Freedom of Information costs

I was very interested to read an article in SC Magazine UK citing a litany of hardware lost or stolen from the Ministry of Defence over a 2 year period. The article estimated that this cost the tax payer in excess of £777,000 in hardware costs alone. We can only guess at the value of the information that was stored on the laptops, phones, DVDs and memory sticks that are now AWOL. http://www.scmagazineuk.com/ministry-of-defence-lost-340-laptops-in-the-last-two-years-and-only-disciplined-nine-staff/article/175122/

However, as a PR professional, I was intrigued to see that this information was elicited via a Freedom of Information request by Lewis PR.

There were three companies quoted in the article: criticising the department and citing best practice on device encryption and remote locking and wiping of devices that are reported lost or stolen. Out of interest I Googled each company and each was a client of Lewis PR.

Rather than “issues highjacking” and providing clients’ responses to breaking news, this was a extremely carefully planned campaign that created an opportunity for 3 clients to comment on the same story.

This got me thinking. With the current “bonfire of the quangos” heralding the demise of  17 advisory bodies including BECTA;  the WEEE advisory body and Martha Lane Fox’s digital inclusion campaign (http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/jul/19/business-quangos-scrapped-coalition-cuts how much does it cost the UK government, and therefore the tax payer, to respond to FoI queries?

According to the Information Commissioner’s Office FAQs site, FoI requests will be answered free of charge, save the cost of printing, copying and postage, up to a limit of £600 per request for central government departments or up to £450 for other public authorities.

“Where the limit is not exceeded, the only charges that can be passed to you are those associated with providing the information, for example photocopying and postage. These are collectively known as disbursements.” – Information Commissioner’s Office, FAQs (http://www.ico.gov.uk/Global/faqs/freedom_of_information_act_for_the_public.aspx)

But how many people are employed to respond to these queries? And how is this cost recouped?

Journalists are always telling PRs that they need facts and figures to back up stories and clearly the FoI request service has provided a useful mechanism for bringing important data into the public domain.

However, while UK government departments’ budgets are being slashed to the bone, how long will this be available free of charge to PRs?

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Search and Rescue?

In his latest blog post, http://sn.im/ypo4s Daryl Willcox, founder of Features Exec,  and Response Source makes some excellent points about the convergence of search marketing and PR, with stats to back up his views that PRs are failing to make best use of search marketing opportunities.

The lines between Search and PR are blurring

Last night Daryl addressed PRs at the CIPR’s Social Summer Series and shared with them the statistics from press releases posted to Features Exec’s press release distribution service. He cites 20 per cent of the press releases are now coming from search marketing agencies rather than pure PR players. Daryl concludes that only 67 per cent of press releases distributed via SourceWire in May 2010 contained embedding links, thus limiting the SEO of the content.

He reasons that this could be because of a disconnect between marketing staff, who are used to using SEO to lift sales by driving traffic to their Websites and PR staff who are in the business of cultivating relationships and managing reputations on behalf of their clients.

In summary, Willcox found that while 89 per cent of the press releases distributed via Sourcewire contained links to client websites, only  67 per cent contained embedded links, which help to provide journalists with additional information and drive traffic to clients’ sites. While the May tally represents a 50 per cent increase in the use of embedded links since 2007, Willcox questions what the other 33 per cent of Sourcewire users are doing.

One of his audience commented that because of the disconnect between the marketing and PR departments of larger companies,  the smaller companies will be the first to demonstrate integration and innovation in PR and search marketing, because marketing is often managed by a single person with responsibility for both.

From my own conversations with smaller businesses, it certainly would appear that the smaller the business the better their handle on social media, search and PR (in that order). A recent pitch to a small information security company (with big name clients) revealed that even though they claimed they’d “done no PR,” they were already using a search agency extremely successfully and seeing measurable increases in traffic to their website, as well as forging strong relationships with their core press contacts by providing timely comment on industry issues and breaking news. The key point is that their investment in search marketing preceded their formal search for PR.

