met our client and was ready to file the article. So far, so good. But there was a problem. The information shared with the journalist was incomplete. Our client would have been in big trouble if the article was published. We contacted the journalist and promised him more information for a much better article. He was adamant. He had a deadline to meet. Even after speaking with him a number of times there was no headway.

We knew nothing else would work now. So we decided to do just one thing, be 100% honest. We called him up and laid bare the facts – if the article was published, our client would have to do a lot of crisis management; a few, very innocent heads would roll; we might lose a very good account. It was not a pleasant call but the article was never published. Of course, the journalist didn’t talk to us again. That is, till last week when we bumped into him. After some initial hiccups, I am happy to say, things were normal again.

There is no moral of this story. At best I would say that being honest sometimes works, even if it means getting badly burnt in the process. I can see many of you shaking your heads in disagreement. If you have a better solution, it’s time we used it.

Image source: http://www.freeimages.co.uk/

Last Friday, I had the pleasure of witnessing a PR crisis spelling out in the western blogosphere. It all started with Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker posting a status on Twitter about a new PR blacklist wiki she has created. She was apparently tired of PR folks sending her irrelevant emails and decided to filter out all emails coming from specific domains of PR agencies.

One of our PR 2.0 guys, Brian Solis replied to her saying ’some of us are trying to help’. Brian posted another tweet soon after - Making Mistakes and Amends in Blogger and Media Relations. Meanwhile Steve Rubel joined in by twitting - @ginatrapani Appreciate your concerns about PR spam but is it really that black and white? Finally Gina tweeted again - PR folks, thanks for your thoughtful replies. Here’s why I filter entire domains. She pointed to this post, which I am sure you will love visiting and reading about the journalist complaining about receiving irrelevant emails from PR people.

All this drama was happening in my Twitterfox right inside by browser. Quite entertaining. While all this time we profess to be PR 2.0 experts, we ended up on the PR blacklist.

So guys, lets try not repeat this in India. Rajesh recently wrote about some PR agency sending some kind of email that he had to sigh. Press releases are not wanted so much anymore by the media today, and especially not by the bloggers. And the copy and paste pitch email mass mailing has to stop. I remember in my early days, I used to send press releases to editors and follow up as well. Lucky me. Phew! The editors were kind enough to day ‘thanks, I will see to it’. I also remember a colleague who had the email addresses of about 500 journalists and he used to mail every press conference invite to all of them.

About journalists, I know one, for whom, in her junior years, I had asked questions to my own client on her behalf because she couldn’t ask any in an interview meeting. Now she is in a hot financial daily and doesn’t seem to recognise me. I also know a journalist who was working in a financial daily with a big shot ‘I hate PR’ attitude, but after she shifted to a daily tabloid recently, she is today the one sending interview requests to PR agencies. Those who used to hate PR yesterday are in corporate communications departments today.

So people, no use trying to wash the dirty laundry in public. Lets just try to make it work together.

Oh about the rest of the weekend, my wife had pretty pink butterfly tattoo done from a parlour at Priya complex in south Delhi. The experience was great (will post a video soon on my personal blog) but funny as well. Funny because the tattoo maker was trying very hard to be cool. Tattoos are cool. So tattoo makers have to be super cool you see.

Now let me shut up.

One last thing, just in case, I tweet at http://twitter.com/palinn

For most times as PR professionals we are conditioned to think beat wise…the same way as journalists do…and the conditioning more often than not finally concludes itself into a media list for a specific beat and there ends all possibilities of communications…I think so. I will tell you why.

Now let’s say for example, you are assigned a particular Client in the infrastructure space. The first step is to work on a media list of the media covering the infrastructure beat. Similarly you are assigned a Client in the education beat; likewise you start working on a media list for that space. What happens in that process is that we leave out possibilities of generating stories for that Client in other opportunities that are not necessarily related directly to him. But he or she can still have some scope of potential talents and Clients and can have a say and just because we limit ourselves only to think beat wise, the Client loses out on visibility opportunities.

Now consider a situation where let’s say you are assigned a Client in the Aviation space…Now ideally you would only prepare a basic Aviation Media list…But lets say you increase the scope of your media lists to HR, Media and Marketing, Education, CSR and along with that chart out an audience map to see if you can reach out to your TG through alternate and new age media as well as other routes in the communication space. We all in situations of ultimate need and dire adversity do end up working on all those media lists for the same Client…but how about preparing it when the Client is signing you on.

So the Aviation Client could contribute in HR stories related to training, retention, requirements and capabilities for the job, profiling of HR spokespeople who are managing such massive talent in their fields, since Aviation is related directly to people over and above just being a part of the travel and tourism industry. The Client could find mention in Educational supplements in stories related to Institutes from where they hire talent, how to prepare to get into the Aviation industry etc. The Client could find mention in Media and Marketing stories where he could comment on media spends and ad spends on their ATL initiatives, the mass media strategy to reach out to their TG etc…

All am trying to say is that think beyond one particular beat…since most industries today overlap, and work in mutual coexistence. Most organisations today find themselves dabbling in multifarious businesses and all you have to understand or find one converging point and make it relevant for the journalist to think that he should get your Client to participate in a story that not necessarily is directly related to him.

