Recently we did an event for an eye wear company for the launch of its new collection. Even though I knew it was totally a lifestyle event, I was expecting a little bit of a corporate element in it. May be because I was running away from the lifestyle part of it as I personally don’t like it much. My experience with lifestyle PR has been not so well.

After handling some of these so called ‘lifestyle’ events, I thought lifestyle PR was nothing but more of a coordination job.

Back to the event, the venue was full of the page three type people and the models were walking on the ramp. We forgot we were there for an event and started getting the feel of a ‘party’ even though, every minute the phone would ring and the journalists would remind you that you are there for work and not to enjoy the ‘party’.

Strangely, I found the media too enthusiastic to attend the event. We did very less of the follow ups.

But there was nothing to be happy about it. Besides it was really a tough job to control the media during such events. Every one of them needs time with a celebrity for a byte and if something goes wrong, then it’s the PR agency that is to be blamed for that.

Talking about that, it’s been noticed that PR agencies are to be blamed for everything that go wrong at these types of events. Despite the fact that the person is out of control after three pegs of a drink, they wanted to speak to the media and give their ’special’ comments. Another problem is the timing, which needs to be taken care of. Most of the time, celebrities are not available before or after the event and sometime they are not in the MOOD to speak to the media. Again the PR agency is on fire.

We had more than five events recently with some famous celebrities for the launch of spas, fitness machines, etc. The only job the PR agency did was coordinating the timing for the interactions with the media. There were lots of fight for getting the interactions first, before any other. We had to refuse interactions for some of the media houses due to time constraint. I felt it could have been done by their secretaries or personal assistants as well.

Lifestyle PR is totally different from corporate PR. Here, we are not selling the company news, corporate figures, or any marketing strategies. The only thing media and the public want is celebrity and related gossip. I felt so odd when celebrity talked about her upcoming movies during the interaction. I felt like limiting their conversation only to the event and the organizer company. But that’s not the way things works. Readers need little more masala.

Sometime this masala creates crisis situation. For example, when one celebrity slapped his girlfriend few hours before an event. Consequently the entire coverage turned to their personal story and the media highlighted the slap case instead of what the event was all about. Everybody enjoyed the masala news and the channels gained their much desired TRPs, but that left the PR agency with a crisis situation. The client wants the event coverage, not the personal affairs of the celebrities.

It is becoming a trend to use celebrity as a brand ambassador to promote the brand. Companies can’t think of launching anything without a celebrity. Even few car manufacturers are using celebrities to launch their cars in the market. So celebrities are anyhow becoming a part of the corporate events as well. Hence PR agencies need to make a tight grip on corporate as well as lifestyle PR. To cope up this situation we need to gear up and accept the case that lifestyle PR is now an integral part of Corporate PR.

It doesn’t happen just with Hollywood or Bollywood stars. Sportsmen are also increasingly participating in this maddening but profitabe melee. The problems are same. I remember when I organised a face to face interaction for the opening batsman of the India Cricket team with one of the biggest publications. This interaction was the result of two days hard work but finally Mr.Batsman denied speaking to that particular publication, due to some personal reason. The PR agency got a major blasting from the journalist, who was waiting for his turn for more than three hours.

Another bad experience was when one of clients decided to take another world famous Indian cricketer (brand ambassador) to shopping for one day. However, the surprise was when Mr.World famous cricketer couldn’t speak much about the company his endorsing before the media. I believe they need proper media training before they face any media on behalf of any company.

All said and done, lifestyle PR seems to need a little more style from the PR agency and PR persons. It reminds me a dialogue from the movie DHOOM: HUM JO BHI KARENGE STYLE SE KARENGE.