They’re a small company, they understand search marketing and they blend this with their PR, without using a large agency. This is precisely the wake up call that Daryl Willcox, Seth Godin and Philip Sheldrake are talking about. What are you seeing? Are smaller companies leading the way in the integration of PR and search?

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Pack your bags!

Is the printed press pack passé?

Four weeks, four shows, four press rooms. First it was SelfBuild and Renovation, then InfoSec, then it was Grand Designs Live, then it was IFSEC.  Yes it’s been a busy month.

What struck me this year was that in spite of the exponential increase in storage capacity on ever smaller devices, we’re still stuck in the groove of printing off press packs and sticking them on racks in a room ten minutes’ walk from the main exhibition space. Perhaps it’s a comfort factor: maybe clients need to see their professionally printed press releases side by side with their competitors’ news to feel that they’re fully participating in the event. However, this year I really got the feeling that this practice has to stop.  How many emails do you see with this appended?

Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail

And yet, we’re still firing off urgent emails to KallKwik requesting a quarter of our body weight in paper, so that we can courier 50 press packs up to Earls Court, Olympia, Excel Centre or the NEC and place them lovingly on a crowded rack in the press room. From experience, the rack is the only thing that is crowded.  I’ve been to all of these venues in the past month and the press offices were the same:  empty of journalists, but full of employees of the event management company and on the last day of the show still sadly displaying reams of uncollected press packs. Okay, InfoSec was the exception: there were plenty of journalists in the press office throughout the show, but I didn’t see any of them studying the printed press packs. They were all busily networking with colleagues, conducting interviews or reading press releases on their mobile devices.

I think today’s blog from Andy Clutton, editor of Risk UK, sums up the way forward:

“The award for the most useful innovation of IFSEC 2010 goes to the event organisers for making the decision to switch from a paper-based Press Office to a single USB pen. No more walking around the show looking like an overzealous postman for me this year; just one handy USB device, containing 189 press packs.” http://www.risk-uk.com/newsletterdetail.php?newsID=240

What do you think, should the PR industry collectively abandon the press pack in favour of email and social media alerts ahead of shows and portable storage devices on the day?

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Disarmed by Aldershot

I’m not a person who is easily won over, but this last week I have to admit that I have been seduced. Don’t get too excited, this doesn’t involve any tall dark strangers armed with roses.

No, I have been charmed and disarmed by Aldershot, the military town where I have lived this past decade.

Looking towards Aldershot from Caesar's Camp at sunrise

It all began with a residents’ meeting, where I listened to town centre manager, David Phillips, outlining his plans to improve the presentation and perception of the town centre. David pointed out that, culturally, Aldershot is very well endowed. We are blessed with two live performance venues; a lido; a gymnastics academy; a museum; library and lovely parks.

Of course I knew this already. I’ve been living here for ten years after moving from Alton in Hampshire. I cherish the fact that I have great neighbours, friendly shop keepers and a real sense that people are looking out for each other. But, a bit like when a friend points out your partner’s attributes, listening to David made me look at the town with fresh eyes and to resolve to spend a bit more time enjoying the facilities that Aldershot has to offer. Here’s a run down of the past week when I did precisely that:

On Sunday 7^th Feb I accompanied my husband on my mountain bike as he set off to sample the delights of Tweseldown in the 24 hour respite between snow and rain. The local kids have been hard at work building new jumps ramps and trails and we still can’t believe how lucky we are to be able to cycle up on top of Caesar’s camp and look across to Guildford cathedral and the North Downs, knowing that we’re only two miles from our front door. In fact we once got up before dawn just to watch the sunrise over Tweseldown.

Tweseldown overlooks Aldershot and provides a treasure trove of mountain bike trails

We cycled out as far as Hawley Lake without having to cycle more that 200 metres on tarmac and then came back via the Basingstoke canal, popping out by the striking Wellington monument. According to the Military Museum, this originally graced the corner of Hyde Park, but was moved to Aldershot on the wishes of Queen Victoria.