But trust me it all still makes sense…since the TG is not one homogenised group of people…you never know who you could touch and connect with and fructify the purspose of being a communications consultant by availing an opportunity to your Client to give him a relevant platform to get his POV across…it just needs a little bit of your time to see the relevance and think beyond one master beat specific media list.

If you are already doing it…GREAT If not, may be now is the time to start

I chanced upon an interesting format of a press release. There was no longer the ’so and so company/ person today announced…’. sentence in the opening para of the release. The content was simple and to the point. The spokesperson quotes were not merged into the rest of the content as one long story. Instead they came in bullets under their own section titled ‘Quotes’. There was a list of key points highlighted in another section called ‘Quick Facts’.

This was a format of one of the press releases issued by the Ontario government that I happened to see quite by chance browsing through my Del.icio.us subscriptions (thanks to Boyd’s post).

Now what is so interesting? While the standard opening sentence of press releases have been omitted in many press releases by government organisations and NGOs in India and it’s not new, how the Ontario Government placed their quotes and the Quick Facts were new (at least to me).

Is this just a good example of a social media news release? Or can we replicate the same for our press releases that we issue to the traditional media?

Pros: Content is to the point and well segmented that helps reading easily. One can notice the key points quickly without going through the entire document.

Cons: Journalists have to redo the draft. So if you are looking for a time-crunched editor who will quickly cut a portion of your release and put it into tomorrow’s paper, then this is not the ideal format.

What do you say? This is how one of them looked like:

Every once in a  while, there comes the case of a company that is unable to throughput communication in stark contrast to its otherwise brilliant performance indices. I have sought to understand this malady now and again but a chance conversation yesterday with a known genius in the Indian Financial Services space triggered this post. If you are the guardian angel of the Aspirational; the evangelist with passion, fire and a head full of mindgames, the PR kind, then read on…

Perception lags performance, due to many reasons. The causes manifest themselves in three primary reasons. For a Public Relations, Communications or Brand consultant, it is important to understand the terrain before they pick up on a project that seeks to break logjams in the media and perception circuits for a customer.

Breaking gridlocks and logjams for late entrants to the perception game requires special skills, the tricks  and tactics have been there forever, question is have you ever thought about it, enough to elevate it to strategy?

Changing share of voice in the media and lecture circuit from a inane buzz to the screaming roar of a Ferrari or shepherding your customer (internal or external depends which side of the table you are sat) from the mind-numbing terrors and traps in the media, triggering a turbo boost for your spokesperson in terms of messaging uptake and effectiveness, is what this post is about.

Firstly, an inability or fear of dealing with the media due to a past bad experience can make efforts hard or non-starters. Media Relations is an art that requires constant practice, the ride comes with bumps and smooth stretches, sporadic crises thrown in for spice.  You give, you get, but you always talk! There is media out there that is out to trick you out, will they hesitate to rubbish your carefully build reputation for an exclusive? Absolutely not for a second! Can PR change the game for your business? Absolutely yes! Good comes with the bad, package deal like with most things in life. If you are going to get anywhere, you need to get started! Tell them like it is, chances are that they take risks in business everyday and will grow into the act with a little hand holding from you, the specialist!

Secondly, there is a clique out there as in most other domains, these ‘usual suspects’ then pretty much control the share of voice in the media, and this maybe specific to a beat. The media is most times too lazy to do any hard digging when mapping a business space and again relies on the ‘usual suspects’, who maybe be convenient darling MDs, CEOs and other assorted rabble rousers. Awards: every publication and their mother has an award stacked with their favourites, breaking into this game needs perseverance, a nose for ‘distress sales’, finally being able to work the apex bodies like CII, FICCI, NASSCOM, etc, for advocacy and influencer relations.

Third and last here, is clearly a lack of process internally at the client organisation be it in terms of communication superstructure, even if one does exist, its ability to deliver strategic advice to management may be suspect in hierarchy driven situations or where communicators are too junior to be taken seriously. Some people use external consultants to tell them what is known already as it brings a credibility they lack.

Anyone can tell you that game changing maneuvers are few and far in between as stereotypes and ’safe’ options abound but if you as a PR professional were ever able to affect changes that made a company’s perception congruent with its performance as benchmarked against its peers, then you indeed deserve to be in the hall of fame. If commitment is your destiny and you can help tell a story that is true and ethical but inconvenient, then you are indeed one lucky person!

We need our heroes just like we need our war stories to feel good about the tribe and what it does, so come on give!