Aldershot’s links with Waterloo are not limited to statues: hopping on the 8.04am train will see you alighting in central London 40 miles away by 9am. Until EuroStar moved to St Pancras, you could have crossed the platform and been in Paris within a few hours of leaving the town.

On Monday evening I went to watch “Coco before Chanel” at the excellent Prince’s Hall (http://www.princeshall.com). This is a treasured live music and performance venue right on our doorstep that draws audiences from Farnham, Fleet, Ash and Aldershot. And deservedly so, I’ve seen everything from the Russian ballet to an audience with Tony Benn, courtesy of David Phillips’ varied programme of plays, films, lectures and comedy. Tonight Julian Clary is gracing the boards.

On Tuesday, I took my friend out for a coffee at the lovely Coffee Mi on Victoria Road, where we were treated to the strains of Albinoni’s oboe concerto which I haven’t heard since I was 15 years old and working towards my grade 5 (hence the “strains”). http://aldershot-info.com/barsandcafes.html

On Wednesday I popped into the fantastic Marks and Spencers Outlet to get a gift for my friend’s birthday. This store offers such amazing bargains that my aunts once turned up for a “lunch” visit at 4pm guiltily clutching three bags stuffed with jumpers, skirts, socks, slippers and jackets.  If it hadn’t been for work commitments that evening I would probably have gone in for another bout with the Funky End quiz (http://www.thefunkyend.com/index.html.

Geoff, the friendliest barman in the world

Put on by the proprietors, graduates of Farnham University of Creative Arts, the Funky End quiz is a highly entertaining blend of visual, audio, current affairs and word play questions that pits the wits of artists, scientist and soap fans against those with an encyclopaedic knowledge of rock, pop and astronomy. We won once: it was the hardest £20 I ever earned.

On Thursday I had a meeting with my new Aldershot-based client, Eleco (http://www.3darchitect.co.uk ), publisher of the Grand Designs 3D software, used by Tim Bawtree to visualise his underground Cheltenham house http://www.pixahome.com/about.php, which was showcased on the long running Channel 4 programme presented by Kevin McCloud. http://www.channel4.com/4homes/on-tv/grand-designs/episode-guides/cheltenham-the-underground-house-08-06-06_p_1.html. Eleco has recently relocated to Ivy Road from its former premises in Bentley, they still can’t stop smiling when they sit in their roomy new board room for our monthly meetings.

The park leading to the West End Centre on Queen's Road

On Saturday, my husband and I walked through the park to the West End Centre where we watched the magnificent Mabon (www.mabon.org), a modern celtic band, comprising a Scot on bagpipes and wooden flute and 5 Welshmen on accordian, fiddle, guitar, drums and bass, who’d missed the rugby to race down the M4 for the performance. They play a blend of modern reels and Galician tunes, which are aptly described on their website at “Interceltic”. It was a stunning performance to a sizable crowd. At the interval I was joined in the CD queue by two ladies chattering away in French about the performance.

I have watched countless performances at the West End Centre http://www3.hants.gov.uk/westendcentre, including: gigs by The Feeling; Julian Cope; stand up comedy from Stephen Merchant;  Mark Thomas and Richard Herring. No matter how many times I go there, I never get over the fact that I can walk there and back within 5 minutes.

Aldershot suffers from a huge perception issue. Go anywhere in the world and people will be able to tell you it’s the home of the British Army. Go four miles down the road to Farnham and people will pull that face when I tell them where I live. But if like me you love the outdoor life; you love being able to hop on your mountain bike and hit the trails within ten minutes of leaving your house;

Tweseldown boasts a treasure trove of mountain biking trails just two miles from Aldershot town centre

if you love live performance by world class musicians, award winning comedians and national treasures like Sir Patrick Moore; if you like a pint in comfortable friendly surroundings and you like being able to leave the car at home while you enjoy a night out; if you want good direct rail links to London, Gatwick, Farnham,  Ascot, Woking, Guildford; or if you and your friends want to take part in the funniest quiz for miles, then you’d soon fall for the place too.

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What’s the Good of Pro Bono?

In an earlier post I talked about how much I’ve enjoyed attending Brad Burton’s rapidly growing 4N networking group. At one of the 4N breakfasts last year, I met Andrew Cox, corporate partnerships manager at Phyllis Tuckwell Hospice (http://phyllistuckwellhospice.org) .

Over a piece of toast, Andrew explained that while there are plenty of volunteers giving up their time to undertake tasks such as gardening and odd jobs at the Farnham site, what the hospice needs is more regular financial support from local businesses.

The reason for this is stark: although the government provides 16 per cent of its funding, Phyllis Tuckwell Hospice still needs to raise £10.22 a minute to maintain the level of specialist care that it provides to patients, and their families, who are coping with terminal cancer and motor neurone disease.

I suggested that he could make a video showing how businesses of various sizes are already providing regular support, with the aim of sharing fund raising ideas and attracting more business supporters to the hospice. With a twinkle in his eye Andrew said, “So how would that work?” …… All of a sudden I was bitten by the pro bono bug.

Andrew went away and contacted three local companies that provide regular support to Phyllis Tuckwell Hospice: Central Heating Services based in North Camp (http://centralheatingservicesltd.co.uk/index.html ); Novartis based in Frimley (http://www.novartis.co.uk/corporate_citizenship/index.shtml ) and Remington Harrow hairdressers, based in Farnham (http://www.remington-harrow.com) .

We drafted some questions for each of the spokespeople and Matthew Barden at Square Production (http://www.squareproduction.com/ ) stepped in to video the interviews, then undertook some skilful editing to create the finished product which you can watch here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmGHalHDeeE

Watching the video again, what intrigues me is the reasons that each of the companies gave for supporting Phyllis Tuckwell Hospice: it attracts the right kinds of employees to their companies; it promotes a sense of community among the workforce, it brings in new customers; the fundraising activities are fun in themselves. But the underlying theme from all of the interviews is that donating money, time or skills to help others is good for you.

Over time, being in business purely to make a profit ceases to be a motivator. An entrepreneurial friend of mine warned that after six years of successfully winning business, she hit a wall and found it difficult to summon the same enthusiasm that had inspired her to found her company. Donating some of your revenue, or your accrued skills, to help other people reinvigorates and refocuses us on the bigger picture. What goes around really does come around. And that’s the good of pro bono.

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A (familiar) Christmas Story?

Left in the dark after online gift order

Here’s an advent calendar I wasn’t planning on that has left me red faced and staggered at the archaic customer service systems still in place at some of our biggest companies.

On Saturday 12^th December I sat down to my annual task of drawing up my thank you list and researching the best sites for Christmas wine deliveries. Having visited Laithwaites and Wines Direct, I chose Oddbins online as their wine selection and delivery service are usually excellent.

On Monday I settled down to order up the wines. I found the Oddbins site quite frustrating in that every time a new delivery address is entered, it clears the recipient list. When you’re ordering gifts for more than 20 recipients, this can be more than a tad frustrating and makes it extremely time consuming.

My confirmation email duly arrived from Oddbins and I got on with my normal PR duties. So I was surprised to receive a message on Tuesday asking me to call Oddbins Direct as there was a query from my card provider. The message read:

Thank you for your order reference #WO000**2*5

Unfortunately, we are experiencing difficulty in gaining authorisation from your card’s issuing bank.  Could you please contact us on the numbers below so that we can verify that the payment details entered on our website are correct or so that we can get alternative payment.

Please note that orders will be deleted in 7 days if we receive no response to this email

0800 328 2323 (Oddbins Direct)

I called the number provided in the email and was greeted with a chirpy, “Good morning Sharps Bedrooms”. ****@**//# ??????

I asked to be put through to Oddbins, there was a muffled conversation, then a delay and then a male voice informed me that I needed to call back. I called back. I thought all this pillar to post business went out more than 6 years ago with the advent of Salesforce.com and RightNow Technologies?

Hello Oddbins?

This time I was left on hold when I explained that I was trying to confirm an order placed online. After a brief conversation during which the “Oddbins Direct” representative appeared to be phishing, I hung up thinking that the site had been hacked.

Wednesday came and went

Thursday, the specified delivery date for my thank you gifts, came and went.

Friday, came and went.

On Saturday (today) I received a letter from my card’s issuing bank informing me that their fraud team had blocked my card transaction. The letter was dated Tuesday 15^th December.  It arrived Saturday 19^th December. I called immediately to see what was going on. It transpired that the bank blocked the Oddbins transaction because I had used my card on You Send It, to send some high res image files to an editor three days before. Apparently this followed a typical fraud pattern: the card is tested with small amounts, if these go through larger amounts are placed.

My card issuing bank apologised for sending a letter second class instead of calling me on Tuesday and told me that the transaction was now cleared to go through. I immediately called Oddbins Direct, which is, “now closed, our office hours are 9am – 6pm Monday to Friday”. So I can’t rectify the order until Monday morning. So I went online, logged in, went to my account and clicked on the queries tab. It asks you to enter your credit note or invoice number, so I used the ref from the sales order confirmation. It’s still trying to load the page. In fact it’s been trying to load the page since I started this post.

I am mortified.

In the dog house after Christmas order #FAIL

I apologise to anyone who normally gets a bottle of Christmas cheer from Phiness  PR and send my sincere thanks for your help this year. Forget November 30^th (http://www.itpro.co.uk/618265/shoppers-out-in-force-for-black-friday) , next year I will place my Christmas orders in May, just to make sure I leave enough time for any card queries or customer service disasters.

I appreciate that the bank has a job to do and had the card been used fraudulently I would be very grateful for their proactive intervention, but I really would have appreciated a call. And as for my call centre experience with the wine retailer, what on earth are they playing at? I honestly thought that disjoint between online shopping and customer service had been fixed long ago. Has anyone else had similar experiences this year?

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No time for networking?

In a recent post, I mentioned that I’m often asked what the value of face to face networking is, particularly when we can catch up with contacts over Twitter, LinkedIn, FaceBook and IM.

In that post I explained why I value meeting people face to face. Since then the same people have complained that they haven’t got the time to go networking. When you’re looking after business clients, then it’s difficult to justify taking two or three hours out of your morning/evening to go and meet new people and prospects. It’s a valid point.

However, last night I attended the monthly MoGu meeting in Guildford, hosted by Nick Lane, chief analyst at MobileSquared http://www.mobilesquared.co.uk. This is a monthly gathering of Surrey-based CEOs and entrepreneurs from the mobile industry. Previous attendees have included, Bemoko (www.bemoko.com) , iome (www.io-me.com),Fudoo (www.frudoo.com), Ed Barker (www.bridgewatersystems.com) and David Murphy, editor of Mobile Marketing (www.mobilemarketingmagazine.co.uk).

Yesterday’s gathering brought home another argument for making time for networking:  you can pick up a lot of information from a group of experts in an hour. This saves you vastly more time that you’d have had to devote to finding that information out for yourself.

Take this simple example, Phiness PR is becoming a limited company in January 2010, necessitating a new batch of business cards. At the Thames Valley Social Media Café (http://tvsmc.redcatco.com/tiki-index.php) I met Andy Piper @andypiper who introduced me to www.moo.com  where your personal library of Flickr photos can be uploaded and used to make business cards, postcards or montages.  I’d added this to my to do list and prepared upload my images and fire off a shiny new batch of Phiness PR Ltd., cards.

Last night I met up with Ben Tudor @btudor, formerly a journalist at Incisive and consumer broadband services analyst at Current Analysis. He handed me a small personalised business card with individual pictures on the back of each. I asked if he’d used Moo.com to create them and he spent a couple of minutes explaining the benefits and limitations of the service. Within two minutes I understood that Moo would be great for personal cards and invitations, but wouldn’t allow me to print the business cards that I needed, with the same picture on each card at the size I wanted it. So this morning, my first call was to my designer to request a fresh batch.

I also found out that a prominent editor had moved to a new publication, that the HTC Magic is a sweet little device running on Android™ and much more user friendly than the BlackBerry Storm. I could go on, but I think that if anyone tells me that they haven’t got time to get out and meet people, last night’s MoGu proved the ROI.

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Only the best Mummies make snails

It’s amazing how much can happen in the space of a month. As I look back over my calendar highlights for November, they include: three new business pitches; pro bono projects for two UK charities and squeezing in a mountain bike skills course in the Lake District (narrowly missing the deluge).

After one new business meeting, I visited one of my closest friends from university who lives just a few miles from the prospect’s office. My visit coincided with her serving lunch to her three year old daughter. I was charmed to see that she had carefully prepared tuna and cucumber swirls which her little girl happily polished off. Commenting on this culinary elegance, I was told (out of earshot) that since her daughter loved “snails”, my friend had taken to preparing her lunch this way so that she could incorporate the most nutritious elements that might otherwise be left on the plate/table/carpet.

Coming from an era when you ate what you were given and the most memorable advice on nutrition was to eat crusts for curly hair, this level of care and attention is impressive.

I was reminded of this during a prospect meeting last week as I explained that the best route to gaining coverage is to provide information to journalists in the format that works best for their publication and readership. If the journalists haven’t got time to meet for an interview, offer a byline, or a CEO comment on a topical issue. If the journalist doesn’t want to speak to vendors and doesn’t accept pre-written case studies, offer them an interview with one of your customers. If they want it in video format, call in a camera crew.

It’s all about delivering the information that helps journalists to write their story in the format that works best for their publication or website. Sometimes, it’s the same story, told in different ways. An enterprise mobility case study that I pitched was covered in the FT as a business consultancy story; in Service Management as a field service efficiency story; in Computer Weekly as a front page mobile technology story and in MLogistics as a logistics management story.

You can’t force feed the media with the same story in the same format, they have a job to do and you have to help them to do it by tailoring your information to their agenda. My friend’s care and attention to detail provided a welcome reminder that being creative can make a routine service more enjoyable, as well as being more palatable to the recipient. As I said to my friend’s daughter, “Only the best Mummies make snails you know.”

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Getting more sizzle from your sausage

 ”Issues hijacking”;“media monitoring”, call it what you will. Providing a timely response to breaking news or making an interesting comment on a topical issue will help you get coverage. Some PRs have to be taught this technique, others just do it naturally.

My friend, an entrepreneur not a PR, falls squarely into this latter category. This week she provided a brilliant example of how to harness the news agenda to gain publicity for her business.

 

I have known Lisa Drummy since our University days when she was a committed vegetarian and spoke passionately about animal welfare. She still holds to those principles, is now a vegan and ten years ago set up Beanies: a vegan and vegetarian food import business http://www.beanieshealthfoods.co.uk/.  Since then Lisa and her father have imported and distributed FRY’s range of vegetarian burgers; schnitzels; vegetarian chicken nuggets and vegetarian sausages and secured the sole UK distribution rights for the B’Nice range of dairy free rice ice cream. Beanies has worked extremely hard to raise awareness of the products that it distributes. The Beanies team has attended the vegetarian and vegan exhibitions;  entered and won vegetarian food awards; written columns in the vegetarian and ethical lifestyle magazines and given interviews to the press. However, this latest example of Beanies’ publicity was a master stroke.

The 2^nd November marked the start of British Sausage Week, aimed at persuading UK consumers to look for the British Quality Standard Mark (QSM) on their pork sausages. The QSM denotes that higher standards of animal welfare, traceability of ingredients and quality control were used in the manufacture of sausages.  You can hear Paul Daniels explaining all in a podcast here: http://www.britishsausageweek.com/

So it was with some delight that I tuned into Chris Evans’ show on Radio 2 on Tuesday 3^rd November to hear Lisa Drummy introducing a taste test. Yes FRY’s vegetarian sausages, burgers and nuggets were being pitted against pork sausages, beef burgers and chicken nuggets. Chris was at pains to point out that this was a test of “tastiness” not a test of whether FRY’s products tasted like meat. Lisa pointed out that FRY’s is aimed at the “meat reduction” market:  people (like me) who are considering cutting down on their meat intake and looking for tasty meat substitutes to combine into their normal diet.  Having tried the FRY’s schnitzels at one of the many exhibitions that Beanies attends, I can vouch for the tastiness. They are fabulous and would certainly help anyone looking to follow Dr Rajendra Pachauri’s advice: have one meat free day a week to help cut the global carbon dioxide emissions associated with animal rearing and meat production http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/07/food.foodanddrink

You can listen to the FRY’s taste test with Lisa Drummy from Beanies on iPlayer until 10^th November http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00nm9lv Lisa’s interview starts at the 1hr 15 minute mark.

All I can say is that’s one tasty bit of coverage for Beanies and a splendid example of issues hijacking.

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Manners Maketh……

A little bit of thanks makes our day

Every once in a while an email comes through from a journalist, analyst or former business contact that brings a smile to my face, brightens the week and makes all the hard work worthwhile. This morning was one of those occasions. I’d got up early to prepare some questions for an early morning case study interview, then logged into my VPN account to check emails on behalf of my PR agency client, éclat Marketing. The first one I opened was from CRN reporter Kayleigh Bateman. Her email stands out as one of the nicest I’ve received in 12 years of press relations work.

 

Kayleigh’s email begins, “I don’t know if you’ve heard yet, but I’m leaving CRN. My last day here is Wednesday 2nd September….” Kayleigh goes on to explain that she has been appointed as the site editor of TechTarget’s new website, Searchvirtualdatacentre.co.uk. This is an absolutely perfect website for one of éclat’s clients, Star http://www.star.co.uk so I’m really grateful that Kayleigh has let me know that TechTarget is setting up a new site focusing on cloud services and virtualisation. However, what really warmed my heart was that Kayleigh ends her email with the words, “Thank you for all your help whilst I’ve been on CRN – I really appreciate it. I look forward to working with you again some time in the future”.

 

I am guided by the Chinese philosophy of Guanxi, that teaches that business is transient, but the relationship is forever. It’s communications like these that really bring that home. PRs are facilitators, networkers, matchmakers….call it what you will, but a fundamental part of our role is helping to identify the right people to speak to journalists so that their articles contain useful comment and advice and readers carry on reading the publication. If we help journalists to fulfil this role, by putting them in touch with relevant experts who share their experience and expertise with readers, then journalists will be more likely to open our email, or take our call in future.

As well as providing positive feedback and proving that 600 years on from William of Wykeham’s proclamation that “Manners Maketh (wo)Man”, Kayleigh’s message also reminds me that it’s not just coverage that we’re seeking when we pull out all the stops to find exactly the right spokesperson to help a journalist meet his or her deadline. We’re seeking a lasting business relationship.

The best matches benefit both parties

It is worth noting that the most successful spokespeople don’t just push their company product during interviews. They take time to understand what the journalist is writing about; what will be most relevant to the readership and then provide the information that will fulfil this brief. In other words, the best spokespeople forge a relationship that leads to them being repeatedly quoted in their target press and thereby raise their company profile with their customers, prospects and partners.

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